Climate change still ignored

Climate change is the last great tragedy for mankind and life on Earth — something that almost every educated person is aware of, but politically almost nothing is being done to resolve.

This is particularly true in the USA, where our president and one of the major political parties is in denial of a scientifically verified fact: The world is rapidly warming because of human activity! However, there is more to the story.

Behavioral scientists have known for 60 years of John B. Calhoun’s rat overpopulation-overcrowding experiments. Unbeknownst to many people, rats, like humans, have social hierarchies and complex relationships. In short, Calhoun provided rats all the food and water they needed, but in limited space. As population densities increased social structures broke down (he called it a “behavioral sink”) and in some experiments the population went to zero even though food and water were available.

Thus, it is possible that overpopulation may kill us even before climate change kills us. Even if human social structures do not break down, there remains the relationship between global population and carbon dioxide. They are tightly linked to each other and both are increasing in parallel. One way or another it is a great tragedy because we know of it and are doing nothing.

On a positive note, if human social structures break down before carbon dioxide kills us, then at least other of God’s living organisms have a chance of survival, even if human consciousness ends.

James Krueger

Spokane