So too the iron ore, the copper ore, the aluminum ore and other minerals needed for industrial society cannot be put back in the earth once they are mined and used. Considering these facts. Worse yet, there is great concern that natural resources like air, earth, water and all the products of the living world like soil, trees, birds, fish and all wildlife has already suffered irreversible damage by the runaway industrial growth of human societies. Some claim that the air and water are getting more and more polluted and the soil more eroded and lost. Still more growth can only make things worse.
Humans are a plague on earth, says one writer.
One country, the United States of America, claim the doomsaying critics, has only six percent of the world's people, but uses forty percent of the world's resources and generates sixty percent of its wastes. If the entire population of the world, some six billion people, were to use natural resources as wastefully as the United States, civilizations the world over would collapse and quickly and catastrophically relapse into 3rd millenia barbarism. For a while in the closing years of the 20th century these doomsaying critics commanded more attention and more credibility than their optimistic opponents. As the 3rd millinium begins, however, a new view is slowly gaining strength on earth. Some say it is the view of a growing majority of scientists.