I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Our planet's lands and oceans are already stretched to meet the demands of 7 billion people. The human population continues to grow. The search for sustainable solutions is an economic and a moral imperative if we are to create the future we want.
All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.
The most important question we have to deal with is a combination of population control and the control of our environment - how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind.
We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems, we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for.
We are losing our environment so rapidly.
During these last ten thousand years, we have made massive, unprecedented changes to the environment, creating problems for ourselves that we may not be able to solve.
Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.
By 2050, seven out of ten people will live in cities, which will account for six billion people living in urban areas. That phenomenon is central to all the challenges humanity faces. If there is an issue to be addressed, then it is certainly happening in cities and therefore must be considered on an urban scale.
Human beings are going to be relying on natural resources for a long time.
It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.