"We are the first generation to live on earth to witness a doubling of population in our lifetime. The babies born within the nest thirty hours of your reading this sentence will replace the 250,000 people lost in the tragic tsunami of December 26, 2004. Nearly 3 billion more people will join the current population of 6.6 billion within fifty years, and the world has yet to figure out how to take care of those already here."
-Paul Hawken
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming
In this course we have heard much about our exponential population growth. We have also heard undisputed data about our remaining natural resources...
What do you think about population projections for our species?
Do you think that the earth can healthfully sustain a population of more than 7 billion people?
What might this world look like? Be like?
How much more can the earth really give?
While it is haunting to think about a "collapse" in our cultural systems, the reality is that a collapse is a reoccurring conversation surfacing in leading academic communities and elsewhere. Please share your thoughts.
Learn More:
Population Growth over Human History
One Hundred Interesting Mathemaical Calculations: #5: Exponetial Growth and Human Populations
"We Have Passed Our Sustainability" (www.overpopulation.net)
The No Impact Man
14 comments:
It is truly a frightening thought for me to think about how quickly our population is growing, and that I could potentially witness a collapse of the human race in my lifetime. One of the first thoughts that jumps into my head is: do I even want to have children now? Or: How many can I even have? China already has strict laws on the number of children each family is allowed. I wonder if those laws will spread across the globe as the time grows closer to our population doubling in size. Here in the US, I can see those laws being met with hostility and rebellion by the general population. But really, what else CAN we do? I don’t believe this planet can conceivably handle that many people at once. There just isn’t enough SPACE! We will be forced to carve into protected lands just to find places to live, or continue to build our urban landscape up to the sky, until we approach the realm of “The Jetsons.”
Space alone isn’t even the worst problem. Think of how quickly we’re depleting our natural resources now… by the time our population doubles, there will be nothing left to deplete! People are already grumbling about gas prices; I can hardly imagine what will happen when our fresh water supply starts to run out. The food riots in Haiti should be a good indicator of how badly things can turn in an instant.
It scares me beyond reason to think that my peers and I are going to have to encounter this before we die. I just hope that we can figure out a way to solve this problem before our time runs out.
Looking at the visual documentation of the human population growth, it is stunning to see the leap in growth that occurs even in miniscule increments of 10, 25, or 50 years. Reading the article "We have Passed Our Sustainability" posted, I was surprised to learn that it was in 1987 that our population growth peaked, having added 87.01 million people to the planet. From that point, there has been a steady average decline of 2.1 million less people added to the total population growth. The article speculates that we could reach zero population growth as early as 2020, with 6.64 billion people. I doubt that, given that this article is 8 years old, but other sources submit the possibility of reaching that zero point in 2029, or 2038.
These facts bring up some very important issues regarding human population growth. I realize I have been wrong in thinking that our population was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, without knowing that it has actually been in a rather dramatic decline for 22 years. So is my ignorance actually the work of bigger powers? According to the article, that may be so:
"Perhaps the powers that be have an interest in keeping you thinking we can expand forever, implying that the Earth's resources are limitless. Perhaps the capitalistic economic system that rules Earth does not want to let you know the truth about our crashing population and that we will reach zero population growth very shortly."
But the real reason behind this crash is that we have reached our limit on our resources. I found it extremely interesting that the author of this article refers to a collapse of society, saying "indisputable evidence of the collapse that has been under way now." And this is before Diamond's work and research on Collapse. That was really shocking for me to read, because I'm realizing how true it really is. Like what we said in discussion, there is tangible evidence for wars over resources to happen in our lifetime, and we're already witnessing that in disputes over oil. What could happen if we exacerbate those wars exponentially? What lengths would people go to get food, or to get water? Our inborn urge to survive is much stronger than perhaps any of us give it credit for, (given that we've had no need to employ it during our lifetimes) and if every human on the planet was desperately in need of vital, life-necessary resources, I don't think anything could stop the chaos that would ensue.
This makes me think of a book by Cormac McCarthy, "The Road." It's a fantastic work, though extremely depressing. But it portrays the world after some unnamed, awful, giant world war, and there are only a few scraggling surviving humans left roaming the world trying desperately to survive. The father and son, the two protagonists, must try to live off of scrounged food and water, and whenever they encounter other humans, their lives are at stake because of the animosity due to lack of available resources. Could that be our future after some world war III over meat, or water? I hate to contemplate that possibility, but perhaps it is a necessary, viable future to remind us of the lengths we must go to avoid such a cataclysmic happening.
