Religion, economy and overpopulation

Early this week, I attended a public lecture by Dr. Rod Nash, an environmentalist who teaches at UC Santa Barbara, focuses on wilderness history and advocates equal protection of animal and other living things as well as humans. His presentation was promoting his concept of “islands of civilization” versus “islands of wilderness.” Where he hit a nerve however, was when he declared that a 2 billion human population was a desirable threshold for sustainability.

This was the only point that fed the ensuing question and answer session and that seemed to rally everyone in attendance, by covering the influence of religion on overpopulation, the possible “natural reaction” of nature by unleashing a wave of ailments like AIDS or Ebola to counteract human overcrowding. Because of time constraints however, the group discussion failed to address the influence of an economic system that still is based on quantitative versus qualitative growth, something evoked by the lecturer at the beginning of his speech and that I believe is key in turning our environmental situation around. That's right, the elephant in the room is still overpopulation and the two main obstacles to bringing it down remain religion and an economic model that has become unsustainable.