Excerpt #95 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
The Global Footprint Network points out that the world is in ecological overshoot.
Humanity is now consuming more resources than the planet can regenerate, causing ecological destruction and social tension.
We are depleting our resources: our forests, fisheries, range lands, croplands, and plant and animal species.
We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives.
We are in a phase labeled the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on earth, different from the others in that it is caused not by external events, but by us.
Environmental destruction
With powerful electrical and diesel pumping techniques, we drain our aquifers and lower our water tables.
We are systemically polluting our air, water, and soil, and consequently our food chain.
We now have microplastic contaminents in our food and water, i.e., we have plastic in our food and water.
That’s a consequence of dumping about fourteen million tons of plastic garbage into our oceans annually.
We have been depleting the stratospheric ozone that shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
And we are experiencing symptoms of global warming and climate change: heat waves, devastating droughts, dying forests, accelerated species extinction, destruction of coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, coastal flooding, more rapid spread of disease, acidification and poisoning of the oceans, famine and starvation, human migration, heat deaths, economic collapse, and potential related wars.