Sean Thompson
Can society collapse? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Many great societies in the past just as great as America today in relative terms have indeed collapse. The Anasazi, aka the Ancient Ones, aka Ancient Puebloeans, had a rich and thriving culture with agriculture of corn, trading, religion, and amazing cities. However, this way of life came to an end, collapsed, and its people were spread about and the culture was lost.
The people of Messa Verde suffered a similar fate. The cliff dwellings they lived in let us now that they may have had other hostile peoples nearby which could have aided in the collapse. But the thing that’s really interesting is that right towards the end there was a great time of growth for that culture, then the culture was suddenly gone leaving only there mysterious dwellings.
Another great example of societal collapse is the people on Easter Island. The people were stuck on the confines of a desolate island with nearly 200 people per square mile. The whole society became obsessed with erecting large ceremonial statues using the trees on the island to do so. Soon there wasn’t timber enough to build boats for fishing and thus the people were the engineers of their own demise. This example is the most chilling because it bears a resemblance to humanity on a global scale. The Erath is Easter Island and soon humanity will die out in our obsession with industry and economics.
the patterns of societies in the past are shockingly similar to ours and the pathway we are headed down toward collapse. Though i could assume there would be argument that "No! of course that wouldnt happen... we have developed so much more technology and medicine that goes beyond the planets ability to keep us alive. but that is exactly wrong, and is exactly what will cause the demise of our planet.
im not sure i forsee the earth, or our country, experiencing a huge collapse that all comes crashing down at one point, or after come catastrophic event. i see nature taking control in this matter and simply not having enough for people to survive, thus they will die off quicker. we already experience the huge discrepancy between the developing world and the developed world. well, i should say we see it because we dont experience that discrepancy at all. but i think it will simply get worse as we keep using the resources of the planet... the scary thing is that the US is responsible for the least amount of population growth around the world but the MOST consumption of resources, while africa and south america are responsible for a significant amount of population growth, the poorest continents in the world.
i feel lucky to have an artists mind, because the way i see it, the people who have been controlling these projects and led the world into a downward spiral have a very one-track mind, like one that considers his or her company and doesnt even think about the paper they use everyday, or the expanse of land that their huge building covered. theres a lot thats up to us to be done, which excites me and scares me too.
It's also interesting where we see growth in the world. Population explosion is not a trend that is uniform through the globe. In fact, many western countries right now are experiencing a sharp decline in their birthrates.
It's interesting, my parents were at the very end of the baby boom generation that came during the ten year period after World War II. Often it is spoken of how there aren't enough workers to replace those that will be retiring in the next five to ten years.
Yet, it's odd to realize that among western countries, the United States is leading in terms of birthrate percentages, slightly above a one to one ratio. Countries in Europe such as Italy and Germany are experiencing numbers a half, or third of that.
This has created a complex string of immigration questions for the EU. Middle-Easterners and primarily Muslim countries have exponential birthrates by comparison, and many have left to seek work in Europe's large economies.
As the ratio of natives to foreigners shifts dramatically, some Europeans have been concerned about cultural pollution and absorption.
Europe is a place that many see as a haven for open-minded thought, but we are now just understanding the amount of xenophobia that plays into their daily decisions and laws regarding immigration.
So too in the United States has immigration become such a hot-button topic.
I believe the human race will indeed face a collapse. If we don't figure out a way to rightfully sustain ourselves, mother nature will for us (and the outcome for humans wont be pleasant, i.e.. plague, disease, etc.).
Life on this planet just cannot continue to live the way it does. The way we live, well at least "modern" civilization, is incredibly inefficient. How can it be that we have come this far and not have learned from past civilizations? Isn't that the point of history, to learn from the past?
Take Native Americans for example, when they would kill an animal, it was almost sacred. They used weapons made from local materials and utilized every part of the animal after it was killed, the red meat, the hide, the bones, even the guts. The settlers from europe on the other hand, with their "boom sticks" blew the shit out of herds of animals, decimating them to near extinction in only a few years, leaving almost everything behind but the red meat which also spoiled often in transport because they didn't know how cure it properly.
