The Doomsday Handbook Read online

  It might not be called soma, it might not even be a single drug, but our future is going to be pharmaceutical.

  Overpopulation

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  At the end of the 18th century, a young cleric named Thomas Malthus noticed that he was carrying out far more christenings than funerals in his local village church in Surrey, south-east England. That insight led him to write a dire warning against the perils of unchecked human reproduction.

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  Malthus believed the masses were on a treadmill of sex and procreation. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, he described how the poorest reproduced with such vigor that their numbers would soon be culled by disease and hunger, as the land they lived on became unable to sustain them. While human populations grew exponentially with every generation (a city of 1 million people would become 2 million in a single generation, then 4 million, then 8 million and so on), the ability to feed them could only rise arithmetically in the same time (from being able to feed 1 million to 2 million in a single generation, then 3 million the generation after that, and then 4 million). Eventually, the world would run out of food, thought Malthus. People would die of starvation. It was a terrible realization, but it was nature’s way of keeping populations in check.

  Fortunately for the world’s people, these dire predictions turned out to be overly pessimistic. Malthus wrote his essay at the end of a millennium when European death rates had been largely determined by the success or failure of harvests, but the Industrial Revolution soon changed that. Britain no longer grew all of its own food, relying instead on its colonies—sugar came in from the Caribbean, wheat from India, tea from Ceylon and meat from Australia.

  And human ingenuity did some incredible things with agriculture in the centuries after Malthus, increasing the productivity of an acre of land to way beyond anything the cleric might have thought possible. In the late 1960s, Norman Borlaug won a Nobel prize for developing high-yielding varieties of dwarf wheat that, if fed with water and fertilizer, would grow large heads without falling over. By the mid-1970s, wheat and maize yields in places such as India had doubled. Similar research around the same time pushed out large-grained “miracle rice” in the Philippines. More people, in the end, did not necessarily mean more starvation.

  But today, in the 21st century, the underlying sentiment of Malthusian angst, that at some point we will run out of space or resources, is back. The question might no longer be whether we can technologically support an ever-growing population; it is morphing into whether we should. Can the Earth bear billions more humans without falling apart?

  The population conundrum

  There was a time when optimists had dismissed the worst of the Malthusian nightmare scenario and many of them firmly believed that more people was a good thing. More people meant more ideas, more talent and more innovation for our world.

  But today, things have changed. With pressure on climate and issues around overconsumption, especially in the West, rising population is once again becoming a metaphor for the ability of humankind to treat the world with reckless abandon. More people means less water for farmers in Africa, less land for everyone and less capacity in the atmosphere for our greenhouse gases. Not to mention fewer jobs and harder living.

  “There are 6.8 billion of us today, and more are on the way,” wrote Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, in 2009. “To make a dent in these problems in the short term without throwing anyone overboard, we will need to radically reduce individuals’ footprint on the environment through improvements in technology and possibly wrenching changes in lifestyle. But until the world’s population stops growing, there will be no end to the need to squeeze individuals’ consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources. A close look at this problem is sobering: short of catastrophic leaps in the death rate or unwanted crashes in fertility, the world’s population is all but certain to grow by at least 1 billion to 2 billion people.”

  Those countries that consume at lower levels—mostly the developing countries, but also India and China on a per capita basis—would no doubt love to match the lifestyle of the average American or Briton. But to do so would push the world over the edge.

  Joel E. Cohen, in the laboratory of populations at Rockefeller University in New York, has tracked the growth of human population through history. Over the past 2,000 years, he says, the annual rate of increase of global population grew about fifty-fold, from an average of 0.04 percent per year between AD 1 and 1650 to its all-time peak of 2.1 percent per year around 1965 to 1970. “Human influence on the planet has increased faster than the human population,” he wrote in a paper in the journal Science. “For example, while the human population more than quadrupled from 1860 to 1991, human use of inanimate energy increased from 109 (1 billion) megawatt-hours/year to 93 billion megawatt-hours/year.”

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  Short of catastrophic leaps in the death rate or unwanted crashes in fertility, the world’s population is all but certain to grow by at least 1 billion to 2 billion people.

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  Cohen predicted that the world population would double within 43 years (by 2038) if it continued its 1.6 percent growth rate, though he said that was unlikely. “The population of less developed regions is growing at 1.9% per year, while that of more developed regions grows at 0.3 to 0.4% per year. The future of the human population, like the futures of its economies, environments, and cultures, is highly unpredictable. The United Nations regularly publishes projections that range from high to low. A high projection published in 1992 assumed that the worldwide average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime at current birthrates (the total fertility rate, or TFR) would fall to 2.5 children per woman in the 21st century; in this scenario, the population would grow to 12.5 billion by 2050.”

