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In Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich discuss overpopulation, in relation to anti-enlightenment religion, as a driver of future global civilization collapse.
... many scientists still tend to treat population growth as an exogenous variable, when it should be considered an endogenous one - indeed, a central factor ...
Too many studies asking ‘how can we possibly feed 9.6 billion people by 2050?’ should also be asking ‘how can we humanely lower birth rates far enough to reduce that number to 8.6’ To our minds, the fundamental cure, reducing the scale of the human enterprise (including the size of the population) to keep its aggregate consumption within the carrying capacity of Earth [121] is obvious but too much neglected or denied.
There are great social and psychological barriers in growthmanic cultures to even considering it. This is especially true because of the ‘endarkenment’ - a rapidly growing movement toward religious orthodoxies that reject enlightenment values such as freedom of thought, democracy, separation of church and state, and basing beliefs and actions on empirical evidence. [emphasis mine]
I've often been disturbed by scientific studies which take continued overpopulation for granted when discussing strategies to avoid Climate Destabilization. By ignoring the controversial issue of overpopulation, serious scientists are complicit in the climate denial framing established by religious orthodoxies' worldviews. Researchers each seem to focus on one small piece of the interlocking complex systems mentioned by the Ehrlichs, which are moving toward global civilization collapse, as if trying to study just one variable, holding all others constant. While this approach to carving out manageable domains for research has validity, the collective effect is failure to cope with the scale of our problem. The collective effect is to yield control of the narrative.
This image by Chet Zar captures "the endarkenment" for me.
Tags: endarkenment, global civilization collapse, overpopulation
Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on This is the same Paul Ehrlich who predicted billions of deaths from famine in the 1970s
This is the same Paul Ehrlich who predicted the demise of India (and suggested we let it sink rather than spend any effort on the futile act of trying to save it).
This is the same Paul Ehrlich who predicted the UK would be a small group of impoverished islands in 2000.
0 for 3, that's the same record that Harold Camping has.
So you will pardon me if I don't go running around with my hair on fire every time this individual says something.
Admittedly at least Ehrlich's predictions contain no "woo" and thus metaphysically could come true. And this time he is wisely shoving the prediction off 37 years into the future so he won't have to listen to people laughing their asses off at him if it doesn't come true.
Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on just don't hoard shit..
live w/o theocracy
learn a bit more than the past has.. ?
Permalink Reply by Steph S. on These are very important issues and I'm so glad to see you educating others on these issues. I am going to the article link now.
Permalink Reply by michele ricketts on I read it all- quite a long article. It's not fair to dismiss Ehrlich as a sensationalist even though sensationalist ideas are included in the article. Rather he leaves no stone unturned and there is much realistic probabability in the details. He does go on about solutions and warnings whereas over-population will be solved simply by people dying or not able to feed and nature more children. Nature does it all the time in the animal world and it looks as though we will be under an unavoidable restraint by Nature this century.
What i liked about the article is how he looks to the future after soceities have burned their fingers and willing to adopt new ways that will resolve and work. He thinks all this globalisation is too broad and rangey and poly-centric complex multi-level ways of organising from grass-roots up will be the way to go. An analogy i read is power will be more locally generated in the future than sourced from huge power-stations. Information and co-operation needs to be better chewd and digested. I think this is a fundamental problem with all the super-communication and information realesed by technology comparatively recently.
Religion is not going to solve anything in the modernising world. Those who sublimate may be the biggest losers in the loss to come from unsustainability.Before technology there was nothing like a good war to shake things up and keep the population down- including religious war if its going to be propelled by competion for land/ resources etc....
under guise of its own propagation.
But we are too many for even that.
ipopulation can be more than halved in one generation. I think it is as simple as that in Nature's eyes.
Permalink Reply by Shillamus on Nukes would leave an awful mess to live with
Very interesting post Ricketts
Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on Over population strains the limits of the carrying capacity of the planet. The growing demands on available resources - arable land, fresh water, energy and the ocean's resources will challenge all societies. Third world countries and failed states are the canaries in the coal mine.
If the current annual growth rate of 1.4% stays the same it means a population doubling time of 50 years so by 2062 the world population will double to 14 billion people. If we fail to recognize the consequences of exponential growth we're screwed. Mama Nature does have a cure for this - massive die offs of the offending species. On the bright side, the survivors will have a bunch of stuff, more than enough resources and niches to fill.
Permalink Reply by Tom Reeves on Overpopulation anxiety was popularized by Reverend Thomas Malthus around 1800 or so. This was back when the world had roughly 1 billion people. I imagine if you would have asked Malthus if the world could sustain 2 billion people, he would have laughed hysterically. But since then, population has “exploded” along with overall prosperity.
I do believe there is a finite limit to some resources, but not to human innovation. As some resources become more scarce, others will take their place. This does not mean that standards of living will necessarily always improve along the same trajectory (though increased prosperity has been the trend as food, healthcare, technology, industrialization, and energy have generally become more abundant to more people, not less so as time progresses). But it’s a fact that many people lead longer, more affluent lives than ever before, which I attribute to both a population increase as well as the philosophical transition from religious tyrannies to more inclusive societies which promote and support individual rights and freedoms. Producing more people means more innovators, more laborers, more goods. This, in general, is a good thing as long as production outstrips consumption – which it certainly has since Malthus.
One of Ehrlich’s greatest fears is freshwater (or groundwater), which in some areas will certainly see greater scarcity as populations rise – especially during times of drought. However, as the technologies for reverse osmosis desalination improve, this will drive conversion costs down, bringing potable water to more people in more areas than ever before. But those in areas with high freshwater abundance will certainly pay a smaller fraction of their income for water than people who live in region with a relative freshwater dearth. That’s just basic supply and demand economics.
We have now the ability to adapt and transform our environment as never before, making the collapse of our civilization due to overpopulation and resource scarcity a vastly different prospect than those of the “Classic Maya” which Ehrlich sees as analogous. I think we are more likely to collapse due to the debasement of our currency and overabundance of government interference – more akin to ancient Rome and the U.S.S.R. than to the extinct Mayans. Regardless, I don’t see global civilization collapsing due to overpopulation, for this alarm has been ringing for at least two centuries now and has yet to manifest anything more than greater prosperity.
Permalink Reply by Shillamus on So you don't see endarkment in the future?
I too see that humans will prevail given an asteroid doesn;t destroy them
Permalink Reply by Napoleon Bonaparte on L'intelligence ne se mesure pas des pieds à la tête, mais de la tête au ciel.
Napoleon Bonaparte
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