Chris, If we mostly talk about our lifestyle choices to diminish our contribution to overconsumption, it's because that's where we have the most choices to make. Also, coming mostly from wealthy countries with low growth rates, that's what we can point to to address whether we are as much a part of the problem as others around us. Yes, we can teach what we understand to be true about overpopulation, and we can push for government policies that can help reduce the global population growth rate (such as funding family planning services in poor countries where such services are not accessible to most people). However, the only lifestyle choice we can make to reduce our personal contributions to overpopulation is not to breed too much, and I'm sure most of us are aware of that option.
I'm certain just about everyone here knows that the total human impact on the environment is a product of population size and per-capita environmental impact. (How to measure "impact" is probably something we'd argue about.) Jim Crants On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Chris_Hamilton <chami...@uwsp.edu> wrote: > I'm not sure being ecologists makes any of us that much more grounded than > the average person. Look at all of these posts about lifestyle choices to > trim our footprint. Only two even refer to the number of humans leaving a > footprint as a potential problem. > -- James Crants, PhD Scientist, University of Minnesota Agronomy and Plant Genetics
