As many of you know, I'm
starting to write a book that describes a utopian future state
where humans actually live in peace, and in harmony with the other
species on
Earth. Everything I describe (in the story outline anyway) is plausible
except a solution for overpopulation. Six or seven billion humans,
even living more modestly and conscientiously than we do now, simply
can't co-exist with the rest of the species on this planet. There's
just not enough room, not enough resources. The numbers can't be
crunched to make it work.
Ecologists have computed that, if 88% of the habitable Earth's surface
is allotted to humans (the other 12% is left for all the rest of the
species on the planet), Earth could support about one billion humans at
a comfortable and sustainable level of existence. There are two
problems with this. The first is that, human nature being what it is,
humans won't limit their resource consumption to 'a comfortable and
sustainable level of existence'. The second is that biodiversity
doesn't work that way -- it's a web of interdependencies, not a zoo,
and human population must be balanced with levels of other species or
the whole ecosystem collapses, as is occurring now.
Global human population was about 150 million for most of the first
three million years of our species' existence, jumping to about twice
that number by the sixteenth century as humans populated most of the
planet. Virtually all increases since then are due to lowering of death
rates as a result of improvements in hygiene and medicine. That would
seem to suggest that a natural, sustainable human population that would
leave the rest of the global ecosystem unharmed would be about 300
million. Acknowledging that these numbers are wild approximations, and
that someone should be doing some serious work in this area (I could
find no professional research on this subject on the Internet), let's
further assume that the dramatically increased resource consumption per
person since the Middle Ages is roughly offset by dramatic improvements
in the efficiency of resource use. In other words, our ingenuity
approximately offsets our greed.
This level of human population is not only ideal for the ecosystem:
It's a level that would allow us to reclaim the age of leisure we gave
up 30,000 years ago. According to the latest anthropological theories,
man lived a simple, easy and pleasant life until then, working perhaps
an hour or two per day to meet his food needs comfortably. Furthermore,
there is evidence that famines, wars, and epidemic diseases were
virtually unknown at that population level: the stress of overcrowding
and competition for food, and the concentration of numbers sufficient
to spread disease simply weren't there. If we could somehow reduce
human numbers back to that golden 300 million level painlessly, there
is every reason to believe that we could regain paradise.
In theory, could this be done? Let's assume that the vast majority of
humanity suddenly
understood this, and reduced their family sizes to bring human numbers
down to a sustainable level, by, say, having an average of only one
child per couple (less than half today's rate). It would take a half
century of this lower birth rate just to stabilize the population at
today's level, because of the current demographic pattern and the
time lag required before the drop in birth rate impacts the peak
population demographic and those of reproductive age. After that
population would drop about 1% per year, reaching the 300 million level
about two centuries from now. The percentage of humans in the 20-65
working age group would drop gradually from the current 55% to about
40% and then start rising again. Therefore, since the extra burden of
the aged would be significantly offset by a drop in dependent children,
the demographic shift should not create a labour or social crisis.
So it's feasible on paper, but...
- It would take a huge cultural change to bring about this
sudden drastic drop in birth rate, especially in the underdeveloped
countries where birth rate is currently highest. Even with the
dampening impact of massive AIDS fatalities in Africa, and an expected
sharp drop in birth rate, the population of that continent is forecast
to grow from 900 million to two
billion by 2050. India & Pakistan's population is likewise
forecast to grow 50%, an increase of 700 million by that year. Large
increases are likewise forecast in the Mideast, parts of East Asia, and
Latin America.
- Human nature, bolstered by religious dogma, would almost
certainly push the birth rate back up when the total human population
started to significantly drop. Parts of Europe are already falling in
population, but the rate of decrease is leveling off. To be able to
sustain negative population growth for two centuries is almost
inconceivable.
- Our rate of increase in resource consumption per person
needs to be cut to zero as well, which would require a grand
'North-South contract' -- Those in the affluent Northern countries need
to agree to cut resource
consumption per capita at least by half, and allow those in the South
to increase theirs, in return for dramatically reducing their birth
rate. The chances of this happening, and soon, are next to zero.
So it's discouraging. While the elements of the solution are
tantalizingly close, we are simply too late, and too disorganized, to
be able to make the solution happen. It's like we're navigating an oil
tanker headed for the rocks and have steered away from them, but know
there just isn't enough torque, momentum change and turning diameter to
avoid catastrophe, even as we watch it happening in apparent slow
motion. This catastrophe -- environmental apocalypse,
annihilation of species diversity on Earth, famine, climate change and
massive social upheaval -- will likely occur late in this century or
early in the next, as population balloons to 10-15 billion before
leveling off (depending on whose projections you believe) and aggregate
human resource consumption increases by a factor of ten. It will be a disaster 30,000
years in the making, because we squandered the last chance to prevent
it, perhaps generations ago.
But we can't of course give up hope. I believe we need to start to
build a global consensus on the need to reduce our human numbers to 300
million (the same level as in the Middle Ages), or some other level
that scientists can agree on as sustainable and healthy. And for those
in the North to also halve our individual ecological footprints. We
need to start telling the story of how wonderful, magical, perfect life
could be, for all of us and
all other creatures in Earth's web of life, if we could achieve these
reductions. The book I'm writing is an attempt to describe that
possible utopia. And it is a work of fiction. I'm just trying to
envision it not being a work of fantasy.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
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