The "Population Bomb Is A Dud" ? Don't Believe It!

Once again, we behold that William McGurn of the WSJ still doesn't grasp basic mathematics and the role of over population in degrading the environment and destroying quality of life.

McGurn's latest babble ('The Population Bomb Was A Dud', May 1, p. A13)  misfires on the first count because he appears not to be aware that was not the author's own choice of title. It was actually, 'Population, Resources and the Environment' - much less sexy and eye-catching.   Of course, this is why the publisher insisted on the catchier title.  The second misfire is when McGurn latches onto a defective tract (book) by Julian Lincoln Simon entitled 'The Ultimate Resource' in which the author insists "we live in an epidemic of life" and it's all basically glorious bounty.  Well, I'd sure love this fool to try to prove that to the people clamoring for housing across the nation right now, and often having to spend down to get even a spare bedroom to rent in the metro Denver area,. (The median monthly rent in Denver is now $2100).

McGurn cites a bet that 'Population Bomb' author Paul Ehrlich made with Simon based on commodities and which Ehrlich ultimately lost. The bet was for $1,000 - not a mammoth sum but not unreasonable given the implicit uncertainties. The bet was that the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals (chromium, tin, copper tungsten,  and nickel would rise by 1990 (Ehrlich) or fall (Simon.) Simon ended up winning but that may only have been because of dumb luck in timing and choosing those particular commodities.  (Potable water and arable land would have been better choices given both are in precipitous decline.)

Ehrlich was right in one sense: the population continued to soar from 4.5 billion in 1980 to 5.3 billion in 1990. More importantly, a 2014  paper by David S, Jacks ('Front Boom to Bust:  A Typology of Real Commodity Prices in the Long Run" ) disclosed Ehrlich would have won the bet had the time frame been extended. In summary, the Jacks' paper found that:"Cumulatively, the picture emerging from this exercise is a clear patter of real, rising commodity prices from at least 1950."

Even The Economist's "free exchange" blog  ca. 2014,  pointed out that while Simon may have won the specific bet, the Cornucopians haven't yet proven their position is correct. The blog pointed out:

"The  (Jacks) paper does suggest that while innovation, substitution and conservation can reduce the price impact of rising demand for fundamentally scarce resources, they can't necessarily eliminate it entirely ."

Further (ibid.):

"Of course, rising demand itself might come to an eventual end given new technologies - or to validate Mr. Ehrlich - the ultimate decline and stabilization of the global population. It may still be too early to tell whether humanity faces Malthusian limits or not."


I am inclined to concur with this - especially in terms of limits to fresh water access, already a problem in many countries. (Look for example at Capetown, S. Africa, narrowly avoiding "Day Zero" but at the cost of 40 percent of the country's water intensive crops.)  Without fresh water resources, the whole 'enchilada' goes south, from crops to public health.  It's a no brainer, given we are seeing the exhaustion of stores of fresh water globally..  One notable ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), warned that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025.  Even now, 1 billion-plus  people live in water-stressed conditions, meaning that renewable water supplies have dropped below 1,700 cubic meters per capita, a critical survival threshold. As observed (p. 47):

“When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”

Anyway, McGurn swallows Simon's codswallop hook, line and sinker that "human beings are more than just mouths to feed"  (Really? Tell that to the underfed billions in  sub-Sahara Africa, India).  He also insists - on the basis of Simon's garbage -- that  "Paul Ehrlich got it wrong because he never understood human potential", adding:

"Fifty years out, alas, Mr. Ehrlich remains as impervious to the evidence as ever. In an interview two months ago in the Guardian, Mr. Ehrlich decreed the collapse of civilization a 'near certainty' in the next few decades."

