The New Population Bomb

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 MEN: MOTHER'S audience mainly lives in North America. The population issues that we are discussing, however harrowing, may too often be just an abstraction to people. At the very least it is hard to even imagine the orders of magnitude. Specifically, and with examples: What does increasing population mean to them in the next 10 years?

 Tobias: If you live anywhere in the United States, you are likely as not, to be aware of increased congestion, increased degradation of your surroundings by way of noise, pollution, more and more development that is usurping previously wild or semi-wild land. Human beings are predators, and our increasing appetite for goods and services is going to produce the inevitable result of displacing native populations of plants and animals, and inflicting on fellow human beings an increasing toll of pain and suffering, or at the very least, discomfort and annoyance.

MEN: Less biodiversity, say...

 Tobias: Absolutely. First, you will see dead forests. You will see third- and fourthand fifth-growth forests with nothing but white-tailed deer, and the mice and mosquitoes that surround them. I could list hundreds of species that you won't know ever existed in this country.

MEN: Such as?

Tobias: Well, we are seeing the demise of amphibians, reptiles, exotic birds in this country. There's a crisis of depletion among water fowl. You will not see any of the carnivores, any of the predators. The cougars, the bobcats, the lynx, the wolverine, the martens, the grizzly bear, even some of the black bears, depending on the region. You'll not see any of the large raptors. They'll be gone. The California condor will be the first to go since there are less than 80 left despite effort to breed the birds, but you're not going to see swallows and song birds and rare ducks and even pigeons of rare varieties...

MEN: And you will see more of...

 Tobias: You'll see more cockroaches, rats, mice, some rabbits, white-tailed deer, which are doing very well despite all-out hunting quotas. You'll see starlings and blackbirds and cowbirds. You'll see a lot of squirrels. And you'll see a lot of domestic animals. You'll see billions of cows headed for the slaughter and sheep and goats. You'll see a lot of seemingly exotic species that are being nurtured for slaughter. ..like buffalo, like emus, like ostriches, like deer. That will pretty much be the universe that young people coming into this world will have at their disposal, and it will be much more diminished with respect to flora .

The New Wilderness"You will [only] see third- and fourth-growth forests, with nothing but white-tailed deer and mice and mosquitoes."

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