“What is ‘our future’, Alex?”
Yes, indeed. This is the ugly future face of an overpopulated planet; a scenario we are rapidly headed toward without a clear blueprint of how to divert the current course. Our population has been gradually growing since the Black Death in 1400, but, due to the development of advanced medical practices and increased agricultural productivity, the planet’s population has skyrocketed in the last 50 years. According to U.S. Census Bureau information, the global population has grown from 2.3 billion in 1940 to over 7 billion last year. Furthermore, continued advancements in food production and medical technology will likely increase birth rates and life span even further to where we could conceivably eclipse 10 billion by 2040.
A significant problem with how to attack this problem is that no experts seem to be able to come to a consensus as to how many people are “too many”, as far as planetary sustainability is concerned. Some estimate that we are already overpopulated while a few others set the bar at a whopping 16 billion – almost 2 ½ times our current population. Can you imagine that? Look anywhere you go; the supermarket, driving, restaurants, and imagine 2.5 times as many people everywhere. The world would be astoundingly crowded.
Interestingly enough, the problem of overpopulation is no recently-concocted concern. In fact, it was a major talking point amongst ancient Romans and Greeks including Socrates and Plato. A citizen of Carthage in the second century CE opined about the then global population of about 190 million; “What most frequently meets our view is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us… In very deed, pestilence and famine and wars and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.” Obviously, this isn’t a groundbreaking issue of which we are just now becoming aware, although, 190 million people sounds like paradise.
Regardless of what we eventually find to be the agreed-upon population ceiling, most everyone agrees that there are just too many people on this planet, in one way or another. The question is; what do we, or can we, do about it? How do we stave off an impending global population crisis?
Some experts believe an increase in global wealth distribution and industrialization of the third world will eradicate poverty and disease enough that birth rates will taper off. Areas with greater burden of disease and warfare have far higher birth rates than the global average simply because their calamitous conditions cause in the citizenry a sort of PTSD about losing family members, so to compensate they simply have extra babies. Lose the war and disease, no need for a dozen kids. This is of course a double-edged sword as with increased industrialization come more noxious greenhouse gases being blasted into our already-beaten down atmosphere, but for now, let us temporarily forget about that pesky little speed bump and focus on the task at hand: How do we convince people to stop making too many kids?
Other experts, however, argue that population increase is not the issue on which to focus, but rather, that we should be paying attention to rampant over-consumption, particularly in the West. More particularly, we should pay attention to it in the United States, where 40% of the world’s goods are consumed. Simply put, the Western world is consuming substantially more than the rest of the world. In fact, it is estimated that the average American has the same carbon footprint of 250 Ethiopians. So we must, therefore, ask the question; are we just participating in that oh-so-human activity of destroying ourselves by any means possible, just on a grander scale?
Perhaps the answer lies in Mother Nature herself. Historically, biological records show that as populations increase, fertility rates decrease. Taking into account other means of population control like disease and famine, Mother Nature seems to be self-regulating, or at least she used to be. Enter modern medicine and agricultural development. Thanks to our philanthropic pharmaceutical companies anyone can now procreate, even if they weren’t intended to. It is a shameful characteristic of a populous that has put its own personal reproductive agenda ahead of global stability.
Pardon me while I climb down off this soap box.
Seriously though, we must be more self-aware and begin to question if we are intentionally bypassing Mother Nature’s ability to keep her planet healthy by having babies when we aren’t supposed to and consuming more goods than we need to so we can ultimately be kept alive for decades longer than we would have (or should have) naturally. One has to imagine that at some point the levees of nature will break and our overseer will unleash hell in the form of a super bug or similar blight to wipe out half the world’s population “Black Death”-style. Or, perhaps, the escalating conflict over scarce resources will lead to another planetary-scale war. Either way, the score will be Planet : 1, Humans: 0.
It is difficult to postulate which of these wonderful outcomes is most likely. Regardless, if we don’t begin taking measures to stabilize the population in one way or another, it is likely that Mother Nature will unleash her own punishment upon us and not a single one of us would be undeserving of it.
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