- As the United accelerates toward adding another 100 million
people within 25 years, its citizens neglect growing consequences easily
witnessed in other overpopulated countries. Americans assume they can continue
unlimited expansion because, "We've always considered growth as the
mainstay of our prosperity."
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- Thus, Americans think 'endless increase' as a normal
aspect of their daily lives. Their paradigm cannot and will not be tolerated
by Mother Nature much longer. Dr. Albert Bartlett, (www.albartlett.org),
said, "Continued growth past maturity for any entity becomes obesity
or cancer." As we all know, both problems create a debilitating existence
or shortened lifespan.
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- The author of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich
said, "Few problems are less recognized, but more important than,
the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In
pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb
on which it is perched."
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- SIX EXTINCTION SESSION FACING HUMANITY ON EARTH
- Over the course of this planet's six billion years of
existence, 'life' popped up a short time ago, and during its survival and
through great geological and special traumas, millions of creatures suffered
extinction from climate change, ice ages and meteor hits that created 'nuclear
winters' that blocked out the sun-thus stopping all photosynthesis that
allowed the food chain to feed dependent life beings. To date, five "Extinction
Sessions" killed of up to 97 percent of living species on the planet.
The three percent that survived allowed all life that you see on this planet
today. Now, in the 21st century, we plunge into the 6th Extinction
Session.
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- In his work, Professor Norman Meyers, UK, wrote, "Winnowing
for Today's World", on the concept of mass extinction. As shown by
the National Academy of Sciences and (www.worldwildlifefund.org), humans,
via encroachment on wilderness habitat, cause the extinction of 80 to 100
creatures daily around the globe.
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- Meyers said, "These, then, are some ultimate issues
for us to bear in mind as we begin to impose a fundamental shift on evolutions
course. The biggest factor by far is that, as we proceed on our impoverishing
way, we scarcely pause to consider what we are doing. We are "deciding"
without even the most superficial reflection - deciding all too unwittingly,
but effectively and increasingly."
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- In 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that
the planet loses 30,000 species per year: around three species per hour.
Some biologists feel that the biodiversity crisis dubbed the "Sixth
Extinction" accelerates more severely than Wilson expected.
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- SPECIES EXTINCTION IN THE UNITED STATES ACCELERATING
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- At 310 million and headed for 400 million within 25 years,
America adds 3.1 to 3.4 million humans annually. Each added American requires
the destruction of 12.6 acres of wilderness habitat known as 'ecological
footprint'. That many acres must be developed into homes, roads, cities,
schools, malls and land for food production.
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- When you multiply 100 million added humans times 12.6
acres-that equals a loss of 1.26 billion acres of wilderness habitat in
the next 25 years. Since demographers expect the USA to double to 600 million,
work the math!
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- Where will the animals flee to eat, procreate and flourish?
Where will we find that much arable land? How about water?
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- According to reports, 6,330 animal species in North America
teeter on the edge of extinction. The National Academy of Sciences predicts
2,500 plants and animals go extinct every decade from habitat loss. At
some point, these extinction rates create a 'cascading effect' for all
other dependent species. We answer to an intertwined ecosystem.
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- In the West, the prairie dog provides sustenance for
67 other creatures in the food chain. Over half of prairie dog colonies
suffered human development destruction in the past 30 years. As their numbers
plummeted, every creature depending on those rodents declined commensurately.
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- In a report in the Boston Globe, October 19, 2006, by
John Donnelly, "Scientists Alarmed at Loss of Pollinators," he
reported rapidly dropping numbers of birds, bees and bats could impact
humanity's food supply. Most plants depend on their pollen being picked
up by birds, bats and bees to be distributed so that fruits, nuts and vegetables
can reproduce and grow.
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- In 2007, on Colorado's eastern plains, farmers imported
beekeepers with their mobile bee hives to pollinate crops. The lack of
bees in the United States created the first imports of bees since 1922.
Reports suggest bees being killed by pesticides called neonicotinoids,
that impair the bees' immune systems. One of the most widely used is imidacloprid.
It's sprayed all over crops from California to Maine. Consequently, bees
get sick and die!
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- "In addition," Donnelly reported, "wild
pollinators from bumblebees to butterflies to nocturnal moths-have lost
much of their habitat, due to vast use of pesticides and herbicides that
kill plants and hedges in which the insects and birds live."
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- With over 80,000 manmade chemicals being injected into
the land, water and air-doesn't it make you wonder what in the heck we're
doing to ourselves and future generations?
- At the same time, humans continue overpopulation this
planet by a net gain of 80 million annually. At what point will leaders,
citizens, media and the rest of us speak up? Can it be too soon, too late
or do we simply watch our civilization collapse from our apathy?
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- "The American people today are involved in warfare
more deadly than the war in Vietnam, but few of them seem aware of it and
even fewer of them are doing anything about it. This is a war that is being
waged against the American environment, against our lands, air, and water,
which are the basis of that environment." --Norman Cousins
(1915-1990)
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- _________
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- Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents
- from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as six times across the USA,
coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic
Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming Population
Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church
groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world
population balance atwww.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America
on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1
888 280 7715
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