My local cemetary is being extended. I was taking a walk around town the other day and saw a few workmen extending the stone-corniced boundaries into the neighbouring horse-paddock that it shares its borders with. How strange, I thought, to have to be extending the burial space for such a sleepy peripheral hamlet. I pondered what would have been the last time they had to expand the extremities of the churchyard to accomodate the swelling numbers of the local deceased demographic. And when you consider that, relative to fifty years ago, more people will (thoughtfully) decide to opt for cremation and take up but a few cubic inches of his fellow neighbours environs; to justify a cemetary extension must preclude a forecast for a large number of bodies to become available over the coming years. It was the first time that my local area had stimulated me to think of the idiosyncrasies of human population growth. Luckily for my townspeople the sum total fallout from this instance is felt mainly by a few horses who have a few less hecters to canter round. However, in the week (or month, or quarter; depending on error analysis) that the global population hits 7,000,000,000 we would be foolish to ignore the far moregrave situations that population growth poses for us as a species in the years to come.
So what’s the big deal about 7 billion people being on the planet? We seemed to be doing OK at 6.5 billion, so what’s all the fuss about? Well, it’s not necessarily the fact that the Earth cannot support the lives of seven billion humans; however the nature of population growth dictates that in the not-too-distant future, portions of the world whereby humans breed at the fastest rate may no longer be able to sustain such a population. Population growth is a funny old thing; and by ‘funny’ I mean ‘shit-your-pants terrifying.’ Take this stock example of a pond; and a lovely pond, no less. As with most ponds, this particular lovely pond is home to algae, which reproduces on it’s surface. Luckily there is so little algae that all the lovely aquatic critters can flourish in the shallow depths below. However, if the algae population doubles by the day then the pond’s surface soon starts to become overrun. By the twentieth day, the algae has covered 1/4 of the pond’s surface. No biggie. However, as the population doubles each day by the twenty-first day; half the pond is covered. things look a little concerning for the critters now and just one mere day later THE WHOLE LOVELY POND IS COVERED AND EVERYTHING DIES! ‘Whoa’ you’re thinking, ‘that crept up fast.’ Correct; exponential growth comes fast and will strike you and your critters down where you stand.
It’s all well and lovely talking about ponds; but what does this mean for humanity? If we take the current global population as being 7 billion, and the current population growth rate, globally, as being 1.2% per year; it follows that it will take a mere 58 years before the current Earth’s human population doubles to 14 billion. Can this amount of people be supported by the Earth’s resources? Probably yes, but it certainly cannot be sustained. It also seems a foregone conclusion that the vast majority of these future peoples will be growing up in abject poverty. Add into the equation that the most densely populated areas of the globe will become even more densely populated, thus increasing the devastation caused by disease. These areas will also be the hardest hit by food scarcity, meaning that already existing famines will worsen and new areas of famine are likely to develop. Furthermore these areas are also likely to be situated on the cheapest, and therefore most geologically unstable landmasses; which means that the devastation caused by natural disasters will eclipse anything that we have yet seen. In short, within 58 years, that is to say within my lifetime (hopefully), we will be facing an untold humanitarian disaster that no amount of relief aid will be able to alleviate.
With that apocolyptic vision in mind (and I don’t intend to scaremonger, I just maintain that these are unavoidable consequences if something is not done to retard the population growth rate) you would think that the perils of overpopulation would affect more attention. In fact it is an issue that seems to recieve little coverage compared to some of it’s more noteworthy contemporaries such as climate change and the state of the economy. Perhaps tackling overpopulation it just isn’t as glamorous as taking on the mantle of the trodden-on masses and fighting the corporations. Or perhaps it just isn’t as intuitively wholesome as trying to save things which instantiate some kind of natural beauty. Essentially, to try and do something about population growth, you’re going to have to tell people not to bang; which isn’t going to go down well. In fact your only friends will likely be asexuals. Good job that all mine are (I assume.)
But what are the real issues behind overpopulation? Essentially, at the heart of it, there is too much procreation going on. But does this therefore make overpopulation an issue concerning sexual education? To an extent, yes. As I mentioned before, it’s hard to tell people not to bang, especially when sexual activity is one of the very few pleasures that one can enjoy completely gratis! Moreover, even the ‘educational’ groups that do push abstinence (until you and a partner sign on the dotted line with a particular sect/cult/whatever) at the expense of sexual education only suceed in creating awkward, sexually naive adults that are far more likely to accidentally spawn than their promiscuous counterparts. So the type of education that must be at the heart of tackling overpopulation is frank and practical advice concerning contraception.
However, maintaining that sexual education is the main weapon in combatting overpopulation presupposes that the primary cause of overpopulation is biological ignorance. Sadly I do not believe this to be the case. Thorough practical advice concerning contraception may well prevent unwanted births around the globe, but it can do nothing for people who have a vested interest in procreation. Furthermore, when this interest is an economically imperative interest to the individual, we have a far greater problem on our hands.
