Environmentalism and Overpopulation: The Solution, Part I

One of my favorite wordpress blogs is Skepchick, which is sort of a clearing house for news stories about the the triumph of reason, or not, in the world and place for like minded folks to meet. I got in an online argument on skepchicks. The  very fact that I have this problem reveals how little enjoyment I get out of normal face to face interaction, and is mildly embarrassing. Anyway, they were talking about climate change, and a lot of ideas were thrown around, the basic one being that climate change largely the result of human overpopulation.

Now, I believe man made climate change.  I’ve seen the facts and correlation and do believe from them that man has the power to change the environment. I also have read man’s history.   All the mega fauna is dead except the ones that co-evolved with man in Africa, and the ones that were protected from man by long voyages.  (The Wrangle Island mammoths were alive in 1700 BC later than any other mammoth.)  The post ice age mega-fauna are almost all dead, and most likely because we hunted them to death.  That represents an enormous man made change to the ecosystem.   

And I believe in overpopulation.  I think biodiversity is not only nice, but necessary.  Everything we learn teaches us a lesson.  To understand some strange process only utilized by some strange species might necessitate the creation of new technology or mental tool.  That tool could be the key to something we want very badly, like the cure for cancer, faster than light drive, inertialess thrusters, or functional communism.  We don’t dare let anything slip away because we have no idea what we are missing.

All that said, environmentalism and overpopulation policy scares the crap out of me.  I feel like there are two main groups on these issues: those who want to pretend that there is no problem at all and nothing should be done, and those who want to pretend that problem is so serious and so big that absolutely any protectionist policy is good, no mater who it hurts.  Then, are these two subgroups.  People who believe that the problem is real, but the solutions hurt to much so we should just do nothing, and people who believe the problems can be fixed without anyone being hurt at all.  

None of those perspectives are true.  First, the problem is enormous and serious.  Second, the problem is not so serious that it is OK to hurt a lot of people to solve it. Third,  the fact that some people will have to be hurt does not mean that it’s not worth doing.  Forth, it’s a lie to pretend that the solutions aren’t going to hurt anyone.  There has to be a process in place that works to fix the problem with a solution that does the least harm to the least number.

Since all human problems are going to be proportional to human population,  human population is a logical and fair starting point for issues of how humans effect the environment.   I’m all for people reducing family size.  But the term “overpopulation” is an awful one.  “Over-” what exactly?  To say the phrase over population is to say there is an ideal population for the planet that we are over.  To make overpopulation policy is say you want to work toward the goal of that ideal population, from our current overload.

Well, there is only one way to do that:  The death rate must exceed the birthrate.  I’m not being dramatic. That’s the plain facts.  If you want to work back to the ideal number, the death rate must exceed the birthrate.  There are three ways to do that.  Increase the death rate, decrease the birthrate, or some combination of the two.   If writing policy which seeks to kill people or prevent people doesn’t scare you, you have far, far more faith in democracy and human nature than I do.

I’m sure some people read that and are offended that I would imply that mass homicide is a tool to reduce the population, barbaric and proven ineffective, they would claim.  They would point out the millions lost in wars over the years and the still burgeoning population, a point that I see from the other side.  Mao killed 70 million one generation ago in country which is now one of the most populous on earth.   So if killing 70 million people does nothing to reduce the population, is handing out free condoms really going to cut it?   Coitus interruptus was known at least as early as 500 BC, since it is at that time it is written in Genesis 38:8.  Yet, the population seems to have kept right on doubling for the last 2500 years. 

So apparently, more coercive methods are necessary.  Forced contraceptive? Forced abortion? And for who?  My sister lives in North Dakota.  There is 3 billion square feet per person in North Dakota.  Is it even remotely fair for her to held to the same standard as a mother in Mumbai, with a mere 500 square feet per person?  Does a mother in Mumbai love her child less? Who decides?  Soviet communism fell largely because command economies simply cannot compete with free market ones.  It takes over 10,000 decisions from field to plate just to eat a potato.  Under a free market, these decisions are taken care of without guidance, in Russia there were never enough potatoes.  When the governments have been proven totally incapable of serving potatoes, we dare to trust them with a command structure of who gets to procreate or how frequently?

It’s a logistical nightmare.  That alone would not bother me.  Many things necessary laws are logistical nightmares.  The real issue with overpopulation is What is the ideal level we are over? Without knowing that, we will always be over populated according to some metric.  Policies to address open ended problems don’t work.  Ever.  Despite the billions spent on the “War on Poverty” since it’s inception by Lydon B Johnson, poverty in the US is now worse than ever.  The “War on Drugs” is the most 2nd most expensive war in history (after the War on Poverty), and totally ineffective. (More people are per capita addicted than ever before.  Cocaine, in particular, had per capita less addicts when it was legally the “Coca” in Coca-Cola than it does now.)    Ask Vietnam vets how well a war which was fought for the open ended purpose of showing continued willingness to fight rather than for a quantifiable victory worked for them.   

To determine the ideal number of humans for earth, we must first decide what kind of an earth we want.  I bet if we want a handful of obscenely wealthy plutocrats living in clusters around the last bits of natural beauty while the rest of humanity totters on the edge of starvation in a vast global slum, well, I’m sure the planet could support a good 15 billion.    If we want to have no impact on the earth whatsoever, then the earth cannot support a single one of us.  Life impacts life.  That’s the nature of it all.   The ideal number is going to be somewhere between.  So the question of “What is the ideal number of humans?” can only be answered if another question is answered first “How much environmental impact is acceptable.”

If you say “None at all!” then by all means, will yourself out of existence.  Any other form of dis-corporation would cause environmental impact.  Humans are not God’s stewards of the Earth.  We are not god’s upon it, and it is not God over us.  We are the biosystem, as much as the trees, and the frogs, and the insects (most effective life form, by biomass fraction.  Collectively, they outweigh us all.)  We have at least as much a reason to be here as the other higher functioning mammals.   I don’t support an open ended command to limit environmental impact for the same reason I don’t support many other open ended commands.  Without clearly defined victory, and a method of measuring that victory in quantifiable terms, there will always be some metric that says “too much” impact, and some subgroup that demands less.  

I can’t, in good conscience, support policies which coerce human beings towards some totally undefined future.  Nor am I content to simply sit on my hands while the ice caps melt.  In my next blog,  I’ll offer a solution that I don’t entirely like.  But, it is the one that works the most with freedom instead of taking it away, that I can imagine.