We need to reduce human population to sustainable levels -- no more than 1-2 billion people globally.
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Why?
The problem isn't numbers of people, it's the amount of resources they
consume. And as nations become educated, they control their own
population. The global population is going to level off at 9 billion.
And no other method beside education has ever had any enduring effect
on birth rate anyway. You can't legislate it -- the need to reproduce
is an imperative in our DNA.
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Well,
then, we need to reduce consumption. Today we are already consuming
resources and producing pollution and waste at a rate twice what the
planet can sustain, and as third world countries aspire to first world
living standards this is on track to rise to eight times what the
planet can sustain by the end of the century.
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You
underestimate human ingenuity and invention. Technology has already
allowed us to increase crop yields enormously, to the point each acre
of land can produce far more food than anyone ever expected. That same
ingenuity will solve other shortages -- replacing oil with renewable
sources, finding ways to refresh water, enabling us to put more people
on each acre and still keep our cities pleasant and habitable, even
growing food indoors.
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So
then what. You have a whole planet packed with people, cities covering
every square inch of the planet, and no room for any other species of
life.
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In
the first place, if the 9 billion all lived in healthy, well-designed
cities, even cities full of trees and parks, those cities would still
only take up 10% of the Earth's surface. The other 90% would leave tons
of room for other species of life,
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But
that's just idealism. The reality is that people don't live in
well-designed cities, they sprawl out and clearcut and poison all the
land available to them.
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Well,
that's human nature. We want room. But historically people have
actually flocked to cities, and are still doing so. If you make a city
attractive, people actually prefer to live there rather than in the
country. The key is reinventing our cities. Europe is showing how to do
that now, and the rest of us will learn.
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Not
everyone wants to live in cities. And much of the land outside the
cities is used up and despoiled in order to provide people in the
cities with what they want and need.
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Yes,
and we'll have to learn to be more efficient. Europe basically ran out
of land a century ago, and since then they have been pioneers:
achieving population stability and even reducing population, reclaiming
land as wilderness to increase biodiversity, making cities more livable
and more efficient and self-sufficient with wind turbines etc. so the
land outside the cities need not be used up and despoiled. We can even
invent proteins that have the same flavour, texture and appearance as
animal proteins, and free up the 70% of arable land now used for
grazing animals and growing food for those animals.
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What you're describing violates the laws of thermodynamics. The stuff these 9 billion people consume has to come from somewhere.
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Yes,
and right now it comes from a lot of wasteful and inefficient
processes. We're still learning how to live properly. We will learn to
reduce, reuse, recycle, to live within our means and consume no more
than we produce.
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How can you be so optimistic? Open your eyes, and all you will see is evidence to the contrary.
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I
guess you see what you want to see. I think we've come a long way from
the middle ages. There is less barbarity now. There is more knowledge
and understanding. We are much better connected and aware of what needs
to be done. How can you be so pessimistic?
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All
the wars and violence, poisoned food, water and land, preventable
disease and suffering, global warming, end of oil, factory farming,
government corruption, an economy dependent on unsustainable growth. I
could go on...
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There
have always been problems. Look at the Spanish Inquisition, the
tyrannies of Stalin and Mao that together resulted in the deaths of
over 100 million people, the two world wars, the cold war with two
irrational fingers on the nuclear button. Somehow we seem to have the
survival instinct to pull back from the brink in time.
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But
this time we're heading over the brink with a lot more mass and a lot
more momentum -- more, faster than ever before, like a heavily-laden
car careening out of control.
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Maybe.
If you think so, you should recognize human nature for what it is, very
adaptable, very resistant to change, and slowly maturing. And then
focus your attention on the "careening car's" vulnerabilities, areas
where change is most possible. Go teach people, especially women, in
the third world, and give them reliable, cheap, easy-to-use birth
control, so they 'grow up' to the European model faster. Make it not
worth their while to aspire to move to the West, and make them see that
the Western European standard of living is a better model to emulate
than the North American one. And in North America, work in urban
planning to make sprawl and commuting unnecessary, to make urban
communities efficient, self-sufficient, self-managed, and delightful to
live in. Work in renewable energy and remediation technology. Help
North Americans 'grow up' to see the value of the Western European
model of land use, not to see value in each owning their own personal
50 by 100 foot piece of chemical-laden grass.
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There's not nearly enough time for that.
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It's
already happening. Third-world population growth rates, though still
too high, are dropping. India is starting to attract some of its
emigrants back. 'Smart Growth' models, though poorly named, and
telecommuting are helping to reduce sprawl and commuting in North
America. And if you're right and this won't be enough to avert
ecological disaster, well, then you might as well party, because no
top-down political act or peer-to-peer meme is going to cause people to
change their behaviour before they're ready, before they have no
alternative. It's not in our nature.
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Hey wait a minute. I thought I was the pessimist.
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You are. I don't believe it will ever come to that.
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There
are a lot of scientists and students of history who say it will. So do
my instincts. So I believe we need to take a precautionary approach,
using tax incentives and social and political pressure and technology
to get people to voluntarily reduce human population to sustainable
levels -- say, to 1-2 billion people globally.
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Uh, I already answered that.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