What do we mean by economically imperative? Forget the seemingly clinical language, we are essentially talking about survival. In the least economically developed echelons of societies around the world, such as agricultural and peasant societies, it is an economical benefit to have as many offspring as a family can bear. The nature of the work of these families will be to provide sustenance for their kin. This could be from farming the land and producing harvest, to scavenging for food remnants or valuable goods or the landfills of large urban conurbations. The more children that a family can bear, the more labour can be employed to assist with the acquiring food and resource. In the built-up urban areas, the competition for such resource is greater, and with greater competition comes a greater need for labour. As these communities exist in what we may reasonably describe as economic poverty, the standard of living is such that infant mortality rates are incredibly high; therefore the greater number of offspring born will offset the fact that the chances of a child dying in infancy is relatively great.
And so we can see the horrific bind; the more desperate the families situation is, the greater the economic necessity to bear offspring. Therefore more and more people are being born into desperate situations, with a vested interest in producing numerous children themselves. Even more alarming is the fact that people in this situation make up the vast majority of the worlds population, living in already overcrowded areas, forced to live on progressively more unstable and unsafe environments. Disease thrives on population density, unsanitary conditions and dearth of healthcare. Natural distaters are most likely to strike in the unstable areas that no one deemed safe to inhabit when people had the luxury of choosing where on Earth they would rather settle. When neighbouring people are forced into intimate confines with one another, in a closed environment of limited resource, warfare seems to be an eventuality rather than a worst-case-scenario. Looking at nothing more than the numbers, the ratios, and some basic facts about human population and resource we can see that we are speeding headlong into a humanitarian disaster of untold proportions.
So what can be done? Well, if the solution to the problem of sexual ignorance was education, the solution to economic depravity is development. A mark of the developed portions of global society is that a child is no longer an economic benefit, but has now become an economic drain. Children take up a considerable portion of the money, resource and time that we have come to take for granted in a developed society. Therefore the more children you have, the less you will have of your money, resource and time. Hence you can see that in more economically developed countries, there is a trend for having smaller families, with a far lower birth rate.
Essentially, to lower this birth rate, you must ensure that the standard of living for every global citizen is such that having a large family is economically draining. Written within a concise sentence as such belittles the magnitude of this task. I have no idea if this would even be possible in an environment of limitless resource on an increased time-frame. I do, however, have my doubts as to whether this can be achieved in time to avoid the afore-mentioned humanitarian disaster.
For many decades the view has been taken that the problem of scarcity of resource and overpopulation will be solved by our continued development of technology. However, this seems equivalent to imploring a person who has been diagnosed with a malignant tumour not to worry becausee there isa chance that someone could discover a cure before they die. It’s wishful thinking at best. With every natural disaster, famine, military conflict, the humanitarian toll rises and I have yet to see the miracle technological cure to put my mind at ease that worse is not to follow. Necessarily at some point in human history the birth rate will fall and death rate will rise to the point that population growth will hit 0. It seems unlikely at the moment that we can raise the standard of living across the globe such that this growth rate will be reached on our own terms.
It has been seriously suggested that a solution to our problem is to relocate people to various colonies on other planets or moons. Many people find this an acceptable solution. But here’s the catch; to keep the population growth at a steady rate, rather than exponential, we would need to send away around 70,000,000 people per year. This would require a vessel that could transport 1,000,000 people safely, making 70 trips per year. With our current technology; the amount of fuel used up and emitted on these trips would ensure that the Earth’s environment would be ruptured beyond repair within a couple of years at most. Good job.
So let’s leave the Sci-fi to one side. Sure, nobody likes to believe that we, as a species, are on the brink of impending danger, but to bury your head in the sand, or buy into comforting fantasies is not helpful. Firstly, we need to make sure that this problem is acknowledged and that the danger is recognised. Secondly, we need to take on the challenge, even if it proves to be futile. We need to make every attempt to assist countries in their development, and to continue to develop ways that we may be able to support a population of our size, sustainably. We need to continue to promote sexual education and banish dogma that prevents this. We may even need to consider and debate our own procreative powers.
Whether you are scavenging for recyclable plastic on a landfill, or trying to save up money for your children’s holiday it can be hard to think of a cause that is bigger than your own immediate world. But even if you feel that nothing can be done, that the situation is lost, that what will be will be; well, the least you can do is brace yourself.
Happy New Year
(Now here’s a video surmising the issue in a more concise and well-thought-out- manner.)
Tags: 7000000000, baby boom, burial space, cubic inches, global population, human population, human population growth, natural disater, nature of population growth, population, population explosion, population growth, population population, seven billion, stock example
