Review of Pianka and Vitt

"Our One and Only Spaceship: Denial, Delusion, and the Population Crisis."



This is a stern wake-up call to the 7,700,000,000 people now crowding our much-beleaguered planet from two prominent ecologists. In it, they cry out for all of us to get out of denial about overpopulation and face up to dire reality. Using fact-based analyses, they make the case that human population size and growth are the greatest threats to our very survival, and that most if not every major global problem (including spread of AIDS and other communicable diseases, wars, immigration conflicts, climate change in particular global warming, conservation biology, human instincts, economic systems, food water and energy shortages, poverty, political unrest, pollution, extinctions, etc.) are all direct results of overpopulation. Birth rates exceed death rates and the current global population of 7.7 billion is unsustainable even without any additional growth. They offer many specific if Draconian solutions; most importantly controlling reproduction to stop population growth and converting to recyclable green energy but we also need to re-invent economics, taxes, and politics, etc. This is the most depressing book everyone needs to read.


All of us must make a collective effort to change our behavior and live ecologically sustainable lives. Solar panels should be on the roofs of all our buildings and we should drive all-electric cars. We are energy gluttons and must get out of fossil-fuel guzzling vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. 500hp muscle cars are equivalent to many thousands of strong men. Thousands of such cars now glutting our freeways are energetically equal to millions of people. In short, selfish per-capita energy consumption multiplied times population = global warming. It is time to wake-up, world!