There is much concern
over population growth at present. I cannot say with any certainty
but the impression I get is that this concern is mainly coming from
the more developed areas of the world where quality of life is
better. This somewhat stands to reason as the quality of life
attained in the more developed areas of the world is not sustainable.
Not only is the world population growing but it is also becoming more
developed as well, both of which put more strain on finite natural
resources such as oil and space. As such those living least
sustainably will find themselves under most pressure to change. This
might just be an economic pressure but it could escalate to
conflicts. Although lowering populations is only a short term
solution to having an unsustainable lifestyle it is often still the
favoured option of those living comfortable lives. The only real
solution is living a sustainable lifestyle which would be a much
bigger sacrifice to them than it is for the rest of the world hence
our relative aversion to it.
People seem to forget
the advantages a vast population bring when presented with the
problem of unsustainable living. A huge part of our ability to live
luxuriously is the efficiency brought about through division of
labour. The less people we have the lower our potential efficiency in
this regard. More people also means more geniuses to bring us
wonderful things and advance humanity further. Scientific progress is
the other major factor contributing to our present luxury. On top of
this a large population helps to provide for minorities. Imagine a
population so small that there was only one blind person and only one
in a wheel chair, how much support would be in place and available
for these people? Certainly no companies would exist making products
to aid them as they would not be economically viable. More people
comes out significantly ahead in pros and cons compared to less
people, which can only really argue lack of space and other resources
in its favour.
Simply put, any time
there is a debate about the problems of population levels and growth
it should always be made abundantly clear that it is part of the
bigger problem of sustainability and that there is only one actual
solution to which population levels have no real bearing. We could
have a potentially infinite population that would survive to the end
of the universe if we all lived sustainably and spread ourselves
across the stars. We could have a vast population here on Earth that
live as long as the Earth remains and, again, we lived sustainably.
The only limit would be space yet we have proven fairly industrious
at utilizing space above and below. The question the developed world
dares not ask is what they would have to give up in order to actually
live sustainably. Many think of returning to the land and having to
live like people did a millennia ago, which is a fairly good way
towards living a sustainable life yet not the only path open, which
is just as well as it is a very space inefficient way to live. We
either have the technology or it is at our fingertips to live very
closely to how we do now and remain sustainable. The problem is that
there is no infrastructure or significant government policy that
supports and enforces sustainable living. As such, most of the
technology has remained out of reach or undeveloped thus leaving it
woefully inadequate to compete in the market. This in turn makes
matters seem worse and ensures it will be harder to make a transition
to a sustainable lifestyle. If someone tells you there are too many
people in the world you should tell them to go and live a sustainable
life themselves before they complain about population. Any reasoned
logical argument against high population must concede it is only a
delay tactic at best and that the only long term solution is
sustainability.
There are other
arguments against population beyond maintaining our current lifestyle
as long as possible in terms of consumption. While some people thrive
in city life and love to be surrounded by others it is not for every
one. Overcrowding reduces the quality of life for people who enjoy
space, nature, peace and quiet. Fortunately we are a long way of this
being a valid argument against population levels. Roughly half of the
global population live in crowded built up urban areas yet these
area's combined only occupy about three percent of the total land
area of the Earth. The population of the planet would have to
drastically increase for their to be insufficient rural living areas
to meet demands. We would hit the cap of natural resources and
growing land as a limiting factor to further growth before we would
start to run out of rural living land.
The real irony is that
we think we need to control our own population levels as we have
advanced beyond our environmental and evolutionary constraints. This
is an arrogant and somewhat dangerous position to hold. Calling it a
food chain is misleading, it, like every other natural process, is a
cycle. Many things feed from humans despite the fact that we place
ourselves atop the food chain. We claim we have no natural predators
yet succumb all the time to various diseases. Yes, our predators are
vastly smaller than us and for the most part don't consume that much
of us. You might say we have antibiotics and other medicines within
our arsenal against the very small predators however we operate in
entirely different worlds. The very small live and die so fast that
mutate far quicker than we are able. Vast populations will spring up
and just as quickly die off again , like who civilizations rising and
falling within just a few days. The evolutionary process for those
that are very small and live very quickly relative to us happens much
faster. As soon as a successful strain of something mutates it
quickly multiplies and spreads. The tools we use to combat harmful
bacteria and our other micro-organism predators expediate their
evolution, we kill off swathes clearing the path for the few
survivors to flourish. As soon as something evolves to be immune to
our defences it will spread like wildfire among us. We cannot rely on
evolution to protect us and are as a result locked in an ongoing
scientific battle with micro-organisms to develop cures, effective
antibiotics and immunisations.