  In 1960, Heinz von Foerster of the University of Illinois took the predictions of population to a tongue-in-cheek extreme by developing a model of growth that became known as “the doomsday equation.” He wrote in Science that on Friday 13 November 2026, “human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia.”

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  WORLD POPULATION

  2009: 6.8 million

  2050: 12.5 billion

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  He based his calculations on “conditions which come close to being paradise—that is, no environmental hazards, unlimited food supply, and no detrimental interaction between elements—the fate of a biological population as a whole is completely determined at all times by reference to the two fundamental properties of an individual element: its fertility and its mortality.”

  Von Foerster’s intention was to add fuel to the heated controversy about whether the time had come for something to be done about population growth control. “This controversy has divided those elements of the population under consideration who profess to show some interest in human affairs into two strictly opposed camps: the optimists, who see in the population explosion a welcome expansion of their clientele, be it consumers of baby goods, voters, or devoted souls, and, on the other hand, the pessimists, who worry about the rapid depletion of the natural resources and the irreversible poisoning of our biosphere.”

  According to von Foerster, the optimists adhere to the belief that, no matter how fast the numbers grow, food technology and industry will easily keep pace—the principle of “adequate technology,” which has proved to be correct for over 100 generations, he says, will hold for at least three more.

  The pessimists, meanwhile, anticipate that further rapid increase in population density will be accompanied by “a deterioration in human dignity, and they see the ultimate fate of the human race as a mere vegetation of the individual on the edge of existence, if no measures are introduced to keep the world population under control.”

  If we can grow in numbers, should we?

  Heinz von Foerster’s pessimists worry about environmental degradation for a good reason. Th
e growth of our species from humble beginnings in Africa has already put enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to bring us to the edge of an environmental catastrophe. In the most optimistic scenario, the world will warm by an average of at least 2°C by the end of this century, and already we can see that this is bringing harsher droughts, more intense storms and higher sea levels.

  If we continue to grow in numbers to 9 billion or more by the middle of this century, that would be bad enough. But the growth is likely to come in countries that want to individually increase their per capita consumption of energy and resources. “The same one-two punch of population growth followed by consumption growth is now occurring in China (1.34 billion people) and India (1.2 billion),” said Engelman. “Per capita commercial energy use has been growing so rapidly in both countries (or at least it was through 2007 on the eve of the economic meltdown) that if the trends continue unabated the typical Chinese will outconsume the typical American before 2040, with Indians surpassing Americans by 2080. Population and consumption thus feed on each other’s growth to expand humans’ environmental footprint exponentially over time.”

  Which way will it go?

  Predictions are one thing, but how far population actually grows or falls in the next century will depend on a matrix of decisions based on economics, environment, culture, politics and demography. Joel E. Cohen tried to survey what the actual carrying capacity of the Earth might be, but the range of predictions that had been made by various academics and organizations turned out to be bewildering. “Many authors gave both a low estimate and a high estimate,” he wrote. “Considering only the highest number given when an author stated a range, and including all single or point estimates, the median of 65 upper bounds on human population was 12 billion. If the lowest number given is used when an author stated a range of estimates, and all point estimates are included otherwise, the median of 65 estimated bounds on human population was 7.7 billion.”

  This range of low to high medians, 7.7 billion to 12 billion, is very close to the range of low and high UN projections for 2050: 7.8 billion to 12.5 billion. “A historical survey of estimated limits is no proof that limits lie in this range. It is merely a warning that the human population is entering a zone where limits on the human carrying capacity of Earth have been anticipated and may be encountered,” said Cohen.

  Buildings stand out amid the haze engulfing Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province. The Earth has a finite carrying capacity and, as more people are born, our cities will get more crowded and more polluted.

  What can we do?

  Is some form of population control the only way to head off Heinz von Foerster’s doomsday prediction? In the UK, an all-party parliamentary group on population has called for better efforts to curb population, and arch-environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, former chair of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, has suggested that parents of more than two children were being irresponsible.

  “Two big questions present themselves as population reemerges from the shadows: Can any feasible downshift in population growth actually put the environment on a more sustainable path? And if so, are there measures that the public and policy makers would support that could actually bring about such a change?” says Robert Engelman.

  Slower population growth would not hurt. Brian O’Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US has calculated that if we could slow the process enough to keep the 2050 population to 8 billion rather than the projected 9.1 billion, we would save up to 2 billion tons of carbon annually. Plus, the billion-plus fewer people would need less land, water, fish, food and forest products.

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  A rural woman in Ethiopia can have ten children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Manchester or Munich.

