Managing Growth and Resources

• The number one producer of electricity for today’s society is coal.
• The dangers of coal include mercury contamination and biomagnification, which interferes with growth, development, and reproduction.
• As the population size increases, so does the need for food, with the greatest need in places where population growth and poverty are the highest.
• Deforestation has led to the loss of 2.8 million hectares of arable land that only lasts about 10-20 years or less.
• Soil is losing its fertility due to overharvesting, and only about 10% of the rainforest is protected.
• By 1950, humans have managed to remove a large percentage of common fish stocks from the world’s oceans due to overfishing and bycatch.
• Waste disposal is a must for large populations, with sources including oceans and landfills.
• Marine garbage sources include cargo and passenger ships, oil platforms, and runoff from rivers, with the most dangerous type being found at Midway Island.
• Biodiversity stabilizes ecosystems, provides spiritual benefits, and has costs associated with limiting biodiversity such as monocultures, habitat loss or fragmentation, invasive species, pollutants (DDT), diseases, and overexploitation, which can lead to extinction or minimum viable population size.