You may recall from
biology at school we were shown a graph for natural variation in
populations over time for rabbits and foxes called the Lotka-Volterra
predator-prey system. They both would undulate up and down like a
sine wave however they would be slightly out of phase with one
another. The fox population would rise and eat more rabbits causing
their population to decline. This in turn would reduce the food
supply for the foxes who would in turn start to decline in number.
This would then allow the rabbits to thrive again thus restarting the
whole cycle. This simplified example shows a trend that is applicable
in a wide sphere of events not limited to just biology. As humanities
population and density increases we improve the odds for the
micro-organisms in evolving a resilient or impressively contagious
strain. A graph against population levels of known human diseases and
parasites and of humanity over time would not look much like the neat
fox and rabbit relationship however a similar process is going on.
The success of micro-organisms is far more based on adaptations than
it is on resources, particularly when those resources entail human
hosts which are typically abundant. While the fox and rabbit will
respond more directly to the population levels of the other, the prey
of the pathogen will be more inclined towards stability until an
adaptation occurs in the pathogen which is then more liable to cause
a sharp and rapid decline in population of their hosts. The way in
which disease spread and mutate is more random and spontaneous than
the slower more continual change of larger organisms. Human
ecosystems are hard to isolate in the same way a rabbit and fox
system is, they are also dependant on far more factors such as war
and scientific discovery than it is on our predators abundance. Even
so, you would see spikes and troughs such as the effect of the
bubonic plague or black death in the mid fourteen century if you were
to create such a graph.
It may look as if the
global human population has been growing continually for a long time
and is picking up pace. This is understandable and somewhat masks the
very real relationship between humans and their natural predators. In
the distant past humanity was more isolated into smaller ecosystems
like the rabbits and foxes as our ability to travel was much more
restricted. With many isolated ecosystems the undulations in human
population due to the efficacy of predators would tend to average out
so as to seem non-existent. As our ability to move about increased
the number of effective ecosystems we occupied in regards
micro-organisms fell quickly. In the modern day we effectively occupy
just one huge ecosystem with the odd tiny pocked of isolated
indigenous peoples such as Amazonian tribes. One of the best reasons
to leave these tribes undisturbed is that they may one day be the key
to the survival and continuation of our species due to their
isolation from potential pathogens. Despite our ecosystems merging
and falling in number we have not had an epidemic in a very long
time. This is a result of the vast scientific progress occurring
alongside our ability to travel more quickly and freely. By merging
our ecosystems we lose the ability to average out any undulations in
population as a result of our natural predators however there having
not been an epidemic for such a long time means we should not expect
to see any undulations any way. The only thing our prolonged and
steep population growth ensures is that future epidemics will be far
more severe in the ease in which they spread and the numbers that
they affect.
All this is to say that
population levels are not the most worthy or relevant subjects for
debate. We live in an effectively closed system that is highly
effective at self regulation which is often described as the Gaia
hypothesis. We are not yet so above this system that we need to
burden ourselves with performing its role. We can happily go on
breeding and living with total disregard for the consequences and
sooner or later Gaia will rebalance the scales for us. Living
sustainably is one key way to limit the number of potential
mechanisms by which we can upset the balance an incur a rebalancing
change in the system. This however does not solve the issue of our
natural predators for which we probably need to populate more
isolated ecosystems to ensure our ongoing safety. In the modern world
this really means populating new planets which is some way off. We
may well encounter some serious epidemics that wipe out significant
portions of the global population before we get round to populating
new worlds however it is very unlikely that any would completely wipe
us out or basically reset all progress as would be the case if only
isolated human ecosystems survived. It is not in a parasites best
interests to efficiently wipe out all of its hosts as that ensures
its own demise as well. Natural variance within species also serves
as good protection against such outbreaks.
I shall simply conclude
by reiterating that attempts to limit human populations solve no long
term problems and would mostly just limit our capacity as a species.
Living sustainably is the only solution and ironically facilitates
and maintains a greater population. A greater population also
theoretically reduces the time it will take us to populate new worlds
with more great minds able to work on the problem, more division of
labour to make that work efficient and more pressure on space
generating a demand for more. This in turn is the most obvious way in
which we can escape the restraints of Gaia which will ultimately
limit our population of it's own accord thus further making attempts
to limit our population seem like wasted effort.
