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Human Population Quotes

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Human Population Quotes

“Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness.”

“Growth, growth, growth -- that's all we've known . . . World automobile production is doubling every 10 years; human population growth is like nothing that has happened in all of geologic history. The world will only tolerate so many doublings of anything -- whether it's power plants or grasshoppers.”

“It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”

“While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.”

“We should educate more women and girls. Because that is the surest route to controllably, manageably reducing the human population. Educated women have fewer kids. And the kids they do have are better cared for and are more successful. As I like to say, it's not one thing that we need to focus on. It's everything all at once.”

“What is the story with the airport sinks, that they will not give us a twist-on twist-off human faucet. "Is it that too risky for the human population? We have to do the one-handed pain-in-the-ass Alcatraz-style faucets. "What is it they think we will do? Turn 'em all on full, run out into the parking lot, laughing, pushing each other into the bushes?”

“In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”

“Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.”

“In fact, the early demographer Thomas Malthus believes that the only way the human population would ever check itself was by running headlong into a disaster, like a pandemic or famine. Sometimes we get so frustrated with the slowness of human political processes that we wish a giant flaming rock would solve the problem for us.”

“Many scientists would argue that we are now in what is called Extinction, and it's caused by this perfect extinction storm: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of species and habitat resources, and of course, human population explosion. All of these factors work together and conspire to drive a species to extinction on our planet, every half an hour.”

“'The anthropocene' refers to the way we live now, in a highly globalized world, characterized by a large human population and powerful technologies that allow for "action at a distance" that aggregate apparently negligible acts into powerful forces that are transforming fundamental planetary systems. In this sense 'the anthropocene' refers to a period in which nature as an independent autonomous domain comes to an end or is under serious threat.”

“The bottom quarter of the human population has only three-quarters of one percent of global household income, about one thirty-second of the average income in the world, whereas the people in the top five percent have nine times the average income. So the ratio between the averages in the top five percent and the bottom quarter is somewhere around 300 to one - a huge inequality that also gives you a sense of how easily poverty could be avoided.”

“The root cause of the looming energy problem - and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health - is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.”

“Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.”

“After a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-" "Okay, that was so not my fault-" "-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population." "I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans." "They smell bad when they're dead." "All you mortal types do.”

“We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored.”

“...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less.”

“Even if we act immediately, the world is doomed to lose many of its animal and plant species and this inturn will reduce the ability of ecosystems to deliver vital services to human populations. The Red List gives all of us a practical tool for raising awareness of the biodiversity crisis and for forging new partnerships within the international community.”

“Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavour, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”

“It is not a dirty word, "feminism." I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else... The problem is, "A feminist looks like this, or is like that." We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like, what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women.”

“Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.”

“We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.”

“Soil is a resource, a living, breathing entity that, if treated properly, will maintain itself. It's our lifeline for survival. When it has finally been depleted, the human population will disappear. . . . Project you imagination into the soil below you next time you go into the garden. Think with compassion of the life that exists there. Think, the drama, the sexuality, the harvesting, the work that carries on ceaselessly. Think about the meaning of being a steward for the earth.”