I guess I'm kind of going off about the Native Americans, my point is simply that in order to head into a sustainable future, we need to adopt the old ways again. We need to be extremely efficient with what we have already and stop creating new. I'm sure there are enough materials and goods that we have created already to last us hundreds of years without creating new. We are just suffocating ourselves with our own products and poisons. We have the technology to accomplish incredible feats and we should utilize that and combine it with the wisdom of past civilizations and cultures.
I believe earth could support seven billion people, but people certainly wont be living how they are now. I bet the planet could even support 14 billion traditional Native Americans because of how incredibly low their carbon footprint is.
One last thing, Biomimicry is a great tool to have. We should try to simulate nature in everything we do because nature is the most sustainable system of all.
That the population will double in such a short time is beyond ridiculous. The worst part, for me at least, is that this is totally preventable. We don’t have to have more than two (max: eighteen) kids per family. I know that this is an instinctual thing for us to want to reproduce ourselves, but why do we do it now that our species is not anywhere near extinction. Oddly enough, it is probably not the decline of births that will be our downfall, but an increase in them, to a point where we have exhausted our resources so completely that there will be nothing for the surviving humans to live off of. Sometimes I think our instincts are incredibly ironic. Not only are they pushing us to a critical mass of people, they also make us tend to be obese, greedy, vain, etc. The seven deadly sins should be renamed as the seven deadly instincts.
This inflation in population will definitely test our ability to survive, ad it will also radically change our goals and dreams as a nation. No longer will expansion and seclusion even be an option, there simply will not be enough room for all of us. We will not be able to constantly buy more, and better things, there wont be enough resources to go around to all of us. I think this global increase in population could either change us for the better or the worse. We should strive to become more like The Netherlands. Their ability to live in such a confined space is remarkable. Hopefully the entire world can escape a third world status, and still live semi-comfortably. However I don’t think that this will happen. Most likely we will see a global spread of what is happening in Africa, and maybe then we will regret what we have done. I do not think we will be able to do that until we are so far gone that there is no more hope for salvation of our environment, and our species.
It’s certainly a depressing thought to think about what seems like an unavoidable collapse in our society. Our population has just soared with the industrial revolution and the many news ways to extend our health and lives. It’s a weird feeling. Here we are celebrating the triumphs of medicine to save people from life threatening diseases, and yet we may very well be undermining the system that has kept ecosystems in check for years. We would like to think survival of the fittest only applies to animals, but at one point it did for people too. We may be reverting back to that kind of reality. So now it would seem that the population will die from starvation due to overconsumption of our resources, war fatalities, or superviruses. All of these options are ones we are ethically against. People should not starve, war and the deadly cost it comes with is something often truly horrible, and we should find ways to combat superviruses before they take away our loved ones. I myself feel the same about fighting against these fatalities, but the statistics do seem to point to collapse. As much as all these potential reasons for collapse may seem horrible, the reality is that we’ve set ourselves up and we just cannot accommodate for so many people to consume at the rate they are with our planet. So something drastic will undoubtedly occur to knock the numbers back down. Perhaps we do have to regulate the amount of children people are allowed to have. Obviously there would be huge problems monitoring and enforcing this and the idea of limiting life is against many religions. But if we can’t provide for the new life being created, it is irresponsible to keep such an exponential growth going. We have gotten too comfortable, we have used up all our resources as if they would magically renew themselves, and now we are headed towards times of crisis. We will unfortunately have to make many tough decisions in the coming years as we face the repercussions of our overpopulated, overconsumed lives.
The idea of running out of space and resources in this small blue planet of ours is very freighting but I could never imagine a life with out my large and ridiculous family. My mother is the third of 6 and my father the last of 6. I am the second of 3. People like my grandparents on both sides are personally responsible for the over population. At least on the North American side. I find that being part of a large family has played a large part of who my parents are, and made them more conscious of the world they live in as well as how to share what they have, while coexisting with others. I think we are not worried about what the social consequences of having a generation of only children running things. I know I am biased, but being raised with siblings has taught me to share not just material things but also space, attention, and even affection. I think that if there will be more of us on this small blue island an in-depth understanding of this would be vital in order to keep ourselves from tearing each other apart. However doing nothing to control the population growth seams only to invite the possibility of catastrophe in the form of war, plague, or famine. Happy medium anyone?
