 In today's NYT,
Verlyn Klinkenborg laments the lack of attention to the fact that
California's population (like Canada's) is expected to nearly double to
60 million by 2050 (both populations, barring crisis, will reach 100
million by 2100, with US total population expected to remain about ten
times that amount, one billion by 2100). Klinkenborg notes that, even
with a moderation in the growth of consumption and average house size,
the increase in total use of land and resources, and waste produced,
will increase at a considerably faster rate than population. He
concludes:
This population forecast is a vivid reminder of the assumptions
that make meaningful change so hard. We can't help believing in growth.
We can't help believing that the way to create change is simply to buy
different stuff, so growth doesn't stop. And we refuse to think
seriously about the number of human beings on this planet, a kind of
growth that somehow seems "natural" to us. It makes no difference how
little each of those 60 million Californians will consume in 2050. It's
nearly impossible to imagine how they could meet their water needs
alone. And then there is the impact of all those people on the other
species with which they might have shared the Golden State. In 2007, we
remain blindly impervious to the life-claims of almost all other forms
of life — to the moral stipulation that their right to life is
equivalent to ours. How it will be then I do not know, but if there are
indeed 60 million people living in California in 2050, there will be
nothing meaningful to be said on the matter, except as a subject of
nostalgia.
We like to take it for granted that we're moving ahead in
environmental consciousness. We like to hope that the curve of our
environmental awareness will catch up to the curve of our economic
growth and things will somehow come into balance. But faith in our
progressive enlightenment seems a little misplaced to me, especially
when I remember a speech that James Madison gave to his local
agricultural society nearly 190 years ago.
Madison said, simply, that we have no reason to suppose that all of
Earth's resources, which support so much living diversity, can
rightfully be commandeered to support mankind alone. It seems
incredible to me, in 2007, that a former president could articulate
such an environmentally sound principle of conscience. But it's a
principle that should move to the very center of our thinking. It
should cause us to re-examine not just how we shop and what we drive
and who we elect but also how our species reproduces. It should cause
us to re-imagine that once and future California, which lies only 43
years away, and make sure that it isn't barren of all but us humans.
Population growth of 1-2% per year is so slow that we
tend to ignore it, and assume that it can be simply or naturally
absorbed. But 1% growth compounded adds up to 60% in 50 years and 170%
(a near-tripling) in 100 years. And 2% growth compounded adds up to
170% growth (a near tripling) in 50 years and 620% (over seven times
current population) in 100 years -- that's what's (still) occurring in
most of the world's struggling nations. It's the proverbial 'boiling
frog' situation - nothing seems to be happening, but suddenly you wake
up and the place you love is gone.
I live just outside the Greater Toronto Area, in an
area, the Oak Ridges Moraine, that is, for now, supposedly, protected
wetland and greenbelt (see map above). The GTA, home to half of
Canada's new immigrants, is growing by more than 2% per year, so even
if this slows somewhat, we're looking at a population of six million
today exploding to 15 million by 2050 and over 40 million by 2100.
Since most of the new residents want single-family homes on private
lots, we're talking about a quadrupling of built-up area by 2050 and a
ten-fold increase by 2100. This is precisely what has happened in most
of the cities in the struggling nations in the last century. The New
Yorker has chillingly described what urban life is like there.
A recent post
by my friend Joe Bageant explains the sense of fatalism, disbelief,
denial and indifference that most of us feel when we look at such
forecasts. He likens us to ants who, up until the day their
colony dies off suddenly from lack of water, continue to do what they
have always done, unaware or unresponsive to the pending disaster. Do
they sense, know it is coming, and just shrug their thoraxes that these
troublesome signs are not their business, something in the Queen's or
the Ant God's hands? Joe writes:
We begin too late to "make better choices." Grim choices
that do nothing but postpone the inevitable, which are called better
ones and sold to us to make ourselves feel better about our toxicity.
Burn corn in your gas tank. Go green, with the help of Monsanto. But
not many can be concerned even with the matter of better choices. Few
can truly grasp the fullness of the danger because there is no way they
can get their minds around it, no way to see the world in its
entirety...
All the green energy sources and eating right and voting
right cannot fix what has been irretrievably ruined, but only make life
amid the ruination slightly more bearable...
So we postpone transformation through truth, and stick
with what has always worked -- empire and consumption. And we twiddle
our lives away thorough insignificant fretting about mortgages and
health care and political parties and pretend the whole of Western
culture is not a disconnect...
We allow ourselves to imagine the worst is somewhere in
yet another future so we can continue without owning decision. Love of
comfort being the death of courage, we continue the familiar
commoditized life, the only one we have known...
Some few of us are in a hellish limbo, simply waiting for total
collapse because it is easier to rebuild from nothing than to change
billions of minds not even remotely concerned with the looming
catastrophe. A minority of the world, the six percent called America,
suffers the mass self-delusion of endless plenitude. A much larger
portion is less concerned with the moral aspects of consumption because
they are brutally engaged in trying to find enough to eat and a drink
of clean water. So plenitude on any terms looks damned good. Escape to
America because those fuckers over there don't seem to be suffering at
all.
And that brings us back to 60 million and then 100
million Californians, a like number of somewhat colder, somewhat less
drought-stricken Canadians (nearly half of them in the GTA), and a
billion Americans, still looking for "plenitude on any terms". I
know, you don't believe it will happen. Previous neo-Malthusians, after
all, have been wrong; their dire predictions never came about. Why
should it be any different this century? We'll figure it out,
you say. We'll adapt. We'll voluntarily reduce our fertility. We'll
close down immigration before it gets to this. Technology will allow us
to live better with less consumption, to collaborate on solutions. And
what more can we do anyway? We're already being more frugal, driving
greener cars, having fewer children than our parents. We're doing our
part. So shut up about it already. Like Joe's ant colony, we
don't believe in Armageddon. And those who do also believe in salvation
from a higher power. We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and
then we do what's fun. If only those needs, those comforts, those joys didn't come with such a huge, and inevitable cost. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
