Some Hard Truths About Human Population Growth
(If you'd prefer, you can read this piece on the web)
It's time to talk about the elephant in the room.
1. In 1800, the total human population on our planet was only 1 billion people. It took 127 years for that number to double to 2 billion. But then it took only 33 years to add the next billion. Since then, we’ve been adding another billion every 11 - 14 years, and doubling our population about every fifty years. At this point, in 2024, we now have in excess of 8 billion people on our planet -- and we're adding another quarter million every day.
2. We live on a finite planet, with finite resources. Therefore we must recognize that the size of our human population cannot continue to grow indefinitely.
3. Past worries about population growth (see Malthusianism and The Population Bomb) were centered around food supplies and the possibility of widespread famine. These concerns are still with us, but are now accompanied by concerns about adequate water supplies, sufficient housing, species extinction and environmental pollution. And we are now seeing cascading effects from these issues, including global warming and disastrous changes in long-established weather patterns.
4. Human numbers are not the primary cause for any of these problems, but they are a direct multiplier for all of them: twice as many people means doubling the sizes of all the problems.
5. If we don’t want to be accused of extending phonebooth stuffing to a planetary scale, then perhaps it is time to begin consideration, not of the absolute maximum number of people that our planet might be able to sustain, but of the optimum number of people that we would like to comfortably host on our planet.
6. Many of us have been conditioned to hold a childlike faith in the power of techno-capitalism to improve our human circumstances ad infinitum. That is, we believe that new technologies will continue to be discovered and developed, and that capitalists will continue to deploy these technologies for the general benefit of humankind. This belief system has generally served us well for the last couple of hundred years, but we are now bumping up against limits that neither technology nor capitalism can overcome.
7. All technology produces unintended, and often undesirable, side effects. So far we have dealt with these mostly by sweeping them under the rug -- generally by pushing them off to some other part of the planet. Unfortunately, we are now at a point where the rug covers our entire globe, and it has become so lumpy that we can no longer walk across it.
8. With such inflated human population levels, and such an advanced stage of techno-capitalism, our living world is simply being overwhelmed, beyond any ability to restore things to a sensible, sustainable balance.
9. If there were an independent, unbiased intelligent species available to make such an observation, then it is clear that homo sapiens would be branded with the dubious distinction of being the most destructive invasive species on planet Earth.
10. Taking all of the above into account, it seems likely that something like one billion humans might be reasonably close to an optimum sustainable human population level on our planet. This is in stark comparison to the “eight billion and counting” numbers we are seeing today.
11. The pressure of huge population levels, combined with continual population growth, makes critical shortages inevitable, as the size of our population continues to grow up to and beyond the available levels of food, water and housing, no matter how hard we work to increase resource supplies.
12. So long as we have shortages of the basic resources needed for decent human lives, we will have survival competition for those limited resources, with winners who get enough (and often more than enough), and losers who fail to obtain access to adequate resources.
13. A large percentage of our population is still hanging on to a sixties-era abundance mindset in which there is plenty for everyone, and the only issue is one of equitable distribution. This was a plausible illusion back in 1960, when there were only 3 billion people on the planet, and when many humans were enjoying the benefits of techno-capitalism, without any of the environmental bills yet coming due. In 2024 this mindset is simply a dangerous delusion. With this many people, and with the numbers still climbing, there is not enough, and in fact cannot be enough for everyone.
14. Technology, in and of itself, is not a problem. And capitalism, in and of itself, is not a problem. But techno-capitalists have developed a dangerous addiction: they are hooked on population growth. An increase in the number of consumers means bigger market caps, higher stock prices, and bigger bottom lines. A continually growing pool of workers means ongoing competition for jobs, helping to keep wages and costs low. And a continually growing pool of workers helps to pay for the retirements of those too old to work (but not too old to consume), keeping leaders in power. The techno-capitalists will try to tell us that this is a win-win-win situation. And, like all addicts, they will continue to tell us everything is rosy right up until the point at which the shit hits the fan. It's hitting the fan now. And they're still trying to tell us that it's all good and, for the stuff that is not so good, just give them a little more time and they will make it good. This is rubbish.
15. Many economists will try to convince us that, when population growth stalls out, economies collapse, and that this is an inviolable law. But enlightened economists, such as Kate Raworth, will tell us that "Economics ... is not a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design." So we just need to set our economists the task of designing better economies, instead of simply serving their addicted techno-capitalist patrons.
16. Humans, like all other commodities, are subject to the law of supply and demand. The more people we have on the planet, the less each of us is worth, all other things being equal. But of course, things are not equal: there are other factors. Education increases a human's worth. Wealth increases a human's worth. So when we see legions of poor, poorly educated humans put to use as cannon fodder, we should not be surprised, When we see masses of poor, poorly educated humans being driven from their homes, and forced to migrate to other countries, we should not be surprised. When we see mass genocide, we should not be surprised. This is what happens when we have too many people, and still continue to produce even more.
17. If we want to increase the overall quality of human life -- for people in general, and not just for a lucky few -- then we need to decrease the quantity of human life.
18. At this point in human history, there is no good reason to encourage the production of large families, or to stigmatize the choice to have only one child, or to have no children at all.
19. It is to the advantage of those in power -- political leaders, business leaders, religious leaders -- to separate us humans into tribes, and to pit us against one another. That is how the leaders hold onto power, and to the wealth and status and privilege that generally accompany such positions. But, increasingly, enlightened humans everywhere can see a potential for us all to be part of one tribe, all interconnected. This does not mean we all become part of an amorphous melting pot, losing our individual identities, or our various group identities. It just means we stop trying to destroy one another.
20. There is no need, nor any intention on my part, for human population levels to be reduced through any form of coercion. Quite to the contrary, I believe that all we need are five things:
a. General acknowledgment of the truths laid out in this document;
b. Universal and unfettered access to modern birth control tools;
c. Universal and modern education focused on literacy, science and critical thinking;
d. Universally recognized rights of reasonable self-determination for all humans;
e. Sufficient time for the first four items to take effect, and for human population levels to decline to a sustainable level, and then stabilize.
21. We need to look with cold, stern and unforgiving eyes on any who try to tell us that the statements in this document are not true, or that we are being too socialistic, or too utopian. Such accusations are not true. We are simply modern humans who want to minimize misery and suffering, and provide opportunities for as large a percentage of humans as possible to live happy and productive lives.