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  “Nature, of course, couldn’t care less how many of us there are,” says O’Neill. “What matters to the environment are the sums of human pulls and pushes, the extractions of resources and the injections of wastes. When these exceed key tipping points, nature and its systems can change quickly and dramatically. But the magnitudes of environmental impacts stem not just from our numbers but also from behaviors we learn from our parents and cultures. Broadly speaking, if population is the number of us, then consumption is the way each of us behaves. In this unequal world, the behavior of a dozen people in one place sometimes has more environmental impact than does that of a few hundred somewhere else.”

  In his 2009 book Peoplequake, environment journalist Fred Pearce claimed that the problem for the environment is not an increasing number of people, but increasing consumption. He pointed out that the poorest 3 billion, around 45 percent of the total, are currently responsible for seven percent of carbon dioxide emissions, while the richest half a billion, around seven percent, are responsible for 50 percent of emissions. “A rural woman in Ethiopia can have ten children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Manchester or Munich. In the unlikely event that her ten children live to adulthood, and all have ten children of their own, the entire clan of more than 100 will still be emitting only about as much carbon dioxide each year as you or me.”

  Population doomsday, it seems, can be avoided. But only if we want it enough.

  Population Death Spiral

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  What happens when your country cannot replace its citizens who are leaving or dying? Fewer people means a smaller workforce and less tax income, and that means less money for basic services. It could spark the end of a country.

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  Too many people in the world, isn’t that what we are normally told to worry about? When it comes to the implications of working out the optimum number of people on the planet, through the ages the problem has usually been one of overconsumption and declining resources.

  But shrinking populations are a major headache for economic growth. As well as less tax, fewer people means less innovation and industry in a country, and it can mean reduced economic and political power on the global stage. No wonder that the countries with aging and declining populations—big economies including Japan, Russia and Australia—are so desperate to balance things out again.

  This is not a classic doomsday scenario—it is unlikely that the human race would disappear completely by not having enough babies. Multiplying, after all, is something we are quite good at.

  Declining populations might not end the world in the cataclysmic sense, but they will radically shift the balance of power. Whether it will be for good or ill is an open, and worrying, question.

  What is happening to population?

  The number of people in the world is going up, overall. But the rate of growth has been slowing in recent decades. Global population replacement level, the number of births required to keep population stable, is just over 2.3 babies per couple. Having said that, however, actual birth rates have been dropping around the world, thanks mainly to increased access to contraception and improving education for women.

  In the 1950s, birth rates were between five and six per couple; this number fell by the late 1970s to 3.9. By 2000 it had come down to 2.8, and by 2008, it was 2.6. In his book Peoplequake, environment writer Fred Pearce says that more than 60 countries, containing almost half the world’s population, now have fertility rates below their national replacement levels. At the current rate of decline, the world’s fertility rate will be below replacement level soon after 2020.

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  BIRTH RATE (CHILDREN PER COUPLE)

  1950s 5.5

  1970s 3.9

  2000 2.8

  2008 2.6

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  In its 2008 projections, the United Nations Population Division pointed out that in the developed countries, the population aged 60 or over is increasing at the fastest pace ever (1.9 percent every year) and is expected to grow by more than
50 percent over the next four decades, rising from 264 million in 2009 to 416 million in 2050. At the same time, “total fertility is expected to fall from 2.56 children per woman in 2005–2010 to 2.02 in 2045–2050 according to the medium variant. In 2005–2010, 25 developed countries, including Japan and most of the countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, still had fertility levels below 1.5 children per woman.”

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  Total fertility is expected to fall from 2.56 children per woman in 2005–2010 to 2.02 in 2045–2050.

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  Based on these projections, the UN says that many countries around the world would face population declines in the coming decades, including Japan, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Canada and Italy. Those approaching decline include Greece, Spain, Cuba and Lesotho.

  Factors in the decline

  Populations can fall for a variety of reasons, including emigration, war, disease, famine or forced control. The Black Death in Europe and the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors to the Americas crashed populations in those places—in the latter case as much due to a lack of immunity to European pathogens on the part of the native Americans as to the wars and slaughter that accompanied the invasions.

  Worries about overpopulation have also led to population control in many parts of the world in the past century. It started with the ideas of an 18th-century English cleric, Thomas Malthus, who was worried about famine caused by unchecked population growth (see previous chapter). Ever since then, people in power have tried to keep numbers down, not always with the noblest of motivations. Malthus opposed helping the poor—he argued against vaccinations, for example, because they would boost populations. The ideas in his Essay on the Principle of Population went on to inspire the first eugenicists. Disowned today, but hugely influential in the first half of the 20th century, eugenics built upon dubious ideas of racial and class superiorities—if the world could only support a limited number of people, reasoned the eugenicists, better that they were educated, middle class and white.