{"id":12900,"date":"2019-11-18T15:23:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T04:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/?p=12900"},"modified":"2019-11-19T16:14:08","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T05:44:08","slug":"overpopulation-prophecy-unfolds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/2019\/11\/18\/overpopulation-prophecy-unfolds\/","title":{"rendered":"Overpopulation prophecy unfolds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years after the best-seller <em>The Population Bomb<\/em> warned of the perils of overpopulation and environmental destruction, renowned American biologist Professor Paul Ehrlich gave an update at Flinders University.<\/p>\n<p>More than 200 people came to the Matthew Flinders Theatre to hear him speak.<\/p>\n<p>For those who missed the public lecture, a full version, or edited version (below), of the public lecture can be viewed online.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Paul Ehrlich - Politics of Environmental Destruction\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DQAzxCtjBik?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The lecture was organised by Flinders University Professor Corey Bradshaw, who has collaborated for many years with Professor Ehrlich and his wife Professor Anne Ehrlich, who co-direct the Centre for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/search?q=Conservation%20biology%20wikipedia\">Conservation Biology<\/a> at Stanford University, California.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Ehrlich, who have been a regular visitor to Australia since the 1960s, pointed to this month\u2019s bushfires across an unprecedented area of NSW and Queensland \u2013 along with drought and bushfires in other states &#8211; as clear signs of his predictions of widespread societal upheaval, climate change and environmental devastation caused by fossil fuel use and other human activities.<\/p>\n<p>He says worse is to come as the planet with limited resources copes with a global population expected to blow out from more than 7.5 billion to an estimated 9.7 billion by 2050.<\/p>\n<p>A panel discussion at the Bedford Park public lecture included SA Chief Scientist University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor Professor Caroline McMillen, Dr Susannah Eliott from the Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC), and Flinders College of Science and Engineering Dean (Education) Professor Karen Burke da Silva.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Bradshaw leads the <a href=\"https:\/\/globalecologyflinders.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Global Ecology Laboratory<\/a> and is a Chief Investigator in the <a href=\"http:\/\/epicaustralia.org.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On the day of the lecture Professor Bradshaw and Flinders colleague Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rik Saltr\u00e9 wrote in The Conversation on &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535\">What is a &#8216;mass extinction&#8217; and are we in one now?<\/a>&#8216;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years after the best-seller The Population Bomb warned of the perils of overpopulation and environmental destruction, renowned American biologist Professor Paul Ehrlich gave an update [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":12904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7777],"tags":[13281],"class_list":["post-12900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-science-and-engineering","tag-environment"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/fit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}