THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE PROJECT

ONLINE CONSULTATION

| E-Conference Homepage | Contents |

| Next comment | Previous comment | Previous comment in thread |

Is Overpopulation the Root of the Need for PP?

From: Rob Cozens
Affiliation: Ocean Wildnerness Network
Remote Name: compression03.oak.mdsg-pacwest.com
Time: 17:07:19 +0100

Comments

In a post to OWN's mailing list, Dr. Elliot Norse, President of Marine Conservation Biology Institute, wrote, "...during the vast majority of the 2 million or so years humans have been on Earth, we have lived in small social groups, my guess being 8-50 individuals...Only since the worldwide extinctions of really large, fierce predators, and especially since the invention of agriculture (and, along with it, civilization, writing, math and music videos), humans have lived in much larger communities. But evolution is partly a function of generation time, and evolution in a species that doesn’t reproduce before the age of 15-25 hasn’t had time to catch up with this. As a result, we are physiologically and behaviorally adapted in living in a world of small, extended-family communities of knowable, closely-interacting humans, but today we actually live in a world of incomprehensively numerous unrelated humans." One can infer from Dr. Norse's proposition that we are are simply feeling the effects of evolutionary time-lag and will evolve to be in unity with our new, man-dominated environment. I wonder, however, if the reality might be that humans began the stage of overpopulation at the point that populations grew to the point that hunting & foraging could no longer support us. What criteria does the scientific community use to determine if an animal population is overpopulated? Aberant behavior? Rise of new diseases? Sociopathic behavior? Major impacts on its habitat? If one compared human populations from "pre-civilized" times and today isn't that exactly what we would see? Precautionary principles were of little importance when humans' "footprint on the planet" was minor, today they are paramount. The preceeding is a statement of my personal view, and may not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of OWN's Executive Committee and/or constituant organizations.