While many undeveloped countries look to the United States as a model for success, it would take seven more planets to provide enough material and energy to implement the U.S. model worldwide, he says. Escalating to six billion people, the population growth is increasing annually by 1.4 percent, according to Montague. That means an additional 80 million people per year will inhabit the world, which translates to about 224,000 more people every day, or a million more people every five days, he said. Montague explains that these are net figures, accounting for deaths. The human species is now a geological force, Montague said.
Humans change the chemistry of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
Humans use 54 percent of all freshwater flow on the planet, some of which is denied to other organisms and even to other people. Biological diversity is also taking a big hit. The extinction of species is on the rise because humans destroy the habitat of other organisms. The blind rush to global affluence and consumption is a rush to failure if ecological impacts are not factored in. If education isn't dealing with these implications, then we may as well all just go kayaking.