Overdevelopment,+Overpopulation,+Overshoot

Reading Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, and Overshoot, was very interesting. I can't imagine how long it took them to put this book together. There are sooo many pictures. I also note that in the subtitles, he writes a lot like Charles Dickens--his descriptions gave the reader ability to feel, see, smell and hear the people, animals, and scenes. Lesson learned--write like you are being paid per word. The Parable of the Lord Man was a very accurate depiction of our world throughout the times. One photo that particularly impacted me was Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph showing a famine stricken child crawling on the ground while a vulture waits in the background. This was accompanied with the quote: "Slowly, the scales began to fall from his eyes when he saw famine ravage the land." This is preceded by many pictures and captions that described the self-deception of mankind, them believing that they were ruler of all, the supreme being on Earth. They talk about how mankind doesn't consider other life as neighbors, but as expendable "natural resources." Their destruction of the environment in the name of "progress" and "growth" until it was too late. Earth already cried out but were ignored until no longer deniable. Freshwater began to disappear, creatures have gone extinct--famine ravaged the land. He was left with 2 choices, to continue for the little amount of growth they could squeeze from the environment, or rejoin the Earth as a member, and not take away, to preserve and rebuild. They end it with a question: Would he restrain his numbers and rejoin the community of life as plain member and citizen or attempt to engineer all the Earth to his will, heeding only the call of more? = = They immediately jump into the topic of overpopulation vs overcrowding. Overcrowding is a much simpler phenomenon than overpopulation. It refers to a situation in which the area or volume of people (or their “extrasomatic extensions” like cars or dwellings) occupy a large fraction of the available two-dimensional area or three-dimensional space, to the extent that people feel pressed and often stressed. Overcrowding implies little or no “elbow room. They ask the question, How many living people can the earth sustain, at a reasonable standard of living while leaving room for the diversity of life to flourish? This question directly addresses overpopulation; occurs when a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment. When carrying capacity is surpassed, the environment, habitat and “natural capital” (e.g., renewable and nonrenewable natural resources) are worn down and used up, reducing the ability of the environment to support that population. Author William Ryerson also throws a lot of numbers at the reader, telling us rough estimations of populations at certain time periods like the UN "medium variant" projection of 10.9 billion people by 2100, but that may be an underestimation. In 2014 the global total fertility rate was ~2.5. At this rate, demographers suggest a population of 27 billion by century's end. As vividly illustrated in the book, human numbers and activity are already destroying the planet's ecological integrity-running roughshod over myriad other species. But not only should we be concerned with the environmental damage but also our own future. They invoke great thought and responsibility when they state: "if you care about people, you must care about what we are doing to the plant. If you can about what we are doing to the planet, you must also care about human numbers." Earth's resources are not boundless, and the illustrations in this book should shatter that illusion.

=Malik McFadden= As I’m flipping through the pages of this book, the first feeling I have is a jaw dropping feeling of awe, from the utter massiveness of the book itself. Honestly If you read through the captions of the pictures, I believe that the largeness of the book actually extenuates the overall message the boook is trying to portray. The book does a great job of adressing an issue and then providing an attention grabber of a picture. On one page the picture shows hundreds of little circles, the caption states “ Assimilation, proceeds by biotic cleansing and the impoverishment of others”. Thoughtout this picture book they use the pictures to say more and extenuate the words. On one page of the book, the picture shows a wide angle lens picture taken is spain, and the picture is about the afro-industrial machine that is becoming harder and harder to manage and also devouring world resources. The main ideas of this book are obviously very liberal and an open look on the world. The authors/author is for energy conservation, world resource conservation, and for world peace.

My experience reading and looking at this book is very unique. I don’t think I’ve read basically a picture book that had such a great message to the readers. The author uses the power of pictures to evoke emotion and then back up those feelings to gain interest with the captions found throughout the book. By reading this excerpt of the book I’ve learned about the devasting effects of the world hunger crisis, the importance of using clean and renewable energy such as solar panels to save the earth that we live on.

I think the most important thing I got out of reading this book is the way it provoked me to want to go take pictures of the things that I feel are an injustice to this society. Maybe it doesnt have anything to do with environmental problems, but in terms of social activism which I believe is very important. Standing up for the things you believe in, just like the author of this book, is important in having and persuading our society to make change and develop progress.