Jane Goodall On Overpopulation
On more than one occasion, primatologist Jane Goodall has warned that human population growth is damaging the planet’s future.
Goodall has previously quoted United Nations figures, which show that in the last 50 years the global population has doubled to more than 8 billion, and is expected to increase to over 11 billion by 2100.
In a message to the 2019 Population Matters conference, Goodall said:
“I would encourage every single conservation organisation, every single government organisation to consider the absurdity of unlimited economic development on a planet of finite natural resources.
“We can’t go on like this. We can’t push human population growth under the carpet.”
And speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020, Jane Goodall said:
“We need to eat less meat. We need to stop land being used for cattle and growing grain for the billions of animals we keep in our intensive farms. And then, finally, we cannot, we cannot hide away from human population growth; because, you know, it underlies so many of the other problems – all these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago.”
“It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it – but there are so many of us.”
Jane Goodall is an English zoologist and considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years’ studying the social and family interactions of chimpanzees in the wild.
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Such a wonderful lady who has done so much for chimpanzees. I agree entirely with her comments about human population numbers.
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There was lot misunderstanding of her comments. People assuming she was talking about control of human population.
She basically was just saying that if there were still less human beings on planet the animals and the environment would be much condition.
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David Attenborough has commented much the same about human overpopulation. Yan Vana is another voice on this topic. And I agree with all of them. The world would be in a much better place right now if there were less of us.
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Simple equation! human numbers x human behaviour = decline of planet
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I recently saw a wonderful painting of this lady at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Such an inspiration.
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