But in truth it is Neoliberal, market -worshipping Cornucopians like McGurn who are impervious to the evidence. That is, that a finite planet simply cannot support an ever expanding population that consumes more resources in one year than the planet is able to provide. McGurn, for example, questions that carrying capacity is "settled science".  In fact, it comes closest to a sensible form for quantifying the human imposition on planetary resources in terms of conserving them for future generations. It is defined:

Carrying capacity =

(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 6 hectares is the ideal "mean individual requirement" over a lifetime (e.g. meet all basic needs and have a few private luxuries) , that means:

CC = (11.4 x 10 ⁹   hectares) / 6 hectares/person » 2 billion

Obviously, this can be increased if the numerator can be increased or the denominator (each individual's ecological footprint) decreased. The problem is how to achieve it? (Especially if the total population continues to increase at 2-3% per year)

This is why McGurn and his ilk don't get it,  as when he asserts: 'It is rooted in an absurdity that when a calf is born a country's wealth increases, but when a baby is born it goes down." Well, because the calf is a net asset which adds to wealth via its usage (and temporary lifetime)  for providing nutrition etc. A baby on the other hand becomes a net consumer  - draining the planet's resources and imposing an ecological footprint of hectares- from the time it's born. (Unless humans descend to eating babies as in the dystopian scifi film, 'The Road')

The point is we're rapidly approaching the threshold at which there will simply be too many people to feed given existing resources: water, arable soil, fertilizers etc.. The projections now are for at least 10 billion people by 2050, and an 80 percent probability of 12.3 billion on Earth by 2100. Simply put, there simply aren't the resources to support even the lower addition. At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. The graphic below 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. Already we are at 1.5 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate.

The most damning indictment of McGurn comes from his own pen, as when he writes  - in seeming delirium:

"It turns out hell isn't other people after all. To the contrary, human beings constantly find new and creative ways to take from the earth, increase the bounty for everyone and expand the seats at the table of plenty."

But this is precisely where he surrenders to a kind of "perpetual motion" machine delusion. Just as perpetual motion machines are impossible because entropy eventually has the final say, and energy -motion ultimately dwindles to near nothing, so also with "taking from the earth".  The reason is that each "taking" is accompanied by less and less useful energy or what we call net energy. In effect, we need more and more higher quality energy to keep extracting more coal, or oil, or natural gas or whatever - and have ever less left-  less environmental quality with each taking and less quality energy (e.g. higher energy return on energy invested, or EROEI)  to use for anything else.

McGurn also doesn't get that the ongoing loss of resources via his takings can be quantified. For example:

-  Every day humans permanently remove 3.2 billion gallons more water from aquifers than nature can replace. If McGurn's "human ingenuity" was as great as advertised it would be able to compensate for the losses nature is unable to. But it can't!

- U.S. consumption of energy grows every day despite efforts to conserve it.  This is important because each energy use is accompanied by entropy or degradation in the quality of energy remaining  which also impacts our environment.

- To accommodate growth we pave over an area equal to the state of Delaware every year.

Common sense ought to inform one that this is unsustainable and can't go on indefinitely.

The Cornucopians get it wrong because they don't see population growth for the toxin it is, and can't put 2 plus 2 together to see how it leads to the Malthusian nightmare.  All of this comes back to net energy which is that energy humans need to survive. If the oil taken from the ground, say by fracking, only has a ratio of 1:1 (for energy produced to energy consumed) then it is barely of use to extract it. The same amount of oil-energy you are using up to get it, is basically what it carries. There is no net gain.

To fix ideas, the net energy equation in the case of oil  (cf. Physics Today, Weisz, July 2004, p. 51) has been given as:

Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]

In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0

Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it. For the last 700 billion barrels of available oil , i.e.from the original 3,000 billion - of which 1,500 b have been consumed:  Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q  (Currently we are working our way through 1,000 b barrels of "break even" oil)

It's crucial to note the rate of energy production (Q (PR) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” Thus its Q(PR) will be small in relation to the bracketed quantity.Thus, the problem in a nutshell is not “running out of oil"  but running out of CHEAP oil.  When oil prices go up radically that's a sign of running out of break even oil.

It is the net gain that has allowed humans to reproduce and cover the globe. It is the reduction in net gain and eventually a negative energy (- Q (net)) balance that will eliminate a majority of  humans. THIS is what Ehrlich was referring to when he predicted the "collapse of civilization" within a few decades.If you need to envision what that will look like, well nothing too dramatic  - just picture a Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria where the electricity and water never come back on. And extend that picture globally.  There! Now you have it!  Does McGurn? I doubt he ever will as he's committed to Neoliberal ideology that markets will always solve the day combined with much touted human "ingenuity". (Which can't seem to take without replacing the same, and without entropic cost.)

