Argument Essay Thesis Dropbox

MegaCrisis? Overpopulation Is the Problem By Gioietta Kuo

A succinct and all-embracing article on the state of the world by Wuliam Halal and Michael Marien, titled "Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenar- ios, Two Perspectives," appeared in The Futurist magazine for May-June 2011.' It contains the pre- diction of an impending global crisis, a perfect storm resulting from a congruence of the ills af- flicting the world today, including climate change, environmental destruction, water and food scar- city, and poverty, along with such cultural and economic effects as financial meltdown and global recession. The authors explore these phenomena from different angles: Halal takes a more positive view based on the technology that our society has achieved, while Marien adopts a more pessimis- tic outlook, foreseeing at best a "muddle through" attitude on the part of the majority of the world's less-informed people.

Reasons for the MegaCrisis As much as I admire the erudition of both

authors, I would like to point out that they have not put their fingers sufficiently on the one evil that is the mother of all others: world overpopu- lation. Imagine if the world miraculously lost 20% of its population. Many of the problems described by Halal and Marien would simply disappear.

For example, unemployment is already un- acceptably high globally, afflicting both industri- alized and developing nations. Most important is unemployment among youth in the 15 to 24 age

group. Youth unemployment is a problem not only in the likes of France (23%), Spain (37%), and Italy (25%), but also in developing countries like Saudi Arabia (28%) and Egypt (24%).̂ What is most horrifying in the developing nations is not that the unemployment figures are high, but that the number of young people continues to in- crease, even in places where more than 30% of the national population is in the 0-14 age group. Where are these young going? To swell even fur- ther the ranks of the 15-24 group of unemployed, creating still more social ills!

On October 31, 2011, the UN celebrated a day on which the latest baby born in the Philip- pines added the last person needed to raise the total world population to seven billion. Celebrate? This is no cause for celebration, as the world is al- ready overpopulated. I was aghast. Coming from such an influential body as UN, this announce- ment seems to me the last nail in the coffin. Is it possible that there is no hope for humanity?

In this article, we shall examine the pros and cons of the overpopulation issue. As a scientist, I accept the fact that all known systems have boundaries (with the possible exception of our universe itself). That means we are bounded. We cannot possibly put nine billion people on the planet, as the UN so calmly predicts, because our agriculture and water resources are already insuf- ficient to meet the needs of the present global pop- ulation of seven billion.' More than one billion

Gioietta Kuo, senior fellow, .American Center for International Policy Studies, is a research physicist specializing

in energy problems. She has published more than 70 articles in American and European professional journals,

and many more in The People's Daily and other widely read publications in China. She can be reached at

[email protected].

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people are already on starvation level.'' Even more have no access to clean water, and some 2.6 bil- lion lack basic sanitation leading to disease, e t c '

Malthus and the Principle of Population

The idea that there are limits to what we can do, such as providing food, water, energy, and other resources to each individual on earth is not new. The great nineteenth-century British econ- omist Thomas Malthus, in his work "An Essay on the Principle of Population,"* predicted that in- creasing population would eventually diminish the world's ability to feed itself. He based this con- clusion on the thesis that population expands in such a way as to overtake thé development of suf- ficient land for crops, and will continue to expand until it is checked by lack of water, food, and other resources essential for survival, and/or until its growth is reduced by disease, predators, and war- fare.

Buoyed by optimism in the early days of the industrial revolution, many philosophers, influ- enced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx, believed that society would expand naturally to- wards Utopian perfection, and Malthus was much maligned. But toward the end of the twentieth century, with billions of Third World citizens— constituting about 80% of the world's popula- tion—malnourished and many near starvation,' more objective observers came to admit that, in many ways, Malthus was right. And yet, even to- day unfortunately, many still do not appreciate the gravity of the overpopulation problem and consider "Malthusian" a dirty word.

Let us put Malthus's thesis into simple math- ematical terms that all can understand. While population growth over a series of 25-year inter- vals can occur in a geometric progression—1, 2, 4,8,16,32,64, etc.—food production at best can increase only linearly. It seems that even the much touted GMO (genetically modified organisms), do not produce yields much above that of tradi-

tional methods.*

World Population Reduction: Is It Possible?

