Green Options » carrying capacity

Kenya White Rhino Translocation: Video

Rhishja Larson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:45:03 +0000

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For the first time, Kenya Wildlife Service is introducing white rhino from Lake Nakuru National Park to Nairobi National Park.

Nairobi National Park will serve as a new home for ten white rhino, who are being translocated from drought-stricken Lake Nakuru National Park. The lack of water has depleted the grasses that make up the huge herbivores’ food source, and Lake Nakuru wildlife officials fear there is too much competition and not enough food for the grass-eating pachyderms.

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Population Control - Is Anyone Willing to Talk About It?

Stephen Boles — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:00:35 +0000

Scott Cooney of Red, Green, and Blue recently wrote a thought provoking post about the need for population control as a fundamental and necessary tool to deal with a wide range of environmental crises. He refers to population control as the elephant in the room when it comes to policymakers. This is certainly an apt description of the issue, and it may even be considered an understatement. I would go so far as to say that population control is regarded as political suicide and a topic that is seemingly avoided at all costs.

Even though the rapid growth of the human population is such an obvious concern, very few people outside of the academic world and some dedicated NGOs are willing to discuss the issue. The earth’s population is projected to rise an astonishing 40% to 9.2 billion people by 2050! This level of increase will put tremendous strain on a wide range of already-stressed resources, including food stocks, fresh water, precious metals, and of course fossil fuels.

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Population and Policy: The Elephant in the Room

Scott Cooney — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:07:31 +0000

The Catholic Church recently excommunicated a doctor who performed an abortion on a 9 year old girl who had been raped by her stepfather. Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the Archbishop, has been criticized for the excommunication of the doctor, the doctor’s medical team, and the mother of the child. He did not excommunicate the rapist, saying that, “A graver act than rape is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life.” (He also did not excommunicate the girl, which would otherwise be Church rule, because, “The Church is benevolent to minors,” he said.)

Feel your blood pressure rising? You’re not alone. There may be no political issue that generates more controversy than abortion. Some recent polls indicate that almost half of voters say it is a top issue influencing their vote one way or another.

Lost in the shuffle of whether life begins at conception or at birth is the broader implications of family planning on the one issue that most affects sustainable development: population.

It may surprise some that Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush, was Treasurer of Planned Parenthood in 1947. Grandfather Bush supported Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive rights, as did Father Bush, until given an ultimatum in 1980 by then candidate Reagan. Why exactly the switch came is the subject of much debate.

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Overpopulation and Oil: What the Talking Heads Don’t Talk About

Chris Schille — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:33:48 +0000

Sometime back on National Public Radio, a panel discussed the high cost of gasoline and what the next president should do about it. When asked if we should be concerned about running out of oil, a panelist quipped that “President Obama” will create appropriate tax incentives for photovoltaics and oil will become so much “useless sludge”. Am I alone in thinking that there is a general lack of understanding about what the future holds for all of us when petroleum runs out?

Yes, We Eat Oil

When nitrogen is allowed to infiltrate a suitable body of water, the normal population of algae grows explosively. It consumes available nutrients and oxygen, turns the water green, and kills most other species. The algae, unable to thrive under the conditions they themselves have created, begin to die. This is called an algae bloom.

Petroleum is humanity’s source of nitrogen. Increasingly, we’re aware that it doesn’t just heat our houses and propel our cars; we actually eat it. Through the twin miracles of modern agriculture and wet-milling, petroleum becomes nitrogen fertilizer, which becomes corn or soybeans, which become virtually every and any processed food product we know (including virtually all meat and farmed fish).[1] In Michael Pollan’s acclaimed book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he documents that over sixty percent of the average American’s diet comes from (petroleum-derived) corn![2]

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