Every current major societal, environmental problem:  from clogged highways, to overflowing hospital ERs,  to over-crowded schools, as well as scarcity of commodities (reflected in their much increased prices) to fouling of our water and atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, can be laid at the feet of too many people on this planet - each needing food, air, water and energy from the time  born.  The more people generated the more CO2 produced as a result of their gobbling resources and assorted carbon footprints. While the latter are greatest in the West, because our societies are based on consumption, the lesser footprints also matter in the sense that wars, tribal unrest and religious wars can result in millions fleeing their home nations and disrupting the balance of life in those countries to which they flee .

The capitalist's favorite barometer, the GDP, needs to be replaced by the sustainability index of Herman Daly. Only in that way will be able to see how much real wealth we have left, and how much has been consumed by a reckless, wretched system designed to pillage the planet to enrich the very few.

Isaac Asimov in one of his early essays (in his anthology ‘The Stars in Their Courses’) on population and carrying capacity, put it bluntly:

“Humans have a simple choice: they can either decrease their numbers on their own to live within the Earth’s carrying capacity or they can let nature do it for them”.

It's past time Bill McGurn stopped deluding his readers with ecological fairy stories and for once told the truth about the actual, precarious position humans are in. That the way the reckless consumption of  resources is going,  there will be little or nothing left for future generations.

Paris Climate Summit Success Hinges On Subduing the 'Old Brain'

"I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second largest emitter to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it". - Barack Obama at the Paris Climate Summit yesterday

Obama's words were bold but his other promise that alternative cleaner energy sources for poorer nations  (like India)  can be funded by Republicans (i.e. the WH can get them to), is perhaps wishful thinking. The Repubs are dug in on this issue, and most of them - see previous post - are not even sufficiently scientifically literate to recognize the problem or want to do something about it. Instead - like WSJ's Matt Ridley in a recent piece ('Your Complete Guide to the Climate Debate', Nov. 28-29, p. A11) they continue to confabulate distortions and lies about it. In fact, contrary to Ridley's header (and as a former scientist he ought to be ashamed of himself) there is NO "debate".

In their analysis of the extent of scientific consensus on global warming (Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22) , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

Ridley,  like the more sophisticated 'pukes, also dredges up other shibboleths*  like "global warming has slowed significantly over the past two decades",  a canard that caused the Reepo Presidential candidates to earn failing marks when they regurgitated it. (See previous post). Ridley is also guilty of making statements such as: "Antarctic ice is increasing" - supposedly offering inconsistent evidence for global warming.  But I already showed the errors of this interpretation in a past post:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/brainiac-goops-screw-it-up-again-on.html

In their book, New World, New Mind: Changing The Way We Think To Change The Future, authors Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich show why humans don't always recognize approaching threats and often fight making necessary changes - even to ensure survival.  For example, referencing overpopulation (p. 197):

"Overpopulation causes no cracking branches, no thunderclaps, no darkening of the cave door. It leads to small annual changes in columns of numbers, hidden in reports.  The lethal threats of overpopulation are not even signaled by demographic statistics.  Those statistics- birth rates, death rates, growth rates, life expectancies and the like - were all very well known to demographers a generation ago. The numbers were there, but to the old mind they signified little, Sure, the population was growing and fast, but so what?"

When the future finally arrived, the recalcitrant old mind (or old brain, given the process called 'mind' emanates from it) could see how overpopulation contributed to the deterioration of the international economic system, and manifested in multiple way such as increases in the prices of food, less potable water, higher energy costs, higher home costs, etc. But instead of accepting the need for change the old mind often invented new rationalizations and excuses not to alter the status quo, e.g. "population growth is needed for economic growth".

The same, of course, pertains to climate change. This has been seen coming since the 1970s but little has been done, say in terms of expediting the emergence of alternative energy sources, until now we have reached a critical threshold for action. Again, the old brain - like that of Donald Trump - fails to appreciate that, as when he babbled on 'Morning Joe':

"One of the dumbest statements I've ever heard in the history of politics ...was Obama's that our number one problem is global warming"

Embodying all the atavistic aspects of the old brain we recognize.

