There is a point here - we have disturbed the balance of nature by our ingenuity. The biggest problem we face is one of over population - too many people for nature to support. In the "good old days", nature kept a balance - fecundity versus pestilence and disease - human populations were largely held in balance for millennia as baby production and mortality more or less matched each other.
Our modern ability to identify causes of disease and to prevent disease, has upset the old balance. If humanity is to have a future where we can live long lives unmolested by viruses and bacteria, then we need to control the fecundity side of the equation by balancing baby production with deaths. In the advanced world, this has been more or less achieved, since wealthy people prefer to divert all their resources into raising one or two offspring, rather than in having a large litter. Unfortunately, for both cultural and economic reasons, poor countries produce an over supply of offspring, leading to all the issues of over population and attendant environmental calamity.
Nature will sort us out one way or another, if we don't remedy the problem ourselves. The key aims of foreign aid for example, should be education and family planning.
Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum