The Dalai Lama argues that human population growth is endangering the
lives of those already on the planet. We ought to worry not only about exceeding the
Earth’s ability to sustain human population, according to the Dalai Lama, but also
about nonhuman forms of life. The percentage of plant and animal species that go extinct
each year is as high today as it was during the great Permian extinction event,
some 250 million years ago, when 90 percent of the Earth’s living species went extinct
(Benton, 2005). Such radical changes to the natural world will no doubt have