I do not think the earth can sustain our rapidly-growing population. Especially with the lack of recycling, and too much consumption, the earth is bound to collapse. It is very difficult to think something like this will happen, but at the current lifestyle of a large group of the world, we have to expect it. We need to pay much more attention to how much we are consuming and cut back on it. We need to recylce more, find new ways for energy, and and get more in touch with our environment.
It will definitely be hard to make such changes when it won't directly affect people. I doubt everyone will be willing to make changes out of laziness or the inconvenience of extra time and effort to recylce and save energy. Yet, we cannot keep living like this. The human population is growing at a fast rate, and we are being way too wasteful. It's not a matter of whether the earth will deplete or not. It's when it will happen. And if we continue to use up our environment, and all the resources, recycling only a small percentage, the Earth is bound to collapse sooner than anyone would expect. I never knew how little people recycled, and never took into account how much I don't until this class. I also realized how wasteful I have been with energy and water. If the word gets out about the future collapse of the world, we can only hope people will be willing to alter their lifestyle to prevent this from happening. I know I will do my part to make sure I recycle everything I can, and save energy. Everyone needs to take action; it's the only way we can save the environemtn, and ourselves. We can't wait any longer. If we wait for the problem to be sitting on our doorstep, it will be too late to do anything.
The tremendous population growth we are a part of and witnessing today, is not really something I have thought too much about before the past month or two. I recently read for one of my classes, the novel The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and this book is what did it for me. It was an outstanding novel, and I couldn’t put it down, but in many ways it brought me face to face with the issue of population growth, loss of natural resources, and all the effects humans have on our environment. The entire novel was about a man and his son struggling to survive in a world that had in all senses collapsed. There were no people on the streets; everything was deserted, isolated, polluted, and just absolutely awful. Throughout this book I couldn’t help but think and wonder, is that what our world is truly coming to? Is this the life that awaits my children or grandchildren? These are incredibly hard questions and things to think about, it is so much easier and pleasant to just erase these thoughts from your mind and try and live peacefully. However, by doing so, we are only managing to continue to hurt and ruin our world and environment and bring the day of collapse closer and closer to the present day. I definitely do not believe that our world could care for another 3 billion or so people if we are already on a fast moving pace towards destruction today. We have no idea how to care for our world properly and how to limit our resources and ourselves and use less stuff and buy more stuff for the betterment of the world. Until we learn how to save resources and help the environment, there is no room for another 3 billion people to join us.
I do not want to have to live in a society with population controls, but it seems that thats where we are headed. China already has this, but when the time comes I do not want to have to monitor how many children I have; however, something needs to get done. There should be a better solution than population control.
Before this class I never realized what terrible condition the world is in. I have heard about global issues and problems but never realized the extent it is at. Our society collapsing had never crossed my mind before this class. I want to become apart of the solution and not the problem.
Something interesting that I learned in middle school but never forgot is the Mayan prediction of when the world is going to end. The Mayan predicted that it would end on December 21, 2012. If the Mayan were right that is in four years. If the world and the people inhabiting the world do not change this could be an accurate date. I always thought that this made no sense, that the Mayans were wrong and that this could never happen. Lately this date has become very real to me, since it occurs in my lifetime, and that it is only four years away.
Too much consumption. But what can we do? In a somewhat dystopian sense, I occasionally come up with the idea that maybe we really need a Third World War to clear the planet of people. One thing that we haven’t really talked about is the converse to the idea that if the entire world’s population lived like we do in the United States, we would need three Earths to be able to put out the resources required to sustain the consumption. However, the other side of the coin is this: how many people can by sustained on our Earth right now if each of the persons lived like we do in the United States? Would we have to reduce the world population by half? By two-thirds? I’m being cynical, but there is an amount of truth to it. China’s solution is to limit all families to one child. What if we instituted that world-wide? What would happen to production and consumption? Unfortunately, I also believe that we will always consume to the point that our resources are taken up. What we really need is to develop a new relationship with our planet, so that we are not constantly at odds with it, but rather embracing it.
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