Population Debate: 10 Billion by 2100 ?

The NYT has a fascinating 'debate' up today over world population and it's sustainability. The newest number-crunching now expects the world's population to top 10 billions souls by 2100. A lot of biomass, that; and under even perfect conditions, largely unsustainable. There's no other population of large-animal, omnivorous creatures that could survive that sort of population bubble without 'mother nature' intervening and near-flat lining it's numbers.

We're different, if you've noticed...we have intelligence (some of us at least can apply that intelligence and make good decisions) and a long history of accruing survival techniques... fire, agriculture, the use of various tools. We can also study past failures in other animal's populations and make things work differently for us, so far largely in our favor. The one thing we don't know how to do is keep a population bubble intact under such extreme pressure, in worsening conditions, without having the bubble burst, and billions die (the 'mother-nature effect').

The warnings about extreme population and possible limits started with Malthus, who is now largely discredited because his models were antiquated before they started, and didn't keep up with the advancing technology. Along came oil, and machines to do the work and harvest the crops and ship the foodstuffs cross-continent and ocean and, well, you see the result. We eat fish from the south Pacific and drink coffee from Argentina. We certainly don't eat foodstuffs grown exclusively in our own county or state or nation. Thanks to the world oil reserves, tho those billions and billions of prehistoric floras and faunas what died and conveniently collected in largely safe underground storage pools so we could enjoy Maine lobster. That scenario probably happens on every world in the universe that houses intelligent life, right? Marvelously engineered, I'd say; but that's not the argument here.

So, the NYT has a group of 'experts' discuss the ramifications of living to 10 Billion. Let's look 'em over, shall we?

Joel E. Cohen is professor of populations and head of the Laboratory of Populations at The Rockefeller University and Columbia University. He is also an applied mathematician and author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”

The world chooses to feed its machines and its domestic animals before it feeds its people.

Shorter Joel: "Sure, we can do it! We can theoretically support 11.2 Billion, with our grain output, given we don't feed any herd animals and everyone gets just enough grain to survive. Oh, and it would be nice to get rid of Capitalism, so we could feed everyone the same rations. That, and spread contraceptives around like candy...hell, put contraceptives in the candy."

I agree with the contraceptives, and with getting proper nutrition to all. But I don't see Joel mandating any of this, especially to the poor and religious who, well, like to fuck and have kids because what do they care about numbers? And if we've truly reached peak oil, how will we get these grains harvested and moved about the world? We aren't ready to go back to sailing ships and iron men yet, are we?

Warren Sanderson is professor of economics and professor of history at Stony Brook University. He is also a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.

If we are to cope successfully with the additional people we are likely to have, it will not be through a single master plan, but rather through millions of educated people solving the problems that they face. The task is not simple, but neither is it impossible.

You see, the answer is education. If we just teach these poor dumb fucks that it's bad to fuck and have kids, then we'll be just fine. We are heading to decreased fertility rates in the 'intelligent' sectors of the world, so just spread that around, we'll be OK!

Hmmph. That's pie-in-the-sky bullshit. There's not one word about how to get third-world people to understand enough to slow down their birth rates voluntarily.

Hey, we're doing just fine here; just look to Detroit.

David E. Bloom is a professor of economics and demography and chairman of the department of global health and population at Harvard University. He spoke about population growth at the World Economic Forum meeting this week in Cape Town, South Africa.

High fertility rates are driving rapid population growth in Africa. Globally, women are having an average of 2.5 children over the course of their childbearing years. But the average African woman is having nearly 4.5 children (and over 6 in four countries). One consequence of Africa’s high fertility is that a preponderance of its population is young. Twenty-seven percent of the world’s population is under age 15, but in Africa, the figure is 40 percent. ...

We have good evidence that the way to catalyze this dividend is through investments in public health measures like safe water, sanitation and childhood vaccination, the expansion of girls’ education and increased access to family planning services. Over time, sustaining this dividend will require good policies for labor and financial markets, and carefully constructed trade policies.

I love how he blames Africa. And girls.

Jamais Cascio is a research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., and a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In 2009, Foreign Policy named him one of its Top 100 Global Thinkers.

For example, modern agriculture would be unable to support 10 billion people with a Western diet; conversely, a primarily vegetarian diet, with meat protein coming from “cultured meat” producers, would be fine. Ten billion people with post-industrial world consumption habits would overwhelm resource supplies and waste streams; conversely, production economies using cradle-to-cradle design or (in the longer term) molecular fabrication technologies would make the very concept of “waste” a thing of the past.

Most notably, a planet of 10 billion people all wanting a Western standard of living would require at least an order-of-magnitude more energy. There’s no way to provide that energy without causing massive environmental damage.

