To the editor:

Many people say that humans aren’t capable of causing or affecting global climate change. I beg to differ. Since the end of the Pleistocene ice age around 10,000 B.C.E., homo sapiens have greatly influenced the Holocene (current) environment; while all organisms influence their environments to some degree, few have ever changed the globe as much, or as fast, as our species is doing. The past 10,000 years have witnessed the rise and fall of all its civilizations up to now.

The collapse of the Roman and Mayan civilizations was accelerated by unchecked population growth, overfarming and deforestation. One need only look to China to see human-caused climate change happening in real time. Desertification has affected 28 percent of China’s land mass, with 18 percent of the country turning to waste through the effects of overgrazing, deforestation, open-pit coal mining and a host of other negative human activities. The expanding deserts then spawn massive sandstorms that lay waste to even larger areas and bring Beijing to a grinding halt.

The root problem is simply our sheer numbers as a species. The Roman Empire grew so vast it couldn’t feed its people. Unchecked population growth is the cause; the billions of tons of pollution from coal plants and hundreds of millions of cars is simply the catalyst by which the climate is affected.

Can global warming/climate change be blamed solely on humanity? Of course not. However, any attempt to blame everything BUT mankind is ludicrous. Denying it won’t make it go away.