As the authors note, in respect of the inherent problem (p. 3):

"We don't perceive the world as it is, because our nervous system evolved to select only a small extract of reality and to ignore the rest. we never experience exactly the same situation twice, so it would be uneconomical to take in every occurrence. Instead of conveying everything about the world, our nervous system is 'impressed' only by dramatic changes. This internal spotlight makes us sensitive to the beginnings and endings of almost every event more than the changes, whether gigantic or tiny, in the middle. "

In the same early pages, Ornstein and Ehrlich note how this "old Mind" of a nation or people can be ramped up collectively and reinforced if its leaders also display and act on their own 'old Minds' prejudices, beliefs, etc. This is certainly evident in the statements of the current Republican field and their denial of global warming, or distorting it to portray it as not that big a problem.  Thankfully, not all Americans are "old brain"- compromised, as recent polls show that 64 % acknowledge it is mostly human caused, while 53 % say it is the most important issue, even surpassing the economy.

In terms of the Paris Climate Summit, the choices at this point are few to halt the 3.6 F threshold increase the participants are supposedly committed to halting. The problem is the steps needed now may be all but impossible to implement politically - especially as the GOP's old mind denizens have vowed to fight anything Obama agrees to.

To fix ideas, Bill McKibben's mathematical limits are instructive. We have roughly 550 gigatons (gT)  of carbon remaining that we can deposit into the atmosphere before earthly "Hell"  is unleashed in the form of rising seas, hellish temperatures and super heat waves, prolonged droughts and superstorms.

Give a current 30 gT/year deposition rate - and assuming we don't add to it,  that leaves us roughly  18 years before - give or take a fraction -  we end up in a likely runaway greenhouse world. It's a world you don't want to live in, believe me.  McKibben's  point was that if we are to avoid that crash inflection point everything must be done to limit the current rate of carbon deposition, including pursuing alternative energy options and imposing significant carbon taxes to limit demand.

The problem? The energy- and fossil fuel empires that govern most of our politicos and economic system don't see it that way. McKibben cited the fact that Exxon's share price, for example, is based on a total carbon deposition of at least 2,800 gT - which also conforms to expectations set by hedge funds, et al including Peabody Global. Thus, again, oil economics is poised against the welfare of humanity and the planet.

This isn't just scare mongering. The most recent reports on melting glaciers (Denver Post, Nov. 27, p. 16A),  show that "90 percent of the world's glaciers are retreating and many of the smaller ones - as in Glacier National Park - are disappearing most rapidly". Most significant is the impact beyond the loss of majestic scenery (such as wifey and I beheld on trips to Switzerland in 2014 and to Alaska in 2005).  Specifically, "thawing glaciers account for 20 percent of the sea level rise recorded in the past century in the past century adding to the meltwater coming from the polar ice caps and ice sheets."

 To put it as McKibben might: Do you want to be able to drive anywhere you wish cheaply and easily, or do you want to fry in endless 'summers' that last all year long...or ...with hundreds of F5  tornadoes to deal with -not to mention new diseases like cholera, amoebic dysentery and dengue fever?

The answer of the old brained Republicans is twofold: 1) they plan to vote to repeal power plant emission rules limiting CO2, and 2) they aim to block funneling and money to developing nations as part of the UN 'Green Climate Fund' to fight increasing CO2 levels. (WSJ,  Nov. 28-29, p. A5)  Nice guys! But....saddled with old brains!

Apart from the knuckle-dragging Reepos who we expect to be reactionary, McKibben's question needs to be answered by each of the 147 nations represented at the Paris Climate Summit.  The problem is that answering it correctly will mean subduing their "old brains". Can they do it? Given they haven't up to now, I am not too confident!

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-global-warming-deniers-get-better.html


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*An old idea, opinion, or saying that is commonly believed and repeated but which has since been shown to be untrue.

Yes - Population Growth Spurs Higher Commodity Prices

In 1980, the prescient Stanford ecology professor Paul Ehrlich (author of :"The Population Bomb") made a bet with University of Maryland economist Julian Simon related to population increase and material wealth embodied in commodity prices. The bet was for $1,000 - not a mammoth sum but not unreasonable given the implicit uncertainties. The bet was that the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals (chromium, tin, copper tungsten,  and nickel would rise by 1990 (Ehrlich) or fall (Simon.) Simon ended up winning the bet, but that may only have been because of dumb luck in timing and choosing those particular commodities.

