I intended for this to be my first post on this blog. It needed a little editing (and still does, in my opinion) before being posted....
Flip on the news, and you’ll see headlines about global warming, rising oil prices, decreasing dollar value, and President Bush’s latest gaffe. You wont, however, hear anything about the world’s population growth. How is it that humanities greatest problem, the unsustainable explosion of human populations, appears to go entirely overlooked? Consider, for example, an excerpt from U Thant, the secretary general of the United Nations in 1973, who wrote:
Over thirty years later, humanity continues to grapple with these issues: eight nations possess, or are believed to possess, nuclear arms (including Iran and North Korea); and global warming is finally becoming recognized as a legitimate issue by governmental agencies. Yet, to my knowledge, there is very little concern over the global population. A visit to the Harvard Coop, a respectable bookstore in Cambridge, only holds two volumes on the subject: 1) Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population and, 2) Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Meadows et al. And a search on Google for “global warming” produces nearly 6.5 times more hits than a search for “population growth” (and that’s just population growth in general, not just human growth)!
This blog will be entirely dedicated to this issue of human population growth, but only through the lens of biology. While there’s plenty to be said about the effects of culture upon population growth (e.g., the effects of the economy, governmental legislations, pregnancy fads, just to name a few), I’m primarily interested in the evolutionary aspects of human population growth. Are there any particular evolutionary traits that are unique to humans that have helped us to conquer the entire planet? If so, what does that tell us about how we live, and where we are going in the future? Hopefully, in the end, we’ll better understand how we became The Colonizing Ape….
Flip on the news, and you’ll see headlines about global warming, rising oil prices, decreasing dollar value, and President Bush’s latest gaffe. You wont, however, hear anything about the world’s population growth. How is it that humanities greatest problem, the unsustainable explosion of human populations, appears to go entirely overlooked? Consider, for example, an excerpt from U Thant, the secretary general of the United Nations in 1973, who wrote:
I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as secretary-general, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to diffuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control (Meadows, page 13).
Over thirty years later, humanity continues to grapple with these issues: eight nations possess, or are believed to possess, nuclear arms (including Iran and North Korea); and global warming is finally becoming recognized as a legitimate issue by governmental agencies. Yet, to my knowledge, there is very little concern over the global population. A visit to the Harvard Coop, a respectable bookstore in Cambridge, only holds two volumes on the subject: 1) Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population and, 2) Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Meadows et al. And a search on Google for “global warming” produces nearly 6.5 times more hits than a search for “population growth” (and that’s just population growth in general, not just human growth)!
This blog will be entirely dedicated to this issue of human population growth, but only through the lens of biology. While there’s plenty to be said about the effects of culture upon population growth (e.g., the effects of the economy, governmental legislations, pregnancy fads, just to name a few), I’m primarily interested in the evolutionary aspects of human population growth. Are there any particular evolutionary traits that are unique to humans that have helped us to conquer the entire planet? If so, what does that tell us about how we live, and where we are going in the future? Hopefully, in the end, we’ll better understand how we became The Colonizing Ape….
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