The Gathering Storm A Treatise on the State of the World From 1998 to 2008

Jim Swann practiced architecture in Chicago at Swann and Weiskopf for 30 years before moving to Bellingham in 1992. His book on human rights and the environment, “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” is available. Please contact Mr. Swann at jimswann@hotmail.com for a copy.

Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch published early chapters of Mr. Swann’s book “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” as a series in July, August and September 2004. The next few months, we’ll publish chapters VIII and IX as a series. The chapters deal with the ecological imperative.

Part 3

The story of population growth from antiquity has been summarized and analyzed by NOVA ( http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/human_pop.html ):

Successive cultural revolutions, such as the agricultural revolution, have led to the surges in population. Human Population Growth Over Time (right-hand column) summarizes again the historical record, typical of a “J-shaped” growth with humans filling new niches and (perhaps) not yet reaching a limiting “carrying capacity.”

One feature to note in this plot is the lack of huge fluctuations associated with famines or wars. In fact, the nature of J-shaped (exponential) growth is such that episodic reductions due to such catastrophes usually do not affect the inexorable and overpowering upward acceleration in population size.

An exception is the period of the “black death” in Europe, which produced a noticeable but small downward spike in the curve. The wholesale loss of life due to world wars of the 20th century produced only small perturbations to the upward trend.

The human population growth of the last century has been truly phenomenal. It required only 40 years after 1950 for the population to double from 2.5 billion to five billion. This doubling time is less than the average human lifetime. The world population passed six billion just before the end of the 20th century. Present estimates are for the population to reach eight to12 billion before the end of the 21st century. During each hour, more than 10,000 new people enter the world, a rate of 1.3 per second!

Of the six billion people [6.75 billion in February 2009], about half live in poverty and at least one fifth are severely undernourished. The rest live out their lives in comparative comfort and health.

The factors affecting global human population are very simple. They are fertility, mortality, initial population, and time. The current growth rate of 1.3 percent per year is smaller than the peak, which occurred a few decades ago (2.1 percent per year in 1965–1970), but since this rate acts on a much larger population base, the absolute number of new people per year (90 million) is at an all time high. The stabilization of population will require a reduction in fertility globally. In the most optimistic view, this will take some time.

How might the steep rise in population growth since 1950 intersect with global warming and biodiversity? As biodiversity decreases you might expect population growth to slow. First, for the same reasons that biodiversity is already shrinking, habitats change due to climate unpredictability — droughts last longer, floods occur more frequently, temperatures increase, ice shelves collapse, wild fires increase.

Population growth itself is the obvious second cause. The needs and desires of humans, augmented by fossil fuels and technology, are consuming resources while concurrently diminishing habitat for other species and themselves. But there is an overriding problem which appears intractable — the slow reaction to change in population numbers to wars, famine and plague (even the “black death” hardly slowed the growth pattern).

There is another factor, which NOVA points to in its analysis of the current population of six billion people [6.75 billion in February 2009]. About half live in poverty and at least one fifth are severely under-nourished. The rest live out their lives in comparative comfort and health. The former 50 percent live near the equator and have had no urgent need to develop technologies or conquer nature as did those who migrated north some eons ago.

As a result those in the north have been able, over the centuries, to plunder their brethren to the south of their resources, both human (slaves) and nonhuman, but the situation is changing. Many in the south, in particular those with resources like fossil fuels and minerals, are cognizant of the north’s urgent need, and have organized (e.g. OPEC) to secure a fair share for their nonrenewable resources. As a result they are accumulating great wealth which in turn they have channeled into technology, not the least of which is war-making technology.

While all this is true for the Middle East Islamic countries, it is not yet true for Africa which is still being plundered by the wealthy north and the newly wealthy Islamics. As Africa lies prostrate before this onslaught from outsiders, so too are all the primitives around the world who have or may have resources that their rich neighbors want.

They are all an endangered species — the Mongols, the Inuit, the Maori, the Tutsi, the Mayans, the Chippewa, etc. Most of these so called primitives have lived for centuries within the boundaries of their original habitat without destroying or polluting it. We may miss their survival skills once they are gone.

