“I’ve seen the future brother, it is murder,” is a line from a Leonard Cohen song that comes closer to reality every day. Mounting evidence shows that the future of this world is becoming bleaker for today’s young and their children.

The world’s population is growing at an exponential rate. As any biologist will tell you, when any species population undergoes exponential growth it must eventually reach its environment’s carrying capacity – the point at which the environment can no longer support any more of the species. After reaching the carrying capacity there is always an overshoot of population followed by a dieback.

This dieback of the population can either stabilize at the carrying capacity, continue to decline to somewhere below the capacity, or, even worse, become extinct (or very close to extinction).

The question then becomes: When will we pass the earth’s carrying capacity, or have we already passed it, leaving us in the population overshoot?

Just when everyone is ready to dismiss this as scientific babble, today’s events reflect the dilemma humans may be facing. If we haven’t reached the carrying capacity, we are surely lowering the earth’s ability to support us. By 1990, ozone levels over Antarctica had dropped by 95 percent compared to their normal levels due to CFCs. The greenhouse effect is continuing. By 2050, the global carbon dioxide level is expected to be double of what it is now thanks to the use of carbon-based fuels.

On top of this, the major agent for processing the extra carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the tropical rainforest, is being destroyed for farming, which wipes out many species everyday, upsetting the food chain. The problem for these farmers is that there are so few nutrients in the soil that it is useless in three years. The problem for the world is that the rain forest does not grow back. This will affect the earth’s weather patterns, causing the world’s agricultural lands to move northward.

We have survived the Cold War’s threat of nuclear annihilation. Or have we? Congress approved $264.7 billion for defense expenses with $453 million going to a national ballistic missile defense system. Just when we thought there was no need to point missiles that could wipe out humans and many other species, governments are still investing in nukes. When we argue over the U.N.’s role in Bosnia and Rwanda, is it far-fetched to think we should be in Brazil and Indonesia instead?

New housing developments, new farms and new roads are taking habitats from plants and animals to support more human life, speeding up our population growth, especially in third world countries. This is simply taking from other species in the name of our own. When one species declines, others in the food chain follow.

When will humans figure out what to do about humans?

Tim Frerking is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Pomeroy.