Ehrlich was right in one way: the population continued to soar from 4.5 billion in 1980 to0 5.3 billion in 1990. More importantly, a recent paper discloses Ehrlich was only off by two decades and would have trumped Simon had the bet been extended (but then there was no assurance both would be alive toil validate it - as it is Simon died in 1998).

This new paper "Front Boom to Bust:  A Typology of Real Commodity Prices in the Long Run" - from the National Bureau for Economic Research and authored by David S, Jacks, found that over the long run "Real commodity prices of both energy and non-energy commodities have been on the rise from 1950 across all weighting schemes".   Further:

"There is a consistent pattern, in both past and present, of commodity price super cycles which entail decades long positive deviations from these long run trends with the latest set of super cycles likely at their peak. The commodity super cycles are punctuated by booms and busts which are historically pervasive and becoming more exacerbated over time."

In other words, the Jacks' paper portrayed commodity prices as a bit like the stock market: over time the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen. However, that doesn't mean that during any given year or even decade the prices of stocks will rise. In summary, the Jacks' paper found that:"Cumulatively, the picture emerging from this exercise is a clear patter of real, rising commodity prices from at least 1950."

In effect, the Malthusians(we who believe human population growth will lead to scarcity and destitution) ought to have won the bet. Even the Economist's "free exchange" blog pointed out that while Simon may have won the specific bet, the Cornucopians haven't yet proven their position is correct. The blog points out:

"The paper does suggest that while innovation, substitution and conservation can reduce the price impact of rising demand for fundamentally scarce resources, they can't necessarily eliminate it entirely ."

Further:

"Of course, rising demand itself might come to an eventual end given new technologies - or to validate Mr. Ehrlich - the ultimate decline and stabilization of the global population. It may still be too early to tell whether humanity faces Malthusian limits or not."


In fact, it's not too early at all. We know already that Peak Oil occurred internationally in 2005, which means we are now on a downward energy spiral with net energy in the negative bracket. Thus the oil needed to run our energy intense civilization (including for food production) will be harder and harder to extract and lead to more energy consumed for extraction than the (degraded) oil can deliver. Hence, continual net energy loss.  This means economies of all scales will show continued regression (recession) as population increases. In other words, the era of unmitigated growth is over.

Readers interested in learning the details of how Peak Oil impinges our economic future and renders all market (as well as their commodities) volatile and contracting are advised to read the introductory material at :

www.dieoff.org

Hanson in his brief makes a good case for more than half the existing human population being killed off - likely by starvation, disease or violence. The starvation will come because of dwindling oil supplies available for mass food production. There are currently barely 1.2 liters per person per day available for food production, storage and transport in a world of 7.3b people. This compares to 2.2 L in the 1970s when there were 2.7- 3.0b fewer mouths to feed. From 2005 this will diminish by 2-4% per year contingent on population growth - currently at 85m a year. By the time the population reaches 9-10 billion by 2050, that production level may be barely 0.5 L per person which telegraphs mass starvation.

Perhaps nearly half as may will be felled by disease, especially bacterial that we'd earlier controlled through the use of antibiotics. But by 2050 - likely much earlier - all the pathogenic bacteria will be antibiotic resistant. One simple cut - say even a paper cut - could be a death sentence.


During all this time available commodities will be plummeting, especially the metals, but also grains. Quite possibly grains to support meat production will cease being available by 2025 because the cost will be so prohibitive.

Violence is a given as populations press each other for scare resources, including critical commodities. When the old energy order finally breaks down- with power grids collapsed because of excess demand during extended global warming heat waves- it will literally be every man for himself.  In such a brutish world that beckons 'survival of the fittest'  it's difficult to imagine even the much ballyhooed brain neuroplasticity (proposed by Steven Pinker) saving the day- say encouraging the better angels of our nature.  When water and food are scarce, and energy supplies adequate to even fill a gas tank or pump water are non-existent, there is the potential for all kinds of violence.

