Originally Posted by
BobH
The vastly larger world population now compared to then is but one of the ways that we effect our environment more now than in the middle ages or even prior to that. In the not too distant past, say pre industrial revolution, man did not burn fossil fuels at the rate we do today, did not use the vast amounts of chemicals we use today and did not farm on the industrial scale we do today. When you use the vastly larger population of the post industrial period as a multiplier of all the practices we do today which did not really exist before, the ability to rapidly and detrimentally change our environment is exponentially larger than previously.
Bob