Culture
Culture refers to a society in which many members share common rules of behavior and a basic social organization. Culture and society are somewhat interchangeable. But while many animals live in societies, such as a pack of wolves, only humans have the capacity for culture.

Because human societies do not exist in complete isolation to one another, they tend to exchange culture in the form of ideas, people, goods and natural resources. Today, cultural exchange has led to many people around the world using the same kinds of technology-cars, telephones, computers and televisions. Communication technologies and commercial trade has effectively created a global human culture and people around the world are doing what they've done throughout history-they are adapting.

The ability to adapt to cultural changes has made humans one of the most successful species on the planet. When the natural environment changes, culture can help human societies survive. For example, when the earth warmed at the end of the last Ice Age, game animals disappeared, and a great majority of the land areas were submerged by rising sea levels. But people survived. They developed new technologies and learned how to subsist on new plant and animal species. Throughout history, major developments in technology, medicine, and nutrition have allowed people to reproduce and survive in ever-increasing numbers. The increase in global population rates, which has risen from 8 million during the Ice Age to almost 6 billion today, can be seen as a sign of our success.

But the success of culture has also led to some problems. Over the past 200 years, people have begun to use massive quantities of natural resources and energy. This has led to the production of an enormous amount of material and chemical waste and the altering of the world's climate in unpredictable and possibly harmful ways. And if that wasn't enough, the global population's consumption of crucial natural resources (petroleum, coal, natural gas, timber) far outpaces nature's ability to produce them. And as the world's population continue to grow, so to will its need for energy. Some experts expect that need to double every twenty years or so and if that happens, we are bound to find out exactly how limited these natural resources really are.

Religion
In all human cultures, there exists the belief that we are connected somehow to spiritual powers beyond our existence. These sacred powers may be within us, external to the self or both and come in the form of gods, spirits, ancestors or any kind of sacred truth. The practice of interacting with these supreme powers and the sacred reverence and attention to which we bestow them is collectively known as religion. Historically, the number of spirits within a particular culture has been virtually limitless. However, over the course of time, spirits that play a more important cultural role usually develop into gods. The history of religion has also shown a natural tendency to move beyond multiple gods toward one central, all-powerful God.

Humans and the Global Ecosystem
An Integrated System
The earth can be viewed as a single integrated system. The epitome of balance. Throughout history, species have co-existed in naturally evolved communities that have kept populations relatively stable and resources plentiful. Enter humans. Though humans are not the only species in history to have changed the environment, there's little debate that we have done so on a substantially larger scale than any other species in history. Humans have at times disturbed the naturally balanced system developed over the generations. One microcosmic example of this type of disturbance is the introduction of goats by settlers to isolated oceanic islands. Intending the goats to roam free and be a readily available source of meat, the settlers did not realize that their introduction of the goat effectively drove many native animal species to extinction. Without a natural predator to keep the goat population in check, the goats thrived and, in the process, overgrazing occurred. Overgrazing created a change in the plant composition that disrupted the natural order of the island ecosystem resulting in the extinction of native animals not capable of adapting to such rapid changes. In a truly integrated system, one simple action can have unpredictable and often dire results.

The population growth problem affects the entire human community. Although it is true that rates of population increase are much higher in developing countries, it happens to be members of the developed world who have a much greater environmental impact. This is due to the fact that developed nations utilize much larger amounts of resources per person than less developed countries. So in the developed world, it is vitally important that conservation strategies be in place that would greatly lessen environmental impact without substantially altering lifestyle. In the developing world, where rates of population growth are highest, evidence suggests that democracy and social justice are important factors in lowering population growth rates. It has been shown that population growth rates have fallen in areas where literacy rates have increased. Similarly, population is much lower in areas where women are given the same economic status as men allowing them to hold jobs and to own property. The availability of information on birth control as well as the freedom for women to make their own reproductive decisions is also important if lower population growth rates are to be achieved.