Have been thinking about this (while I've been trying, and failing, to get some work done).
As I stated before, I think it's pretty obvious that most of the world's problems are caused by the population - after all these are human problems, remove humans from the equation, and the problems go away. Simple as that.
But - an alternate theory (and I'm just flapping my gums here). Is the problem over-population, or is the problem that the population is not developed enough?
Think about the timeline that North America has gone through over the past 150 years, heck even the past 30 years. It wasn't that long ago when it was acceptable to bury "old barrels" out in the back 40. A town here in Ontario, lost it's water supply due to contamination from a UniRoyal plant that occurred back in the 60's (they made Agent Orange for the US military back in Vietnam). Love Canal, Hamilton Harbour - the list of Superfund sites goes on and on. But this just isn't acceptable any more. Society has decided that we can't bury old barrels - we've changed, and the result is, many of the problems we're dealing with, are historical ones. As North America has become more developed/advanced many of the "problems" caused by people are becoming less and less. I'm not saying everything is perfect - but it's pretty hard to deny that things are much better now than they were in the 70's.
So why are we getting better? I think it could have something to do with the fact that we don't have to worry about whether or not we will survive past tomorrow - we live fairly secure lives. There may be some ups and downs, but we will get through. Most of us will live into our late 70's. This removes a huge amount of pressure from us, and gives us time (and energy) to worry about other things - like our impact on the environment.
Then look at other, less developed regions of the earth. The African villagers that shoot an elephant in order to sell it's tusks on the black market couldn't care less about the health of the elephant herd. The fisherman who has a starving family and uses dynamite to fish isn't worried about losing the world's corals. And the country that needs electricity to lift millions out of destitute poverty isn't worried about air pollution.
When it comes down to acute vs chronic issues..........acute always takes precedence, even if the solution to the acute issue causes a chronic one.
So - how do we get the world's population to develop a global conscience? We could probably start by giving them the tools so they no longer needed to scratch out a life. Development to the rescue......Plus you get the added bonus of a greatly reduced birthrate!