So, for our planet to survive, humanity has no choice but to reduce population. A study by a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel ag- gregated the use of all the Earth's natural assets— our "ecological footprint." They concluded that humanity's collective demands first surpassed the Earth's regenerative capacity around 1980. By 2007, global demands on the Earth's natural sys- tems exceeded sustainable yields by 50%. Stated another way, it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption. If we use environmen- tal indicators to evaluate our situation, then the global decline of the economy's natural support systems—the environmental decline that wül lead to economic decline and social collapse—is al- ready well under way'

It is obvious that more people require more food, more water, more housing, more employ- ment, more education, more medicine, and even more fresh air. Delegates to the 1994 Conference on Population and Development'" held in Cairo recognized reproductive health and family plan- ning as fundamental human rights and pledged to invest between $17 billion/year and $22 bil- lion/year to reach the goal of universal family planning by 2015. Yet we are now approaching 2015 and much ofthat investment has not been forthcoming. As a consequence, many in the de- veloping nations still do not have access to fam- ily planning, and poverty remains the major cause.

To illustrate how thorny the problem of lim- iting population is, we need go no further than China. Thanks to its unique government struc- ture, this is the only country in the world where it has proved possible to mandate a draconian one-child-per-family policy. Yet even here, while this policy works in large cities where the govern- ment has more or less strict control, it has proven

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difficult to regulate the birthrate in rural areas where 70% of China's population lives. As a con- sequence, China's population is still rising: 81 mü- lion people will be added between 2010 and 2015." In countries that lack a comprehensive pension system, people tend to want more chil- dren as insurance for their old age.

World History and Our Future Many look back on the world's history and

conclude that, since we have survived disasters of all kinds—wars, disease, famine, etc.—we will overcome whatever evils the impending Mega- Crisis will bring us. But this argument contains a fallacy. Today's malaise is of a different kind be- cause we have changed our environment in an ir- reversible way.

We have let the genie out of the bottle; how do we put it back? How does one reduce the earth's temperature, extract CO^ and methane from the atmosphere, prevent sea level rise, re- freeze tundra, reduce world desertification, stop the melting of glaciers, restore tropical forests, and reduce world population all at the same time?'^

In our hearts, we know that we are on an un- sustainable path. We are taking resources out of the Earth so fast that we can no longer hope to maintain existing supplies. Sooner or later, we will encounter the limits to what our planet can pro- vide us.

What is different from previous history is that the world has never had to cope with seven billion people before. Overpopulation has brought with it the many specific stresses listed below. Of these, the chief concern is undoubtedly climate change. Following this are some other semi-irre- versible phenomena that appear to be here to stay and to be progressing at an ever faster rate.

Yet even admitting that we can see no way out at the moment, there is nothing to be gained by despair. Facing hard facts and still remaining optimistic offers the best chance we have left to overcome the hurdles confronting our future. Let

us now examine what the history of past civiliza- tions has taught us.

• Climate change is the most serious phenom- enon confronting us. As the world population has increased, ever-greater fossil fuel use has demon- strably resulted in global warming. Today the global average temperature has risen 0.7°C since 1900, and is forecast by the IPCC to rise a total of 1.5°C by 2030" The number-one effect of global warming is the melting of glaciers and icecaps, and this is leading to widespread water scarcity worldwide.'"* Following this comes, naturally, food scarcity. Thus, even now, we are beginning to ex- perience global scarcity ofthe two most essential elements of human existence: food and water.

According to the UN, more then 11 million people have died from drought since 1900.'' Al- ready 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drink- ing water, and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanita- tion." Almost one billion people are already going hungry world wide today.'^ Hunger is most per- vasive in less-developed countries where popula- tion is dense. Work by the UN and various foun- dations is providing some relief But endemic poverty is the main cause, and remains largely un- checked.'*

• Warming in the equatorial regions has al- ready intensified drought conditions to some 30 degrees latitude north and south, helping expand desert regions in Australia, the American South- west, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Med- iterranean region." Already we are seeing the scorching effect of the drought in the American corn belt and the agriculture lands of Croatia. The result has been to force agriculture to higher lat- itudes and to decrease yields in arid areas.̂ °

To support an additional two billion people by 2050, the world would need access to a new growing area the size of Brazil. By 2050, 80% of world's population will live in urban areas.^' Lim- ited water and growing space will increasingly turn agriculture indoors—toward greenhouses and vertical farming. There also will be new meth-

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ods of irrigation—aerophonics, hydroponics, and drip irrigation. Unfortunately much energy in the form of lighting and water will still be necessary. There will likely be huge demographic changes, too, with people and agriculture moving toward the higher latitudes in Canada, the Arctic, Alaska, Siberia, and even Greenland.

