Saturday, December 17, 2011

the good earth is dying

Excerpt from the book The Roving Mind by Isaac Asimov

The mass of humanity has been increasing throughout history; and it is still increasing, but is doing so at the expense of other forms of animal life. Every additional kilogram of humanity has meant, as a matter of absolute necessity, one less kilogram of nonhuman animal life. We might argue, then, that the earth can support, as a maximum, a mass of mankind equal to the present mass of all animal life. At that point, the number of human beings on the earth would be forty million million, or over eleven thousand times the present number. And no other species of animal life would then exist. 

--
I re read - it is forty million million? hmm.. the good earth is dying for sure. And how do we even know we are ignorant? And our mass has no direction I guess.

Srik

2 comments:

Nithianandan said...

hi could u pl share the article on good earth is dying by isaac asimov

my id arumugam.nithianandan@gmail.com

Unknown said...

It's not that the mass has no direction, (I mean, we are educated enough to know who is the culprit and sadly nations are still debating) it's just that, no one wants to take responsibility or lest be bothered.