Brane Space: Of Course Ten Billion Population Is Unsustainable - Why John Kerry Is Right

Isaac Asimov lectures on the dire effect of overpopulation in Feb., 1976

Since November, we've become aware the global population has officially crossed eight billion, more than three times the figure in 1950. Special climate envoy John Kerry recently told AFP (Agence France-Presse) that the world's population will not be tenable in 2050, when it is projected to hit nearly 10 billion, but refrained from asking Americans to give up steaks. Or more babies. Can we say Mr Kerry is not being realistic, and we need more than tame bromides? Yes we can.

The 3-fold increase in human numbers has already stretched food and energy needs and supplies. UN projections say the figure will balloon to 9.7 billion in the middle of the century. This is insane and as the late science author Isaac Asimov has put it, "human dignity cannot survive overpopulation" - which is why we need to do all we reasonably can to halt it now. Not later.

It is also the leading source of global carbon emissions, since humans need to consume oil, gas, coal - or trees - to survive. Right now, producing food for eight billion mouths accounts for over a fourth of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050 it will be a half of all greenhouse gases given the remaining fossil fuels will be much less efficient.

In his address to the AFP, basically the French International press corps, Kerry said:

"We need to figure out how we're going to deal with the issue of sustainability and the numbers of people we're trying to take care of on the planet."

One of the issues of sustainability is that cattle rearing for human consumption, combined with food waste and deforestation have further contributed to warming. This in turn is responsible for droughts, flooding and extreme weather conditions. The more people, the more these 'issues' impact sustainability. Hence, it behooves us to consider reducing human numbers to a level enabling sustainability.

One key factor known for decades, is an awareness of carrying capacity.

Science writer Isaac Asimov, in a 1976 Barbados lecture (as well as a number of books), defined carrying capacity thusly:

(Usable land-water resource base providing water + food + fuel) / (individual food, fuel + water requirement)
If the numerator is » 11.4 x 10 ⁹ hectares of usable aggregate equivalent land-water resource base and if 4 hectares is the ideal "mean individual requirement" over a lifetime (e.g. to meet all basic needs and have a few private luxuries) , that means:

CC = (11.4 x 10 ⁹ hectares) / 4 hectares/person » 2.85 billion

That is a figure we are now on the verge of surpassing by a factor of four.

A metaphor that Asimov used to illustrate carrying capacity has since become known as "the bathroom metaphor" and it works to get people to understand the debilitating, disastrous effects of too many people. As Asimov noted, if two people live in an apartment, and it comes with two bathrooms, they have a comfortable life. Either one can use the bathroom anytime he or she wants, and can remain in there as long as they desire, even reading while doing business.

One can say, that for the purpose of "Bathroom freedom" - 2 is the carrying capacity for a two -person apartment. Now, let there be twenty people occupying the same apartment, and what happens? Bathroom freedom evaporates. Visits now must be regulated by the clock, and no one may stay in for too long. Indeed, a timetable likely has to be set up for each person's bathroom use. (Don't laugh too hard at the improbability of this example, since we now know of numerous cases where immigrants have been found crammed into such conditions - but usually in a house)

The point is, that the liberating (and convenient) use of the bathroom which applied for two persons, no longer applies with twenty, and probably evaporated by the time there were five or six occupants of the apartment. (And we won't even go into where each - unrelated- person sleeps, if there are only two bedrooms).

The graphic below, representing an overshoot of resources, also puts this into perspective;

The interpretation of the graph (upward) is straightforward. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. By 2050 it will be 2.5 Earths. Where will these 'Earths' come from? They won't! We have to limit the population to be accommodated on this one Earth!

Kerry himself seemed to be aware of this when he told the AFP gathering:

"I've been to a number of African countries where they're very proud of their increased birth rate but the fact is, it's unsustainable for life today, let alone when you add the future numbers,"

But then he undermined his point by saying:

"I'm not recommending the population go down. I think we have the life we have on the planet. And we have to respect life and we could do it in so many better ways than we're doing now."

The other question is whether Kerry actually visited the Congo Basin, covering 1.3 million square miles in West Central Africa and 6 countries.

The forests of this area are now under attack despite the fact they remove an estimated 0.61 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year - nearly six times the amount for the Amazon basin. Oh, and equivalent to about one third of all the CO2 emissions from U.S. transportation. What we know - and which Kerry may not - is that subsistence agriculture is the main driver of deforestation and degradation in the Congo Basin. Double that population in the Basin by 2050 and these last major "lungs" of the planet are gone.

Hence, the other point he dodged is that the population must go down, or as Asimov put it in his lecture:

"We have two choices. We can either limit our numbers ourselves, or nature will do it for us."

In effect, Kerry's half measures simply won't work- such as limiting food waste, or driving EV cars i.e.

"I think you can have a better lifestyle, and you can eat better food and we can feed more people if we stop wasting as much food as we waste."

If Kerry's solutions don't work, what would? Well, severe birth restriction, starting with economic penalties for exceeding a given number of children. (No more tax credits is a start, at least in the U.S.) Then coupled with more aggressive artificial birth control and access to abortion - not just in the U.S. but all other nations facing a population cataclysm, especially in Africa, Asia.

Disdain such draconian measures? Well, the new 'Club of Rome' (original authors of 'Limits to Growth' ) has a solution:

Everyone reduces their standard of living to just above subsistence level, equivalent to an annual income of $15,000- 19,000 a year. (Uh, that includes Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as well as the hundreds of other billionaires.)

About what a burger flipper earns at Burger King. By the Club's reckoning this spreads out resources more evenly given they believe the core problem isn't overpopulation but inequitable distribution of capital, property, income.

We can pretend all we want that half measures like Kerry's will work or we can get real. If we don't get real with actual solutions we will have to accept a world without dignity that finally arrives. For the pro-life contingent, one irony of their zest for being anti-abortion is that life's value overall diminishes the more humans on the planet.

In Prof. Albert Bartlett's words:

"As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears."

See Also:

Sustainability