It is very interesting that Greenland was pop- ulated and cultivated for nearly 500 years—from AD 984 to the 1400s—by Viking settlers who wiO- ingly left a rich European civilization behind to create and maintain their new homeland, Norse Greenland.^^ They depended on domestic live- stock and hunting for living. The most likely rea- son for the eventual failure of these Viking settle- ments is that the climate grew steadily colder over time. However, the Inuit peoples managed to sur- vive there simultaneously and continue to do so to this day.

There may be a lesson here for humanity's future. The low-tech, low-population Inuit com- munity was able to adapt to changing climate con- ditions because of its simple lifestyle of fishing and hunting. But the European-derived Viking culture proved unable, or unwilling, to give up its reliance on imported materials (such as lumber and iron), clung to the European concept of "growth" as its measure of success, and continued to see greater nobility in trying to defy and tri- umph over nature than in closely observing na- ture and altering its lifestyle to remain in harmony with the changing environment.

• Family planning is the only way to control global overpopulation. Even to mention this re- ality tends to make some people throw up their arms in despair that this could ever be accom- plished. Yet such a reaction is actually unjustified, for much has been achieved in the past few dec- ades. Here are some shining examples to follow. Japan managed to cut its birthrate by one-fourth in just seven years between 1951 and 1958." And countries like Taiwan and South Korea, while struggling to achieve First World living standards.

actually managed to lift themselves out of pov- erty by following Japan's example.̂ " It is the un- derdeveloped failed states with relatively unedu- cated populations that have maintained high birthrates.

The recent history of Iran shows what can be done even in a Muslim country if the government is motivated to reduce population." When Aya- tollah Khomeini first came to power in 1979, he dismantled the Shah's familyTplanning clinics in the belief that more people brought strength in numbers especially when it came to the Iraq-Iran war. However, the added stresses that population growth brought about unemployment, over- crowding, and environmental degradation, and made him realize that much can be gained by achieving a stable sustainable population.

So in 1989, the country turned an about-face and implemented an aggressive family planning program, combining clinics with universal pri- mary schools and public sex education. Through government propaganda and incentives, Kho- meini was able to reduce the rate of population growth from an explosion to a very low level in a space of 10 years.̂ * This is by no means an en- dorsement of Iran's treatment of women in its society. It is simply an instance of how population control can be achieved even in cultures where, traditionally, unlimited reproduction has been ac- cepted as inevitable and even desirable.

Furthermore, the cost of pursuing a zero growth population is not prohibitive. As men- tioned earlier, delegates to the International Con- ference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 pledged to fully stabilize world popula- tion by 2015." So far the First World countries have fallen short of the goal by half. But their fail- ure has been due to a lack of will, not a lack of possibility. And so, NGOs like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have taken up thê task.

Lastly, whereas finding effectivé'vaccines is an arduous task that involves years of research, sometimes with no guarantee of ever developing

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a viable final product, a program of family plan- ning to reduce population growth is sure to suc- ceed because there are precedents. Furthermore, significant results can often be achieved in a short space of time—as little as 5 to 10 years.

• World desertification now affects 74% ofthe land in North America and Africa.̂ * The habitat of around a bülion people has been affected. The major cause is population pressure leading to over-cultivation and over-grazing of land. Defor- estation also allows erosion and the loss of top- soil. According to the World Wide Fund for Na- ture, the Earth lost 30% of its natural wealth between 1970 and 1995. This is a fast and irre- trievable process that is devouring our agricul- tural land and our cities. The Gobi Desert is mov- ing south at three kilometers a year, and sand dunes are forming just 70 kilometers from Bei- jing." But China has initiated a vast reforestation program to reverse the advance of desertification, and it appears to be achieving great success.'"

• Due to population pressure, some two giga- tons of carbon are released every year into the at- mosphere. Much of this is caused by the defores- tation of our tropical rainforests, the lungs of our planet. The UN, together with countries that con- tain tropical forests, like Brazü and Indonesia, are very aware of these dangers and have initiated large-scale reforestation programs to reverse for- est loss.

But the ultimate success of such efforts will require significant changes in global demand for slow-growth forest products, as well as an end to the financial incentives that now encourage large- scale deforestation. Paying farmers not to clear land for new plantings, taxing or even prohibit- ing the trade in slow-growth forest products, and, perhaps best of all, widespread promotion of more sustainable lifestyles (e.g., making bamboo and cork flooring more fashionable than hardwood) may have still greater impact in the long run.