Is there a way out? Hanson doesn't hesitate to assert there is, but it entails replacing capitalism with democracy. Capitalism is not and never has been democratic because it asymmetrically  bestows the power of resource control and ownership only on the very few. Worse, capitalism is the single worst thing for the environment because it consumes actual wealth in the form of natural resources (and energy) to convert most into useless consumer waste. In doing so it fuels a preposterous "growth" that is at the basis of making the Malthusian future a reality.

The Cornucopians get it wrong because they don't see population growth for the toxin it is, and can't put 2 plus 2 together to see how it leads to the Malthusian nightmare.  All of this comes back to net energy which is that energy humans need to survive. If the oil taken from the ground, say by fracking, only has a ratio of 1:1 (for energy produced to energy consumed) then it is useless to extract it. The same amount of oil-energy you are using up to get it, is basically what it carries. There is no net gain.

It is the net gain that has allowed humans to reproduce and cover the globe. It is the retraction of net gain that will eliminate a majority of  humans. In effect, for breakeven oil one finds Q(net) = 0.  We are fast approaching the last 700 bbl of oil - which we are fast approaching - calculations show Q(net) = - Q  so that the energy extracted - say from shale oil or tracking - will always be less that the energy that can be delivered. Worse, the difficulty of extracting this type of degraded oil-energy always comes with fearsome ecological costs - essentially destroying the future natural wealth of the planet.

Unless the human population is radically reduced  to the carrying capacity limit, there is no way we can avoid the Malthusian future to which we are headed. The math simply doesn't support it and the fact that so many economists don't see that merely confirms Jay Hanson's point that economics is no longer based on reality but on fantasy. (He notes that the very notion of "Pareto Optimality" bears this out.)

Alternative sources of energy are a possibility, but their diffuse nature again means a limited human population is presumed for them to work. You are simply not going to run glass factories and tanks or jet plane plants on solar energy - or even a combination of solar, wind and geothermal. It's just not going to happen.

Last, the capitalist's favorite barometer, the GDP, needs to be replaced by the sustainability index of Herman Daly. Only in that way will be able to see how much real wealth we have left, and how much has been consumed by a reckless, wretched system designed to pillage the planet to enrich the very few.

A World Of 7 Billion: Not So Nice!

Roughly on the date of October 31, 2011, according to the UN Population Fund, 7 billion humans will inhabit the planet. This will represent the latest in an exponentiating increase of humans - all competing for fuel, food, water and jobs. To put it in perspective, according to demographers, the world's population didn't reach 1 billion until 1804 - that is more than five thousand years from the first agricultural societies to get to 1 billion!

It then took 123 years to hit the 2 billion mark in 1927, and only another 32 years to hit the 3 billion mark, in 1959. Merely 15 years later, 4 billion, and 5 billion in 1987, then 6 billion in 1998. Thus, only 13 years after that high mark we are hitting 7 billion. Essentially, the global population has doubled in merely 46 years. Is this a good thing or bad?

Depends on which perspective you take! According to the Pew Research Center, in a report released last Wednesday, U.S. birth rates are declining owing to the recession. The analysis, based on data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, suggested women were putting off having babies while the economy was weak.

Well duh! I mean, if you can't even feed your existing family, say of two kids, why in the world would you add a third and have to worry over that extra mouth to feed too?

Anyway, according to preliminary data from 2010, the rates dropped to 64.7 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44, from 69.6 births per thousand women in 2007, the year the recession began. The report analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau.

Others, mainly of the Right, have seen these stats as a bad omen. Since their economic model is predicated on capitalism - which requires an endless procession of "consumers" for its products - say to keep the GDP stable (70% of GDP is provided by ordinary consumption), then it stands to reason it will want as many of these consuming "units" as possible. Since the young are the greediest consumers, the preference will always also be for new babies as opposed to more old people! It is also obvious that this shtick carries over to their other arguments, including the canard-based one that we need ever more workers to support the benefits of elderly beneficiaries. They fret that the current ratio of barely 3 workers to each retiree is not enough.

Nowhere, certainly in the corporo-media, is any of this codswallop skewered as it ought to be! For example, demanding endless consumers requires massive impacts on the natural resource base, including oil, to support the manufacture and distribution of said products. At some point, putatively passed in 2005 (the date for Peak Oil applied to conventional oil stores) there must be diminishing returns and there are.

