Here is another factor to consider.
Its been estimated the land required to feed the average person per year is 4 acres.
All the food you buy at the supermarket to feed yourself for a year used about 4 acres of land
Total Earth's solid surface is , 57,500,000 sq mi. Now, there are 640 acres per square mile which when multiplies together =
36,800,000,000 total acres on land to be divided up.
Latest World census figures as of Dec. 10, 2008 = 6,867,020,300 people living on Earth as of today. Divide the acres of land by the number of people and you get = 5.36 acres of land for every single person on Earth.
Using todays population figure its 5.086 acres per person (the trend is less and less land per person as time goes by )
Now this figure doesnt account for land used for cities and urban areas, doesnt account for desert of mountain terrain.
And of course
Desertification is a land degradation problem of major importance in the arid regions of the world. Deterioration in soil and plant cover have adversely affected nearly 50 percent of the land areas as the result of human mismanagement of cultivated and range lands. North America and Spain have the largest percentage of their arid lands affected. Overgrazing and woodcutting are responsible for most of the desertification of rangelands, cultivation practices inducing accelerated water and wind erosion are most responsible in the rain-fed croplands, and improper water management leading to salinization is the cause of the deterioration of irrigated lands. In addition to vegetation deterioration, erosion, and salinization, desertification effects can be seen in loss of soil fertility, soil compaction, and soil crusting. Urbanization, mining, and recreation are having adverse effects on the land
And of course if we decide every last acre of land is exclusively ours...........
Habitat loss is possibly the greatest threat to the natural world.
Every living thing needs somewhere to live, find food and reproduce. This is known as its habitat. In order for a species to be viable its habitat must have sufficient territory, necessary food and water and a range of necessary physical features. These features can include tree cover, rocky hills or deep pools, as well as the organisms and
ecosystems that are needed to complete the life cycle.
Habitat loss is when land cover, or its aquatic equivalent, is changed, usually as a result of changing use by humans.
Whenever we humans take over natural areas for our own use, we are encroaching on the habitat of another creature and progressively we are doing this at an alarming rate.
The
world's forests, swamps, lakes and other habitats continue to disappear as we make way for agriculture, housing, roads, pipelines and all the other hallmarks of industrial development.
Human activity is responsible for the loss of around half of the forests that once covered the Earth. Although these can recover and can even be sustainably harvested,
their rate of loss is about ten times higher than the rate of regrowth.
Europe's wetlands are traditionally an important habitat for countless numbers of creatures, but around 60% have been damaged, even though they are often an essential provider of clean drinking water.
Taking just one example: because of rainforest habitat loss it is estimated that at least 120 out of the 620 living primate species (apes, monkeys, lemurs and others) will be extinct within the next 10 to 20 years.
Habitat loss is generally more serious for the larger animals because they need a greater area in which to have a healthy breeding population.
Tigers, mountain gorillas, pandas and Indian lions are good examples, but habitat loss does not just affect animals.
A recent study has indicated that more than 40
species of fish currently found in the Mediterranean could disappear in the next few years. Tropical orchids that thrive in the rain forests are at serious risk as are numerous species of birds from a wide variety of habitats. In fact the only species that are not truly affected by habitat loss are creatures that benefit from human activity such as cockroaches and rats.
Read more at
http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/habitat-loss-degradation/#KkgkjYlyqicjq5Qh.99
I therefore contend that if human expansion costs us even a single species, then we
are overpopulated. In order to make room for more humans, other species including some with the potential to evolve to sentience given enough time have to be wiped out.
If in order to make more room for our species, we need to steal the habitat of others causing their extinction as a result, then the answer is to check our growth, not steal our fellow terrestrial's homes. We must leave room for them
Its for this reason alone i contend we are already overpopulated, expanding the population of our species at the expense of other species, causing them to be wiped out and made extinct is a great shame on us.
