The moral dilemma of the 21st century

Advances in agriculture and medicine have given us now an overpopulated planet with severely impoverished ecosystem services — and a profound moral dilemma: how can we continue to respond to the still-growing need to feed more mouths and to treat more illness in the coming decades, without continuing to imperil the opportunity for our descendants to enjoy long and healthy lives? Lonnie Aarssen is a professor of Biology at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada. His work explores how evolutionary thinking can affect our understanding of our lives, our species, and our ability to share the planet with other species.