We need a serious and wide-ranging discussion of how many people our planet should be carrying. We are at about seven billion now. Is that ideal? How about eight billion (we’re getting there fast). Is that ideal? First, we need to ask what we want to achieve, as a human race, on a continuing basis for centuries into the future (science, the arts, flourishing of human and other species, etc.). Then, plus or minus a few hundred million, how many people are needed to achieve these goals (the lower bound) and how many would be so many as to prevent these goals from being attained (the higher bound). I believe we’ve already far surpassed the higher bound, but opinions may differ. In any case, it would be useful to hear candidate numbers for an ideal human population size.

– Terence Kuch

(Henry Harpending, review of book Pandora’s Seed: The unforeseen cost of civilization. New Scientist, 5 June 2010, page 42)

Right. The alternative to population control by governments is population control through mass starvation. With a firm population policy, no one must die such a horrible death, and no woman need be deprived of the right to bear at least one living child, if that is her choice.

Addendum: A letter in New Scientist (26 June 2010), commenting on Harpending’s review, reads “… Such action would be the end of that which makes us human and makes life worth living. I begin to wonder whether the scientific legacy of our own generation [will be] existence in a dystopia too awful to imagine.” [abridged]

No. The real dystopia would be a world where up to half the species have been extinguished, and with ever-more fouled air and water, drought, and millions of people dying slowly and painfully of  dehydration or starvation. That may be awful to imagine, but if we do nothing it is likely to come to pass.

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(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052705393.html).

“PAKISTAN — Militant organizations traditionally focused on liberating Indian-held Kashmir have adopted water as a rallying cry, accusing India of strangling upstream rivers to desiccate downstream farms in Pakistan.

[All of Pakistan’s major rivers rise in, or flow through, India or the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.]

A protest here [included] thousands of farmers driving tractors and carrying signs warning: “Water Flows or Blood.” [A] cleric recently told worshipers that India was guilty of “water terrorism.”

Pakistan’s water supply is dwindling because of climate change, outdated farming techniques, and an exploding population.

Pakistan’s water situation is reaching crisis proportions. As the population has grown over six decades, per-capita water availability has dropped by more than two-thirds.

The dispute has hard-liners in both countries predicting war.”

(Washington Post, May 28, 2010; page A14 — excerpts — emphasis added)

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Is “overpopulation” a dead issue? No, it’s more vital than ever. Consider:

1) The human population of the Earth is already exceeds a sustainable number.

2) World population is increasing. The percentage of increase is slowing, but the absolute number is steadily rising. Population increase is uneven, and most pronounced, by and large, in poor countries that already have serious resource problems.

3) World resources, especially fresh water, are shrinking owing to many factors, including draining aquifers faster than they are recharged. Also, a warming climate dries out farmland faster than does a cooler climate, requiring more water for irrigation to achieve the same results.

4) Human populations are, in many places, demanding water to drink and cook food that could instead be used in agriculture. If they prevail, agriculture suffers, and food supplies dwindle, thus forming a vicious circle.

5) If human population is not reduced beginning within the next few years, the result, sooner or later, will be the slow, painful, and desperate death by thirst or starvation of many millions of people, a death without dignity. And in their struggle for the last few drops of water or the last few grains from the field, the dying will strip their countries of animal and plant life — leaving a desert.

6) Strong and decisive government action may be abhorrent, but the alternative is degradation, suffering, and death on a scale never before seen on this planet.

7) There is a public policy option that can avoid most of these deaths, and can restore the planet to health. (see Post #104 on this site.) Freedom to breed uncontrollably must be given up, but such a policy could still allow every woman to have two children, if she wishes.

.8) In an era of restricted breeding rights, every life will become more highly valued. In desperately poor countries, such values disappear all too readily (see Colin Turnbull’s classic study The Mountain People — highly recommended).

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* Statistics from Wikipedia, accessed 29 April, 2010, and are current as of 2009.

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Each woman in the world would have, by right, two child-birth licenses. One of them she could sell, at the prevailing market rate, if she wished (a kind of ‘cap and trade’); or she could choose to give birth. The second license would be for her use alone, and could not be sold or given away. If a child dies in childhood, an additional license would be granted to the mother. If a woman declines to have a child or any children at all, that would be her sole decision.

This plan would improve the wealth and power of women everywhere in the world, especially in poor countries. And each woman would still have the right to bear one child; two, if she chooses.

World population would decrease slowly and steadily to some agreed sustainable level; then the policy could be liberalized.

BUT … even if we agree that this is a workable and humane plan, who would initiate it? Who would administer it? How could it be enforced? How would cheaters be detected? punished?

This population plan, like all the others that have been proposed, no matter how attractive in theory, are doomed to failure without strong government action, agreed and implemented world-wide. We are wired, by God or evolution (probably both), to breed.

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“Too many people: Earth’s population problem.

“The world’s population is expected to grow by another 2.3 billion, from 6.8 billion in 2009 to 9.1 billion in 2050.

“Human consumption of renewable resources is already overshooting Earth’s capacity to provide. Resources are becoming scarcer and the number of hungry people increasing year by year.

“Reversing population growth is one of the measures needed to ensure environmental survival.”

Fine so far. Unfortunately, OPT goes on to say “It can be done by voluntary and peaceful means,” and, on another OPT web page,

“The Optimum Population Trust is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning.”

Sorry, Charlie. Voluntary population reduction hasn’t worked. Won’t work. We have a real ‘tragedy of the commons’ here. Neither extreme poverty nor relative wealth nor earnest moral suasion have stopped people from uncontrolled breeding.

2) Lester Brown (Scientific American Magazine [on line], April 22, 2009):

“Many of [failing states’] problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. … Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty — and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.”

Brown’s plan may slow population growth; it probably would. But not reverse it. And, health and education initiatives in many parts of the world are failing just because population is growing uncontrollably faster than health and education can keep up.

3) Ted Turner wants to reduce human population “humanely”, which he defines as voluntarily. (NPR interview, 7 May 2009). But we already have too many people for sustainability, and the number is still growing.

Coercion: Giving up one freedom, the freedom to breed without limit, is necessary if we want to preserve all our other freedoms, and if we want to avoid the eventual Great Die-Off.

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