Quotes & Sayings About Population Explosion

No magic bullet, not even the Internet, can save us from population explosion, deforestation, climate disruption, poison by pollution, and wholesale extinction of plant and animal species. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy. — Joanna Macy

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. — Jeff Corwin

We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children. — Germaine Greer

Real problem is not population explosion, but what the population is doing. — Radhanath Swami

In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people. — Vandana Shiva

There are now more phone connections in the world than there are people. — John E. Mackey

Population Explosion [10w]
The world will soon have more live people than dead. — Beryl Dov

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. — E. O. Wilson

An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one's mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most ... No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials. We are no more distressed at their proliferation than an owl is at a population explosion among field mice ... but in the animal world things are different, and human feelings are different ... Fecundity is anathema only in the animal. "Acres and acres of rats" has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, "acres and acres of tulips". — Annie Dillard

The people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live. — Vandana Shiva

No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers.
Any society with a marked population explosion will be forced to devote all its energies and technological skills to feeding and caring for the population on its home planet. This is a very powerful conclusion and is in no way based on the idiosyncrasies of a particular civilization. On any planet, no matter what its biology or social system, an exponential increase in population will swallow every resource. Conversely, any civilization that engages in serious interstellar exploration and colonization must have exercised zero population growth or something very close to it for many generations. — Carl Sagan

The slaughter of Oxford's dogs and cats had been well intentioned, but the result had been an explosion in the town's population of rats, with few surviving predators to keep them down, — Ann Swinfen

There's no question at all that the population explosion will come to an end. The two basic choices are it'll come to an end because we control our reproduction, and in many areas we have started to do so, or we'll end up with a high death rate. You have to take a personal moral stand on this. — Paul R. Ehrlich

We all worry about the population explosion, but we don't worry about it at the right time. — Art Hoppe

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication - and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking - and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation - and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful - and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions - and intensified the population explosion. — Isaac Asimov

There would be no population explosion if people who are trying to keep the wolf from the door wouldn't let the stork fly in through the window. — Evan Esar

I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes. — Daniel Quinn

I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist. I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus. — Prince Philip

I believe that human brilliance manifests itself only in flashes, among rare individuals. For this reason, humanity as a whole is enormously destructive: the creation of something as devastating as Western culture, which is now allowed to spread throughout the world, offers sufficient proof of this fact. — Pentti Linkola

We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000.1 Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980 - an increase of 1,100 percent.2 Drug arrests have tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began.3 To put the matter in perspective, consider this: there are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.4 — Michelle Alexander

The population explosion is the primary force behind the remaining six groups of critical global events [diminishing land resources, diminishing water resources, the destruction of the atmosphere, the approaching energy crisis, social decline, and conflicts/increasing killing power]. — Ron Nielsen

Yes, yes. I've heard the argument. If we all lived as long as you, we'd be in crisis. Population explosion. The stability of our society would fracture. Chaos. Anarchy. And perhaps there's a shred of truth in that. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning. — Pentti Linkola

Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during the past twenty-five years reflects changes in crime rates. Few would guess that our prison population leaped from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates. Yet it has been changes in our laws - particularly the dramatic increases in the length of our prison sentences - that have been responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime. One study suggests that the entire increase in the prison population from 1980 to 2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes. — Michelle Alexander

If the level and amount of consumption and waste of the western rich countries ever reaches the poor countries, it will mean the end of humanity. The big world corporations are busy doing it ... The production, selling, consumption, accumulation, wastes' and advertisement explosions in the western rich countries and the continued population explosion in the poor countries will turn into major catastrophes. — Robert Muller

By undercutting fundamentalism and intolerance, education would curtail violence and war. By empowering women, it would curb poverty and the population explosion. — John Brockman

You need to take a step back from the problem in order to see it in global perspective. At present there are five and a half billion of you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you're producing enough food to feed six billion. And because you're producing enough food for six billion, it's a biological certainty that in three or four years there will be six billion of you. By that time, however (even though millions of you will still be starving), you'll be producing enough food for six and a half billion - which means that in another three or four years there will be six and a half billion. But by that time you'll be producing enough food for seven billion (even though millions of you will still be starving), which again means that in another three or four years there will be seven billion of you. In order to halt this process, you must face the fact that increasing food production doesn't feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion. — Daniel Quinn

In what I think is the most serious problem the world faces, which is the population explosion, we will come I think to a time when measures that are not even dreamt of now will become necessary. — Charlton Heston

The world population 60 years ago was just over 2 billion and it's now more than 6 billion. This huge increase - an explosion really - has probably done more harm to the environment than anything else. — Prince Philip

Statistics indicate that the church is rapidly losing in the population explosion. There are fewer Christians per capita every day. — Billy Graham

The population explosion is an ecological phenomenon of displacement. Unless we solve that ecological problem of displacing people - to build huge dams, to build motorways, to take away what people need in order to survive - we will keep pumping more and more money into population programs. We will have more and more coercive and violent methods through which women's bodies are treated as experimental grounds for new contraceptives. Yet we will not have a solution to the problem of numbers. — Vandana Shiva

Allah sends down natural disasters to control population explosion. He encourages us to go to war, He creates Pakistan and Akhand Bharat. In doing this, He teaches humans new and innovative methods of birth control. — Saadat Hasan Manto

To declare enthusiasm for feminist ideals is almost a new mode of macho, a way to flaunt an invulnerable virility. Many will dismiss feminism as merely a matter of domestic logistics ... Mention procreation, and they talk about the population explosion. They believe it is just as well that many women indicate disinterest in having children. — George Gilder

Nature's standard operating procedure, pairing a population explosion with a population crash. — Alfred W. Crosby

When it comes to the population explosion, there are two questions on the table. One, is our population growth going to kill us all? And two, is there any ethical way to prevent that from happening? — Annalee Newitz

It has been stated that the Wigan District of Lancashire, and the surrounding areas had three females for every male in the population right up to the turn of the twentieth century. Fine for the boys you might think, but this was a direct result of the men folk being wiped out in mining accidents, whether they were such as this, an explosion, or the multitude of individual accidents that took away life in the coal mines of the district. The Saw Mill Pit, with its dark and deathly past was finally abandoned in 1898. (24) — Jack Nadin