As we consider growth in Sussex County, let’s remind ourselves that land is limited and human population growth is exponential. Given this reality, growth will stop simply because the land is no longer available.
As I discuss with my biology students, the earth is only so big, yet the world’s population continues to grow exponentially. It took us nearly 2,000 years to reach 3 billion people in 1960, and less than 65 years to reach the world’s current population of over 8 billion. Shortages of water, our most important resource, and food and shelter, as well as climate-induced extreme weather, indicate that humans are exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity.
Likewise in Sussex County, in the past 15 years, the population has grown 40% to over 277,000, many more than the few thousand here in 1800, when forests stretched across Delaware. Today’s pressing concerns about traffic and flooding and freshwater and shelter and climate change indicate that the citizens of Sussex County currently exceed the area’s carrying capacity, while diminishing available land is lost to development.
As Native Americans, the Lenape and the Nanticoke, well do, I encourage us to make decisions being mindful of people and life-sustaining natural resources seven generations hence. Let’s thoughtfully listen to each other, especially to those who consider the long term. Jane Gruenebaum and others encourage us to make wise decisions and create thoughtful policies and supportive communities that allow us to best live now and well into the future.
In the spirit of Jane Goodall, I urge us to well consider such wise and visionary thoughtfulness, especially for the sake of best lives for us, for our child and theirs, for all life.
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