Comments on: Biodiversity in Europe – Closer to a 2020 Target http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2010/03/31/biodiversity-in-europe-closer-to-a-2020-target/ Advancing ecology and making it count Mon, 20 May 2013 14:42:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Steven Earl Salmony http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2010/03/31/biodiversity-in-europe-closer-to-a-2020-target/#comment-1675 Steven Earl Salmony Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:02:07 +0000 http://britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/?p=990#comment-1675 Perhaps I am mistaken but it appears the human community is currently saddled with a widely shared, consensually validated and pernicious misperception: that food production must be endlessly increased to feed a growing population. Where are the experts who are reporting that this misconception could be a product of preternatural thought and pseudo-scientific investigation borne mainly of political convenience and economic expedience? Have these experts not noticed that peer-reviewed articles are extant that directly contradict these prevailing mistaken impressions regarding human population dynamics. This is a tragedy in the making. How are people to respond ably to the human-driven threats before humanity if the best available science regarding human population dynamics is rejected?

From my humble inexpert perspective, the best available science of human population dynamics has been and continues to be willfully ignored by most experts. I would like to make an appeal to the BES community now. It is not anything new. The entire point of the AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population during the past decade of denial has been to encourage open discussion of the best research on the population dynamics of the human species, population dynamics that have led us to be overpopulating the Earth in a dangerous way. Please, someone with expertise or a group of experts, please comment on the research by David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg which indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity that human population numbers could be a function of food supply; that food supply is the independent variable and absolute population numbers of the human species is the dependent variable; that the population dynamics of the human species is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species.

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