Biodiversity and You

As the Earth's population surges toward the 7 billion mark, the following twist on an old maxim perhaps best applies: A single birth is a joyous occasion. A billion births is a tragedy.

When the planet's human head count topped the 6 billion threshold in 1999, few pundits seemed to grasp the catastrophic ecological implications. Rush Limbaugh weighed in with frequent assurances that the entire global population could fit comfortably in the state of Texas. But as the planet endures an alarming net gain of more than 73 million a year, or some 200,000 people a day, it would be naïve to think that this explosion can occur without grave environmental repercussions.

Until now, there has been a dearth of literature linking human population growth and biodiversity loss. However, Jeffrey K. McKee's stunning, albeit flawed, new book Sparing Nature pinpoints the precise moment (in geological terms) when our early ancestors' success resulted in the death of neighboring species--roughly 1.8 million years ago, with the arrival of Homo erectus. Around that time, African mammals began to disappear at an unparalleled pace. But the biodiversity crisis really accelerated, McKee establishes, at the onset of the agriculture age, some 10,000 years ago, when humans enjoyed unprecedented growth. The book then takes the cause-effect model one step further and assesses what the mass decline of species diversification means for the continuity of the human race.

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