MAKE FEWER BABIES

摘要

Alan Weisman thinks about the end of the world. A lot. His book The World Without Us describes what would happen if humans suddenly vanished. In Countdown, his follow-up, he examines what it will take to keep us going on a planet that is staggering under the weight of too many people (7.4 billion and counting) and too much carbon dioxide. We asked him how we can ensure a human-habitable planet decades from now. If you could magically make a law that would help humanity survive, what would it be? There is no zero-emission energy yet. Just to mine the metals to make the solar collectors or the wind turbines incurs a big carbon debt. We need to reverse the demands on energy. That means we have n to have fewer people (Fig. H).