I have a little New Yorker drawing, a cartoon that depicts our Earth looking somewhat puzzled as another bigger orb wearing a doctor’s ophthalmoscope on its head serves up the unsettling diagnosis: “I am afraid you have humans.”
No need to point fingers, or get preachy. It is a fact. Our population has doubled in the last 40 years and will likely double again in the next 20. There are now more of us humans (close to six and a half billion) using up our planet’s survival rations of water, air and fossil fuels faster than ever before. We are also having a go at the fields, forests and oceans that house other species. Their rate of extinction is speeding up and we are losing them. Gone. Despite energetic efforts to save some, we can’t keep up with the demand.
Oh yes, one more thing. We have released enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels in the last 50 years to change the climate for the future.
Most scientists buy this, and...
Kathryn O’Hara is the president of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association and a journalism professor at Carleton University.
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