Raven: Population size creates resource crisis

“In 1950, there were about 2.5 billion people, and now there are over six billion,” Raven explained. “By 2050, the world population will exceed 10 billion.”

This population growth has led to an increased strain on the world’s resources, Raven added, noting that “there have been violent protests in about 30 countries so far this year” as a result of food shortages.

The amount of fertile land available for cultivation has also been decreasing, and this decrease in usable land has also strained the food supply, he said.

“We have 20 percent less agricultural land than we did in 1950, which means that we’re feeding six billion people on 80 percent of the land that fed 2.5 billion people in 1950,” he explained.

A wasteful world

Raven noted that humans, in addition to using up the world’s resources, are currently wasting about half of the world’s photosynthetic energy and much of its sustainable supply of freshwater.

“When people mine oil, they tend to pump it up and then forget about it, which makes the surface water polluted,” he said, adding that one way of combating the problem is to reuse water as much as possible.

Pollution, though, is not limited to water, he added, and the growth of the human population has also played a role in global warming.

The United States is the nation most responsible for global warming because its citizens use 25 percent of the world’s energy while only comprising 4.5 percent of the world’s population, he said.

“We use twice as much energy per capita as any other country on earth, including Britain, China and Switzerland,” he explained. “And I don’t think anyone in those countries is suffering as a result of using only half as much energy as we do.”

Raven recalled a recent trip he took to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands during which he saw firsthand the effects of global warming. He noted that, for residents of the islands, “their way of life will simply no longer be possible” because of climate change.

A sustainable solution

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Solutions to the crisis will only be found when “the nations of the world get together,” Raven said.

“We need social justice, level populations and greatly improved technologies if we really want to achieve a sustainable world,” he explained.

Raven added that, to attain such a “sustainable world,” we also need to strive for biological diversity.

“Biological diversity is essential to our lives, and yet we’re driving organisms to extinction,” he explained.

Raven noted that humans get all of their food, directly or indirectly, from plants and that the diversity of major crops helps humans fend off disease. He also noted that there are life-saving drugs that will never be discovered because the associated bacteria and fungi are destroyed when tropical rain forests are burned.

“We need to set aside natural areas and protect them, bring endangered species of organisms into captivity or cultivation, combat alien invasive species, adopt new technologies and provide alternatives to gathering species in nature for our drugs,” he said.

Most importantly, our society needs to change the way it perceives the world’s resources, he said.

“We need to expose our children to nature,” he explained, “to safeguard the future and produce adults who give a darn about it.”

Raven emphasized the individual responsibility each person has in maintaining earth’s sustainability by closing his lecture with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

Miyuki Miyagi ’12, who plans to earn a certificate in environmental studies, reacted positively to the talk.

“It reminded me of a lot of things I’ve forgotten about, and that upset me,” she said. “More people should be listening, and Princeton should try to get more people to listen.”