The US-based Center for Biological Diversity, with headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, has launched an Endangered Species Condom Project. This aims to distribute free condoms throughout the country, in six different packages featuring endangered species, with the goal of raising awareness about overpopulation's serious impacts on the planet.
The packages will be released next month, and the organisation is looking for anyone interested to help get them out.
The Center calls on readers in the United States to sign up today "to help us educate people across the country about what overpopulation does to species that don’t have the privilege of over-reproducing — or even reproducing enough to survive — from the spotted owl to the Puerto Rico rock frog to the polar bear."
It asks all those interested to sign up today, Monday, February 1, at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2167/t/5243/signUp.jsp?key=4774.
Commenting on the impact of the world's growing human population on other species, the Center says: "By any ecological measure, Homo sapiens sapiens has exceeded its sustainable population size. Just a single human waste product — greenhouse gas — has altered the chemistry of the planet’s skies and oceans, causing global warming and ocean acidification.
"In the United States, which has the world’s third-highest population after China and India, the fertility rate is rising again after leveling off and declining in previous decades. Our rate of reproduction is now at its highest level since 1971. At 2.1 children per woman, the birthrate is the highest of any developed nation and well above the developed-world average of 1.6. Our current population tops 300 million and is projected to grow by 50 percent by mid-century, eventually approaching 450 million.
"Discussion of overpopulation has become somewhat taboo in the environmental movement. To change this dynamic, more than 200 conservationists and scientists, including the Center for Biological Diversity, pledged during the February 2009 Global Population Speak Out to promote awareness of the problem."
The Center’s primary mission is to stop the planetary extinction crisis that’s wiping out rare plants and animals in every nation, ocean, and ecosystem on earth. "Explosive, unsustainable human population growth is an essential cause of the extinction crisis", it says.
To see the Center's 'overpopulation website click here
Source: http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=29241&topic=23§ion=3
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