It is evident that we in the north are currently dominating the homo-sapiens species and on an ascending population trajectory that is not expected to slow until we reach some 10–12 billion population. It is debatable that we will be able to survive such an increase given the known resources for food, shelter and energy which a population that size will require, and the resultant greenhouse gases they will generate.

It is more reasonable to assume that we will reach an impasse caused by population growth and a breakdown caused by an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in say 30 years with an expected population of eight billion. Along the way to this impasse we can also expect the unexpected — wars, genocide, plagues and the breakdown of other countries, beyond those in Africa.

The U.N. population division, which relates population growth to energy consumption in both rich and poor countries, makes it clear that consumption and population are major factors in energy usage:

“… it would be a mistake to think of population growth as a challenge facing only poor nations. When population growth and high levels of consumption mix, as they do in the United States, the significance of the latter balloons. For example, although the U.S. population increases by roughly three million a year, whereas India’s increases by nearly 16 million, the additional Americans have greater environmental impact. They are responsible for 15.7 million tons of additional carbon to the atmosphere, compared with only 4.9 million tons in India. Wealthy countries with expanding populations need to look at the impact of both their consumption and their population policies.”

What we are talking about, regardless of how the scientists and technologists resolve the energy crisis, is how we must restore our global environment with less energy. To date we have overused and misused it. Some things are clear and urgent — restoration of lands, forests, rivers and lakes; stopping our shrinking biodiversity is another.

Population, with its increasing eco-footprint and augmented by our fossil fuel technologies is the main cause. Consumption per capita of consumer goods and government production of goods and services for the general public make up the eco-footprint. Here are two quotes from World Watch’s state of the world book for 2004 (quotes are from Tawni Tidwell). They focus on two modern giants:

Although more than a third of the world’s people live in China and India, they now account for only 13 percent of global energy consumption. But their energy use is rising rapidly, and these two nations both rely heavily on coal — China for more than 70 percent of its commercial energy and India for over 50 percent. The International Energy Agency projects that rising energy demand in China and India will account for more than two thirds of the expected global increase in coal use between now and 2030. These population giants will thus have enormous impacts on the global energy market and the environment in the decades ahead.

China’s economy has more than quadrupled in size since 1980. During the 1980s, electricity demand in China increased more than 400 percent because of appliance purchases. In India, the number of “affluent” households grew six-fold in just five years, while the number of low-income families declined significantly. Such trends promise to accelerate, feeding a growing consumer class that wants access to the conveniences of home appliances, light, gas-powered cooking and increased mobility.

Paul B. Sears wrote “Deserts on the March” in 1940. He continued to expand on his thesis through the 4th edition in 1980. What he had to say was probably the most insightful view of mankind’s husbandry, population growth, and the growth of deserts. Here’s a quote from his 4th edition:

There is not much in the story of China, India and Egypt to suggest that an entire continent can be exploited with the efficiency of the machine age while its inhabitants multiply and enjoy what the politicians speak of as the “American standard of living.”

In short, there is not much in the record of lands occupied by man before he crossed the Bering Strait into America to show that he has been able by hard toil and trial and error cleverness to preserve the ability of his environment to support him while increasing his own numbers indefinitely. This is not to say that environmental damage is a simple function of population growth. Vast damage to North America was done by a population less than half what it is now while some of the densely populated parts of western Europe have husbanded their resources well

…Meanwhile famines continue to occur and deserts continue to spread, generally where population is otherwise unchecked. Estimates of deaths through starvation are appalling, running into more than 100,000 in the region south of the Sahara between 1973 and 1976. Here the desert margin has been advancing at an average rate of three miles a year, while in northern Africa a million acres of crop and grazing land are lost to desert in four years. With the exception of Europe, desert is still expanding on every major continent…

Most ominous for the environment, and therefore for ourselves, is the same kind of phenomenon that lead to the disappearance of gigantic reptiles in the past. Like dinosaur bodies, our vast political, military and industrial units have grown faster than the means of coordination and control. §