Chikalada's got it absolutely right - the single underlying contributory factor to practically all of Planet Earth's problems is there are just too many human beings: we are the equivalent of a cancer on Earth, destroying the organism that sustains us.
In the US, some 300-odd million humans overconsume and cause the gravest damage to the planetary ecosystem. In India, we have a 1000 million human beings, mostly 'underconsuming' (by US standards) - but due to our numbers, we too cause quite significant damage to the ecosystem; and now that India seems to have gotten over that famous 'Hindu rate of growth' syndrome, Planet Earth can look forward to the depradations of a sizable number out of these 1000-million Indians!
I don't know how accurate the following statement is: It will take something like the death toll of one 2004-tsunami each day for the next 18 years(!!!) to bring the human population back to levels that Earth can sustain!
Till we learn how to handle this major problem of human overpopulation on Earth, all our efforts are are just 'pissing into the wind'.
GSC
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