Professor Fenner on Human overpopulation

After publishing my previous report 'Eating ourselves out of a home,' I came across this chilling prediction from Professor Frank Fenner, Professor Emeritus of microbiology at Australian National University; the human race, and most of the natural world, will be extinct within 100 years due to human overpopulation.

Professor Fenner is the man who helped eradicate smallpox. According to Our Compass, Fenner told The Australian Newspaper that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and ‘unbridled consumption.’

The original story appears in Our Compass, and shared through the site Care2. A portion of the news story is quoted below:

Fenner told The Australian newspaper that ‘homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.’

‘A lot of other animals will, too,’ he added.

‘It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.’
Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene – the time since industrialisation – we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, he said.

Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox and has written or co-written 22 books.

He announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980 and it is still regarded as one of the World Health Organisation’s greatest achievements.

He was also heavily involved in helping to control Australia’s myxomatosis problem in rabbits.

Last year official UN figures estimated that the world’s population is currently 6.8 billion. It is predicted to exceed seven billion by the end of 2011.

Fenner blames the onset of climate change for the human race’s imminent demise.

He said: ‘We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island.

‘Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we’re seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.’

‘The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years.

‘But the world can’t. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we’ve seen disappear.’

There seems to be a global awakening as to the dire situation we've gotten ourselves into. I pray that this perceived global awakening is real and that everyone will now be motivated to take action to protect the future of our planet, all its precious life forms, and our children.

Please read. Please pass it on. Please contact your legislators and other law makers. This is not a passing matter; this is life or death, not only for humans, but for our living planet.