The main ‘elephant’ David Christensen confronts in his slender call for change is the very real problem of overpopulation. Though once a much-discussed issue, it has slipped in the public mind as many assume that the starvation and malnourishment plaguing as much as a third of the world are mainly matters of distribution.
Not so, the author argues. Whether we’re talking about arable land, or usable water (which now constitutes only 1% of the Earth’s total water), the long-term “carrying capacity” of the Earth is “about half of the world’s present 6.8 population.” Our present unsustainable course is complicated by a “growth syndrome” which holds “that everything has to increase every year to be successful.” The second elephant is the urgent need for dramatically increased world cooperation and governance. As someone with overpopulation concerns, and an avid seeker of information on this, I found Two Elephants in the Room to succinctly lay out key issues related to the overpopulation problem.
