The Human Problem

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It’s not Climate Change, or AIDS, or Oil that’s the problem

6.5 billion may seem like a small number. 6.5 after all isn’t much. It sounds like a tall person. The human population of planet Earth should probably be written like so:

6 500 000 000

On paper it still fits comfortably into one sentence. But that number of human beings doesn’t fit into any sustainable systems anywhere. They do incredible damage every day, and produce gargantuan quantities of waste.

In fact, unlike other animals, every time human beings move, they pollute their environment. Every time they cook. Everything they do erodes the natural world of its resources. In fact right now, your reading this article on a computer screen, and me writing it - something that may seem particularly benign - is consuming resources.