As we've also seen, when major financial crises strike citizens have no choice but to pull back in spending, in order to pay off existing debts etc. With this comes a harsh realization, as expressed by one letter writer in today's WSJ (p. A16) that: "30 years of unhealthy income distribution has led to too many years of artificial living standards built on credit".

Indeed. so the question becomes:Why - in an era with proclaimed "higher efficiencies" do we need more people to support social insurance beneficiaries? The reason is that instead of using capital for job formation it has been used for war making, for speculation in risky markets using risky devices (derivatives) and sending the capital overseas to support foreign jobs instead! Thus, the claim we "need more workers" must be taken with a grain, because the actions of our pols and companies don't support or resonate with that contention.

The other part of the argument that falls apart, is the fact the more worker promoters don't grasp they are endorsing a population Pyramid scheme. Because if we push American females to have 15 million more kids - then what will we need to do to support them in their old age? Obviously we will have to massively cut their benefits, or bring in millions of foreign workers. Then...who will support them...or do we just intend to tell them, 'Hasta la vista! You've been useful to helping us, now go home!"

Another weakness of this argument: How can you assert there is a need for more workers to support Social security recipients, when there are already 24 million under- or unemployed? How about hiring that lot first, before demanding women make more babies which will merely add to the expanding surplus labor force. (Indeed, the country's added population since 2000 is about 20% higher than the total number of the unemployed.)

The actual fact, as the graphics attached show, is that the planet can ill afford more people! One of the grossest effects has been the human impact on ecosystems. Over the past 50 years alone, humans - by thier numbers and consumption - have altered more ecosystems than any other period in history. This has been primarily to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh lumber for shelters, fresh water, and fuel. Fuel is an especially parlous resource. As Geologist Colin Campbell has pointed out, we're now consuming about 31 billion bls. a year with about 7 billion humans, but by 2050 - when the world is expected to have 9 billion, there will only be a supply of about 14 billion bls. a year. In other words, the supply will be more than halved, as the population is 22% larger.

This is a recipe for a crash, a population crash, since then the extra 22% will not be able to find enough food, water, fuel etc. to survive. Water is obviously the biggest constraint. In the ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As they note (p. 47):

“When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”

The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects (see. eg. recent issues of Eos) and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.

Meanwhile, the latest meme to emerge, from Nicholas Eberstadt, is that we don't really have a population explosion but a "health explosion". E.g.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/16/fewer-babies-for-better-or-worse/not-a-population-explosion-but-a-health-explosion?scp=4&sq=Population&st=cse

He insists we shouldn't be fretting over third world population growth but rather the increasing number of humans in all nations able to live longer because of health enhancements, treatments and prevention.

So what, should we take all the elderly and line them up at the age of 65, then shoot them? Is that the implied solution?

The crux of the argument is the world’s population profile is being transformed by a very different sort of demographic phenomenon than poor people's birth rates: namely, a growing and seemingly unstoppable worldwide march toward sub-replacement fertility, population aging, and (in a growing number of countries already) long-term population decline. Well, mayhap the guy didn't check out the Sunday Denver Post population story ('7 Billion and counting') and the photo of a Ugandan's family with 14 children.

Adds an expert demographer (John Bongaarts) quoted in the piece, in referring to the coming population spike in Africa:

"Most of that growth will be in Africa's cities and in those cities it will be almost all in slums where living conditions will be horrible."

In addition, because the production of babies will outpace job creation, vast hordes of young people in Congo, Uganda, Zaire, Malawi, Burundi etc. will join "rebel" gangs, be issued AK-47s and told to fight for their freedoms. Of course, they'll also be told that includes raping and plundering. Such are the spoils when there is too great a demographic imbalance caused by poorly thought out population plans.

By far the worst aspects will manifest when both Peak Oil and climate change attain their respective critical points (or catastrophe cusps), which I project to be at or near 2025. We will then be experiencing massive disruptive climate upheaval across the planet almost every month, even as the energy supplies needed to abate it - or even reconstruct afterwards- are almost nil.

People, fasten your seat belts, because you will need them!