He's right. We would all have to eat grain, protoplasm produced in giant vats with unknown sources, and bugs. Soylent Green, baby~!

Jason Clay is a senior vice president at the World Wildlife Fund and an expert in global markets and natural resources management. He is the author of "World Agriculture and the Environment."

We currently use 33 percent of the Earth’s surface for food. As 25 percent isn’t useable (deserts, cities, roads) and 12 percent is set aside for national parks and the like, we continue to expand the food production frontier each year. At the current rate of habitat loss, after 40 years, we will have “eaten” nearly all the remaining natural habitat on the planet. Whatever is sustainable with 7 billion people will not be with 10 billion. ...

The challenge to feed the planet in 2100 is daunting. Indeed, with rising per capita consumption, by 2100 we’ll need to produce an amount of food that is 2.5 times the amount that all human societies have produced in the last 8,000 years. However, by convincing global companies to maximize efficiencies in their supply chain producers, this challenge can be met.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~! This guy will be dead, and he obviously doesn't give a rat's ass.

No one alive today will be here in 2100. That's the good thing. What we must convince those alive today to do is to have fewer kids. We should get the word out, as soon as possible.

That's all the NYT's spokesmen. I noticed they left off some of my favorite population thinkers. As a blast from the past, here's Dr. Pianka...

What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know

This is the scariest graph that you're ever going to see in your entire life -- take a good look at it. We hit six billion not very long ago and now we are at six and a half and we're still going, roaring. This kind of exponential population growth is unsustainable and has to stop. People sometimes ask "what is the carrying capacity for humans?" As I stated earlier, humans now occupy roughly half of Earth's land surface, consuming over half the freshwater and using about half Earth's primary productivity. However, lots of those people are living in poverty and not even getting adequate nutrition. Many are just little babies, still living under their parent's roof, who in a couple of decades, will need their own houses and cars. A tidal wave of humanity is coming. No politician will even recognize, let alone address, this enormous problem. ...

People are in a state of denial -- they simply don't want to confront reality. We still allow people to have more than two kids. We actually encourage reproduction. You get a deduction for having kids. You should have to pay more taxes when you have your first kid. When you have your second kid you pay a lot more taxes, and when you have your third kid you don't get anything back, they take it all. Our tax system is completely backwards. But, then, so is our whole insane grow-grow-grow economic system. Earth and her resources are finite. ...

Humans could have been stewards of Earth and all its many denizens, microbes, plants, fungi, and animals. We have the ability to have been God-like. Instead, for a short-sighted and selfish transient population boom, we became the scourge of the planet. We wiped out and usurped vast tracts of natural habitat. We ate any other species that was edible and depleted Earth's multitude of natural resources. In a single century, humans burned and wasted fossil fuels that took millions of years to form. We fouled the atmosphere, polluted the waters, and damaged all of our one and only Spaceship's life support systems. The disparity between what humans could have been versus the pitiful creatures we actually managed to become is tragic and unforgivable. If only more people would live up to their full potential!...

Here's one more little upbeat thing, but unfortunately this isn't very much of an up, Herman Daly has identified the big problem, which is our economy. It's basically completely flawed. You've heard politicians talk about "growing the economy." Our economy is based on the principle of a chain letter, a pyramid scheme. That simply cannot work. Upside down pyramids must fall over. Bubbles always burst and this bubble is bursting. ...

It's bursting right now in terms of fossil fuels. The price of gasoline isn't going to go down again. Some greedy oil men are getting very rich from peak oil. We have institutionalized greed in the form of limited liability offshore corporations -- if we do not control runaway greed, it will destroy us all. ...

Our economic system based on continual growth must be replaced by a sustainable system where each of us leaves the planet in the same condition that it was in before we were born. This will require many fewer of us and much less extravagant life styles. We won't be able to move around so freely (airplanes will become a thing of the past) and we will have to go back to walking and riding horses. In addition, humans will have to be more spread out, living without big cities. Before it is all over, we are going to have to limit our own reproduction, un-invent money, control human greed, revert back to trade and barter, and grow our own crops, among other things. ...

You are going to see it in your lifetime and the important thing is this is just the beginning, this peak oil/peak food problem we are experiencing right now. We aren't prepared for a what's coming and we cannot avoid it. The future is coming up on you fast -- if you are fortunate enough to survive, you are going to become a hunter-gatherer. Get prepared for that.

Well, a bit extreme, you might say?

IF we are truly 'biological entities', evolved from those little carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms you hear so much about; if life is independent of any 'intelligent design', THEN we are well and truly fucked. If not, then pray for - expect something...else.

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