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Eric R. Pianka As an ecologist and a student of life on planet Earth, Pianka has always been very concerned about human overpopulation. The first edition of his now classic textbook ended with a chapter on Man and Environment. In his later years, Pianka became increasingly outspoken and proactive, lecturing often on "The Vanishing Book of Life", the now infamous speech he has given many times. In 2006, Pianka taught a freshman seminar class on The Human Overpopulation Crisis. He prepared a website for this course with an extensive downloadable collection of essays and readings. Students wrote term papers on various aspects of overpopulation and prepared a class video, posted here. Pianka created a trilogy exploiting the metaphor of Spaceship Earth, Can Humans Share Spaceship Earth?, and Why Can't We Humans Share Spaceship Earth? along with a companion essay "Can human instincts be controlled?" He identified runaway greed, selfish corporations, ineffective government, and our our insane economic system as major impediments to improving the human condition. 
Noting that humans are in denial about
overpopulation, the ultimate
driver of all our many problems, Pianka created
Domino Effect in an attempt to draw
attention to the
interconnections
among challenges we face. Symptoms of overpopulation include pollution,
energy shortages, peak oil, climate change,
global warming,
rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, starvation, disease, and war.
Providing symptomatic relief without confronting overpopulation itself is tantamount to
putting band-aids on a dying patient.
Return to Pianka lab page Last updated 25 March 2013 by Eric R. Pianka |