Comments on: Who will miss Asia’s awkward elephants? http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/03/16/who-will-miss-asias-awkward-elephants/ Global environmental challenges Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:56:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Jeff http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/03/16/who-will-miss-asias-awkward-elephants/comment-page-1/#comment-334112 Jeff Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:44:05 +0000 http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/03/16/who-will-miss-asias-awkward-elephants/#comment-334112 This problem, like most other ecological ones, is caused by human overpopulation and, even more fundamentally, by agriculture. If the human population had remained within proper ecological limits, there would be plenty of habitat for both humans and elephants. But, unfortunately, the discovery of agriculture caused human population to explode, and planting inappropriate crops makes a bad situation worse. The only solution here is to lower human population so that elephants, and all other species, have some room to live. Free and unrestricted birth control and abortion, empowering of women, a one-child-family policy like China's, or whatever it takes should be used. Otherwise, to answer the question posed at the end of this column, if humans don't care about other species, why should the Earth or anyone else care about humans? This problem, like most other ecological ones, is caused by human overpopulation and, even more fundamentally, by agriculture. If the human population had remained within proper ecological limits, there would be plenty of habitat for both humans and elephants. But, unfortunately, the discovery of agriculture caused human population to explode, and planting inappropriate crops makes a bad situation worse.

The only solution here is to lower human population so that elephants, and all other species, have some room to live. Free and unrestricted birth control and abortion, empowering of women, a one-child-family policy like China’s, or whatever it takes should be used. Otherwise, to answer the question posed at the end of this column, if humans don’t care about other species, why should the Earth or anyone else care about humans?

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