Human Growth Annihilates Species

I'm thrilled to learn that the Center for Biological Diversity is launching a new population campaign. Here is the opening paragraph from their announcement:

The human population is 6.8 billion and growing every second. The sheer force of our numbers is dominating the planet to such a degree that geologists are contemplating renaming our era the "Anthropocene": the epoch where the human species is the dominant factor affecting land, air, water, soil, and species. We now absorb 42 percent of the planet's entire terrestrial net primary productivity. We use 50 percent of all fresh water. We've transformed 50 percent of all land. We've changed the chemical composition of the whole biosphere and all the world's seas, bringing on global warming and ocean acidification.

And here is the intro to their new website:

The human population doubled from 1 to 2 billion between the years 1800 and 1930 — an unparalleled event in the planet’s history. No large mammal had ever grown to such numbers or commandeered so many resources. The impact on North America’s native species was devastating:

• Driven extinct by hunters, the last eastern woodland bison was seen in West Virginia in 1825.
• Undulata delissea, a Hawaiian plant, was driven extinct in 1865 by domestic cattle.
• The beautiful Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, which existed on a single island, was drowned by U.S. Dam No. 41 in Kentucky in 1881.
• The Whiteline topminnow was last seen Alabama in 1899, its spring habitat repeatedly pumped dry by the growing human population.
• The Culebra parrot was hunted and collected to extinction in Puerto Rico by 1899.
• The Rocky Mountain grasshopper was purposefully driven extinct — a bounty was even placed on its head — by 1903.
• Merriam’s elk was hunted to extinction in Arizona in 1906.
• The Tennessee riffleshell disappeared in 1930 due to pollution and dams.

The human population doubled again by 1975, this time taking just 45 years. The rate of extinction also increased. Today’s population stands at 6.8 billion and, if it continues on course, will reach 8 billion in 2020 before leveling off at about 9 billion in 2050. If it doesn’t level off, the worldwide population could theoretically reach 15 billion by 2050, but that is unlikely due to the insurmountable economic, political, and ecological crises that would likely ensue.

I am clapping my hands and going "bravo, bravo." This could not have been better said.

The point is that it's NOT FAIR for humans to drive tens of thousands of other species into extinction. This is criminal. If a desperate young woman aborts her fetus, the conservative Christian types scream "MURDER," but they don't bat an eyelash when 30,000 species are slaughtered due to human activity. The Christian conservatives FREAK OUT when two guys hold hands in a park, but they don't think twice about the millions of animals obliterated in North America. Where is the justice? Here is the fairness?

Please visit their site: Center for Biological Diversity Overpopulation Campaign

The Goose