Global warming of a global village

Here’s the way I lead my students to a different way of thinking with respect to the environment: Imagine two islands with the same population size, land area and quality. Both have population growth rates of almost 3 percent, which means the land per family halves each generation. Eventually there won’t be enough to subsist on. What, I ask, should be done? Do you want to know anything more before you can act?

..Students almost never ask if all sectors of the population live under equal conditions. But the discussion quickly moves to a new level when I tell them that on island B, 2 percent of the people own 60 percent of the land, while 70 percent have only 2 percent of the island to live on – a typical land distribution for Central America in the 1970s.

Newsday