Where a Farm Used to Be, A Lesson on Urban Sprawl and Overpopulation

Howdy boys and girls.

I know a lot of you are in denial about human overpopulation, you don't think it is a real "thing".

I suppose some of you might even be shocked to learn that human overpopulation has been talked about for many years, even over 100 years ago when Reverend Thomas Malthus suggested that war and famine was God's way of punishing us for overpopulating the earth.

I am over 50 years old, and in my time the earth's human population has more than doubled, many forests have been destroyed, rivers polluted, the Aral sea has almost vanished, and hundreds of species have gone extinct.  YES human over population is a real thing!

Please watch the video above but mostly listen to the words!

In my lifetime I have observed the urban sprawl of many cities, mostly the one where I grew up, Edmonton, Alberta.

I remember as a child driving out to a place in the country to take our cat for boarding when we went away.  That place is now a parking lot for a shopping area, and it is at least another 10 minutes drive to get out of the city.  When I was a kid all that are was farm land.  Before it was farm land I suppose it was natural area, perhaps forest, or other wilderness area.

Years ago North America was home to a bird that numbered in the billions.  This being the Passenger Pigeon.  Those birds have gone extinct in part due to hunting but mostly due to loss of habitat as they needed certain large forests in which to congregate and nest.  Those forests were destroyed to make way for farm land.

I do not understand how anyone more than 30 years of age can deny the changes they should have been seeing in their own lifetimes, unless they just do not get out of the city much and have not seen how things actually have changed, or have not read the news about how fast some animal species are going extinct due to habitat loss.

Ask yourself what used to be where a farm used to be?  Hint in the background!

Where a farm used to be there is now a parking lot, mega shopping structures, housing, and hundreds more people.  Nonetheless what is very important to remember is that something used to be in the spot where the farm used to be too.  As soon as we needed to clear trees to have a farm, at that very point, we entered an area of being an invasive species, we became overpopulated, not necessarily to the point it hurt our own species, but to the point that it hurt others!

Shocking Photos that Prove Human Overpopulation

These are photographs that I have taken in the area around me.  The prove that there is a concern with human overpopulation, but if you do not understand the connection I will explain it below.

What do you see when you look at these photos?  Do you see farm land?  I would assume you do, but are you aware that only a few years ago this farm land was forest?  I was able to see some older aerial photos of the area which showed a lot more trees and a lot less open farm land. 

If the planet was not overpopulated the forests would be preserved, thriving, and being the lungs of the planet and the home of wildlife.  Instead we rape the forests for wood or chop them up and burn them to make room for agriculture to grow food for people or food for livestock.

The trees in the distance of both of these photos are not forests, rather they are rows of trees about 30 feet wide, not much more; a poor replacement for all the trees that used to cover the land.

Now I know there are some people who do not see this as an indication of human overpopulation but I ask "When does it stop?"  At what point do we say "Ya, enough trees have been chopped, it cannot all be farm land, we need forests?"  To me the fact that we are not sustainable and are still cutting trees to make more farm land is proof that we are overpopulating the planet.

I only had one child, that was plenty for me.  I live rurally and am allowing trees to reclaim part of the area in front of my house which was once known as a "lawn".  We need to stop the destruction of our environment and the only way to do that is to slow our population growth.