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What ecological challenges have been created by rising human populations around the world? Be sure to include 2-3 examples outside of the West.

The spread and rise of human populations, especially relatively sudden, driven by technological or scientific, medical advances, and colonization, urbanization, or whatever it is that drives humans to further populate the planet (lovemaking?), sometimes have adverse effects, or challenges, for the environment around them (and inside them). While the size of microbes relative to the overall scale of the planet (the planet being the size of, say, an apple), we humans are quite ambitious and destructive creatures.

Driven by the idea of our dominance and supperiority over all other animals on our little (almost) round planet, we take it upon ourselves to alter and change the environment to best suit us, much like the West deemed it (half-heartedly, for I shudder at the thought they were seriously that stupid) their moral responsibility to enlighten the barbarians around them (also human~ self destruction is a habit of ours) in their correct ways of living and thinking (mostly subordinating and at times enslaving the people for their own benefit, under the guise of motherly love).

As a result of that endeavor, and an inability of the decisive majority of the population to mature out of wars and the mindset of scarcity, where only one wins and the other has to loose, the environment, our solitary home planet, or at least its surface, undergoes some radical changes, often for the worse.

(One planet asks another: What's wrong? ~The other, sighing~ I have humans. ...Oh.. don't worry, I had that. They went away on their own.)

With the rise of human populations, demand for resources rises. More food is necessary, and, a fairly new development (human evolution wise), more energy. With "prosperity" (more correct term would be material wealth), the demand often shoots through the roof. People don't really know what they want or how much of it, or what will make them feel fulfilled, happy, so they desire more, and more.. of everything. Finite as the planet is, and, following a fundamental law, since something can't become nothing, the people overexhaust their environment, digging up natural resources and sucking up fertility out of soil, turning gardens into dust, and materials into things with limited use, then garbage. Humans went as far as to litter the orbit. We s**t where we eat, so to speak.


Naturally, as is only to be expected, pollution (discards of the transformation of materials into things or energy, previously mentioned) in the air and on land increases. Landfills fill up. Soil becomes barren and useless to us and most of the living world. Deserts spread. Species die. Forests get chopped down. Dust Bowls, smog, acid rain, ozone holes, polluted city rivers, floating islands of trash in the oceans, chemicals going out into the air, down into the water, across and over land (and inside our own bodies through it all), just to list a few benefits of the trend.

It is a rather grim picture I am painting, but imagine it as the mess of toys a child leaves after him/herself, or as the insides of a couch ripped out and about in the room by the apologetic dog. Cute, and it may be ammendable, yet.

The first challenge is education. Another, following from, and going alongside the first, is the reversal of the trend; responsible treatment of the surrounding environment. The internet and sped up global communication lines make for a good atmosphere, provide the means for communication and sensible problem solving and inner growth for us as a species. Alas the laziness and the consumerism.. If only people were helped to realize what it is they want, and how it is they can achieve it (lasting fulfillment), a win win outcome for humanity and the world at large.