• Aquifers were created during the ice age. De- pleting aquifers to meet water needs can cause

dangerous ground subsidence. For example, over 50 cities in the North China Plain are even now experiencing destruction of the surface infra- structure due to the subsidence of depleted un- derground aquifers. '̂ Even though the total effect is small, industrialized nations should neverthe- less be wary of depleting aquifers for golf courses, private swimming pools, and other nonessential luxury uses—particularly in arid regions ofthe United States. At present there is no way to re- verse this depletion. The only way to avoid sub- sidence is to stop pumping from aquifers.

• The burgeoning middle class in countries like China and, India has recently installed many air conditioners.'^ The chemical coolant CFC was banned by the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer. But the new HFC coolant, caüed 410a and labeled "environmentally friendly" because it spares the ozone, has been found to have 2,100 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. We need urgently to find a different coolant chemi- cal—as we earlier abandoned CFC—if we hope to reduce the warming effect of the present sys- tem.

• As mentioned earlier, sea level has been ris- ing at an accelerating rate of three millimeters a year since 1990.'' Already countries like the Netherlands, the Maldives, and Indonesia are ex- periencing inundation. It is possible that some- time in the future, major coastal cities like New York, London, and Shanghai will all be sub- merged. Massive efforts should be started now to move people from these cities to higher ground.

At the same time, work is in progress in Lon- don and East Anglia to build dams to protect his- torical buOdings like Westminster Abbey from in- undation by the Thames. To alleviate water shortage, one can recycle waste water. Also, de- salination of sea water is currently being used in Australia and the Middle East. Already in Aus- tralia desalination plants are producing 150 bü- lion liters of fresh drinking water for Melbourne and other cities.'"* Eventually cities on the coast of

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China or India may use nuclear reactors with co- generation to combine energy production with desalination.

• There is no doubt that present-day lifestyles will change, but not necessarily for the worse. For example, food should be produced locally to re- duce transport costs. Diet will become more veg- etarian because it takes 2,000-16,000 liters of wa- ter to produce one kilogram of beef, while one kilogram of wheat needs only 800-4,000 liters.'^ Overpopulation is partly responsible for the waste of water in polluted rivers. The lack of sewers in underdeveloped countries is a major cause. An- other is the careless or unnecessary use of pesti- cides and petroleum-related products that lead to uncontrolled wastewater runoff in developed countries. Both of these might be eliminated by improved infrastructure and more effective reg- ulation and enforcement of environmental controls.

It is important to realize that we are using up our resources—metals, materials, etc.—in a wasteful and unsustainable way. Yet there is much we can do, such as recycling. As the cost of scarce materials rises, efficiency and conservation will be naturally phased in.-" These changes wül be re- alized in areas such as passive house design, light- ing, mass transport, and many other spheres. As for how to cope with shortages of materials, a good example is that China is now mining rare earth metals not hitherto used for the essential CPU (central processing unit) of electronic com- ponents." It now holds a near monopoly of these metals and is able to dictate the market.

It is true that the world is not short of energy per se, although more and more of it (currently 65% of the energy we use) comes from fossil fuels. However, the use of these fossil fuels leads to fur- ther greenhouse emission and global warming— hence ever greater water and food scarcity. Thus we are in a vicious circle. The more energy we use, the more global warming occurs. If we are to have any hope of dealing with this problem, we must

exploit all available alternative energy sources. This means that, in addition to developing renew- able wind, solar, biofuel, hydro, geothermal, and newer and safer designs for nuclear reactors, we must take advantage of technology advances in new methods for extracting energy (e.g., obtain- ing natural gas from shale—although this, too, has environmental drawbacks).

Beyond the MegaCrisis Halal and Marien do not really offer solu-

tions to the MegaCrisis, other than hoping that humanity's phenomenal technology progress, in such areas as information technology, artificial intelligence, and others may lead in time to bet- ter governance and world culture. Sadly, "mud- dling up or down" may buy us some time, but it is no solution.

However, concomitant to the cultural/eco- nomic problems posed by the MegaCrisis, there is another problem that no one addresses: the capitalist system itself. I am not speaking of abolishing free markets. For all its obvious flaws, capitalism as practiced today is still the best economic system there is. But it is based on the impossible goal of continuous economic growth. For growth, we need to use more and. more energy, more and more resources, and to continually expand markets—not only by breeding more and more potential customers, but also persuading them that they need more and more possessions and services. And yet we are in a bounded system. At some stage that growth has to level off. And it looks as though right now we are very near the limit set by nat- ural systems and resources.

