Center Op-ed: Dear 7 Billionth Baby
Today isn’t just Halloween — it’s the second anniversary of the world’s population reaching 7 billion people. A lot has happened in the first two years of Earth’s 7 billionth baby: The human population keeps growing, each person leaving a little less of our planet’s limited resources for other species (with some consuming more than others — we’re looking at you, fellow Americans).
Stephanie Feldstein, the Center’s new Population and Sustainability director, has a new op-ed in The Huffington Post in honor of Baby 7 Billion’s 2nd birthday. It takes a close look at our growing environmental footprint, and imparts some early wisdom for the landmark babe on living as sustainably as she can throughout her years ahead.
“You’ll make choices throughout your life — from what you eat to where you live to how many kids you have — that will help or hurt other species,” writes Stephanie. “It’s up to you to make sure future generations don’t know polar bears and panthers only as stuffed animals.”
Read Stephanie’s whole op-ed in The Huffington Post and sign up for our monthly newsletter Pop X.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2013/huffington-post_10-24-2013.html
Exposing the Big Game 
The world’s population is approaching 7 billion and the march of civilization continues the destruction of the planet, the destruction of flora and fauna, wilderness encroachment, destruction of biodiversity, sports killing of animals to the brink, resources exhaustion, carbon footprint growth, sterilization of the earth. Some religions encourage population growth, after all this planet is a temporary stop on the way to Nirvana or heaven. I occasionally re-watch The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves in which he is an alien coming here to save earth from man: “If man lives, the earth dies. If man dies, the earth will survive”.
You must have misspoke yourself–the world’s human population passed the 7 billion mark 2 years ago. If any other species (especially one that ate so much animal flesh) had a population that was so out of control so fast, people would be panicking and wondering how to control or exploit them…
Reblogged this on Wolf Is My Soul.
The VHEMT is not catching on quickly enough. I know people who have degrees in human ecology with it’s emphasis on the downside of human over population. These same people graduated and went on to have baby after baby. Hopeless is what I call the future of mankind. We can’t even save ourselves in a simple gentle way. Just stop having babies. Nooooo we will have to go head first into some kind of terrible collapse and immense suffering for all.
Excellent statement Denderah, I agree with you 100%. There, in a nutshell is the history and future of mankind. How hard is it to decide not to add more humans to the world? Too bad your friends with degrees in human ecology with emphasis on the downside of human overpopulation didn’t learn that for every new human baby born, thousands of farmed animals and entire species of wildlife have to die.
I have never had children and neither has my husband. I knew when I was a girl I never wanted to be a mother. Wouldn’t it be a horror to have a baby who turned out to be a psycho hunter?
Same with my wife and I. Some people think if they teach their children to respect the planet and raise them vegan they will be helping to solve the problem, but you can’t force a kid to accept your way of thinking, and as we know, they often rebel and end up doing the exact opposite.