ENVIRONMENT: ON THE EXTINCTION OF GRIZZLY BEARS

The earth is in trouble.

There are too many people. 

The earth's population is approaching 8 billion.  And its rate of growth is linear.  There are still many places with very few people,  but the concentration  in giant cities with massive populations is increasing.  Where humans are highly concentrated,  they drive out other life and create changes in the environment which have given rise to the name for the emerging era: anthropocene:  the age of humans.  To address this problem it is necessary to limit the birth rate of the species to some  survivable limit. This is very difficult to accomplish because it involves coordinating across nations  to regulate an activity considered outside the range of legislation in most countries.

It is getting too hot. 

Despite denial by the current American government, most other governments and scientists agree that there is a dramatic warming of the planet.  The evidence for the warming is unequivocal and human activities likely play a significant role in at least accelerating,  if not causing the changes.  The scientific explanation has been that there is increased C02 which allows the heat to stay "trapped" in the atmosphere in a "green house" effect.  Whether this factor or some other astronomical issues are also involved is unknown.  But the evidence is clear that the earth is warming  in the contraction of ice packs in polar regions and changes in ocean water temperature,  and rising average atmospheric temperatures.

The world is becoming toxic and polluted.

This piece in the New Yorker last year describes a so far unsucessful effort

New Yorker: The Widening Gyre to clear-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch

We are running out of drinking water.

The human and animal species depend on non-salinated water for survival,  and this water is not evenly distributed over the earth's surface.  Fresh water depends on rainfall,  snow pack,  location of streams and rivers,  preservation of unpolluted sources,  and a balance between use and replenishment.  All these factors are out of balance in specific regions posing challenges for the human survival in those areas.  Plants also depend on water supply and so crops are lost in the same regions, compromising the food supply.

And animal and plant species are going extinct.

The distinguished biologist E. O. Wilson has written a book about conservation.  His proposal is clear and unachievable:  set aside roughly 50% of the earth as protected,  to be allowed to continue to function without excessive human incursion.  The regions he proposes are ones with some of the highest levels of biodiversity,  and his stated aim is to preserve diversity and present the extensive loss of species through extinction currently in progress.   As a biologist-zoologist,  he has great respect for the genetic store of information in different species and the need to preserve this "information" for future generations.  This includes the genome of plant species as well,  though he gives that less emphasis.  The first 3/4 of the book details the extent to which human development is rapidly depleting regions of the "natural world" and replacing them with human settlements.  These have mostly human genomes,  extinction for most animal species around them,  and has given rise to the term "anthropocene" to describe  the earth's  transformation by human activity.  Why is this happening?  There are two clear reasons:
1) Human reproduction is expanding rapidly,  and human mortality decreasing by various modes,  so the life expectancy is extending,  ergo more people around. 
2) The economic value of extracting natural resources and developing land is clearly defined,  while the economic or other significance of genomic diversity is not.  Economic considerations now dominate all others.

The geologic record suggests that the earth has seen two or three dramatic extinctions of most creatures and out of these new life forms have evolved to populate the remaining earth.  Insects and some plants are especially gifted at survival,  and this suggests that an alternative solution would be to allow the earth to be catastrophically destroyed and repopulated by other species.  This is not likely to be a favorable solution for humans who have a strong attachment to their survival and importance as a species.  Indeed,  one of Wilson's major points is that humans don't know that much about how to live with other species,  apparently because we don't care.  This is less true for "primitive" cultures who did and to some extent do coexist with other species.  But the"developed" world of Eurocentric and American culture is organized around isolation from other creatures and destroying their intrusion into our lives.  Especially insects!

Given the interdependent issues involved,  the issue that gets the most attention is:  Developing Renewable Energy  All human activities require energy,  much of it provided in parts of the world by the energy mechanisms within the body,  food,  and atmospheric oxygen.  But in the increasingly technical world,  the role of energy is to power devices for transportation,  manufacturing,  and communication.

The Real Solution Is  to manage human population growth,  and balance it with the rest of the natural environment.  This requires a major change in the evolutionary view of certain  species.  How to engineer that?