The Lesson of Easter Island In his book Collapse,^" the great anthropolo-

gist Jared Diamond pointed out two groups of civ- ilizations: those like Easter Island and the Maya, which eventually failed, and those like Japan and Iceland, which managed to survive for thousands

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of years. Where do the societies ofthe present day belong?

For contemporary civilization to survive, we must work on two fronts: We must maintain a sustainable environment and keep population low enough that Earth's environment can support it. At present, we are not achieving either.

Take the history of Easter Island as an ex- ample of a failed civilization. Easter Island's near- est neighbors are a thousand miles away. When any disaster strikes, they can look for no help from outside. Theirs is a bounded system. Similarly, our planet is a bounded system. When we have ravaged our etivironment, we cannot expect the Martians to come rescue us.

All societies consist of human beings who possess the same familiar contradictory traits of aggression, cruelty, and treachery together with compassion, generosity, and love. It therefore comes as no surprise that, in general, the collapse of failed civilizations in the past—including that of Easter Island—all seem to have followed the same familiar pattern.

First comes an assault on the environment, beginning with deforestation to provide for hu- man habitation and create more arable land. As the population continues to increase, still more forest has to be cleared. This is inevitably followed by soil erosion." Then, within society there emerges a governing elite, whose members con- sume a disproportionately high amount of the available resources while the rest of the popula- tion remain essentially paupers. The clans of this elite vie with each other for wealth and grandeur, erecting bigger and bigger monuments—such as those long-eared statues whose ruins make Eas- ter Island famous to this day.

Human nature being what it is, most people tend to focus mainly on short-term goals of en- riching themselves and experiencing pleasure rather than safeguarding the environment over the long term. The societies that fail do so because they are set on a non-sustainable course, and over-

exploit their available resources. Eventually, com- petition for these diminishing resources leads to warfare and civil strife, sometimes culminating in a scarcity of food so great that it leads to can- nibalism'"' and the destruction of everything that civilization had hitherto achieved.

There is an eerie resemblance of the pre- dicted MegaCrisls of our society to the history of Easter Island. Are we on the same path to self-destruction? Just look at the impact of pop- ulation pressure on the Amazon basin—about 78 million acres of our tropical forests disappear each year. Already more than 20% have gone.'"

At this point in our history, we stand at a crossroads. We can ask ourselves, are we going to be overwhelmed as a failed society like Easter Island? Or are we going to flourish like Iceland and Japan? The choice is ours. Already we are at the danger point. And there is little time left. The Earth is warming fast.

The world has experienced water and food scarcity in its history before. The question facing us today is just how much scarcity can we endure, given the clamoring of 7 billion mouths? If we al- low our present climate change and the resulting deterioration in food, water, weather, and physi- cal infrastructure to continue unchecked, then, carried to its logical extreme, we must reckon with the ultimate consequences.

Will we really become so short of food that we have to face cannibalism one day? CNN founder Ted Turner reached precisely this con- clusion in his interview with Charlie Rose in 2008.''̂ Turner predicted "mass cannibalism" by 2040 when crops will have been destroyed by global warming. So perhaps we shall all end up eating each other? Only, being the richest coun- try in the world, we Americans may be the last cannibals on earth!

Epitaph If our civilization does vanish—and I say if—

it will be because we have so overcrowded and

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damaged our planet that it becomes uninhabit- able. It is our responsibility not to let this happen. As James Lovelock, the distinguished environ- mentalist, put it:

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century hu- mans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 biUion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another."

Suppose however, that the worst occurred, and humans were wiped out. And suppose fur- ther that, after perhaps a million years, our planet did manage to recover sufficiently from the rav- ages inflicted on it that another race—not neces- sarily similar to our own—sprang up and devel- oped their own science. Imagine how their paleontologists and archaeologists might inter- pret.whatever relics might survive from human civilization, and how they might speculate on what caused us to vanish, just as we speculate about Easter Island today.

They might compose an epitaph for us along the following lines: "Here there once existed a very clever race. They developed incredible technol- ogy—even went to the moon and changed the planet's climate. But they allowed their popula- tion to grow unchecked and consequently as- saulted their environment in an unsustainable way, and in the process, brought about their own destruction."

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3 2 World Future Review Fall 2012

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