Goodbye Blue Sky

This week I discuss Professor Gary Peters article on world population. Between 1970-2009, global population doubled from 3.5bn-6.8bn, an alarmingly increased rate considering previous trends of growth. Coinciding with the rapid depletion of oil (amongst other energy resources), raw materials, natural habitats, biodiversity, and the destruction and degradation of the litho-bio-hydro-cryo-atmos-spheres, it’s plausible the "Earth cannot sustain a growing population of ever-wealthier people living on a planet that has a finite supply of resources, and the 21^stC is going to be the proving ground for this proposition". 

   A still taken from Blommkamps 'Elysium' - a 

    world where the rich escaped into space to 

     continue their luxurious existence in splendid isolation. 

Logic tells us to prepare ourselves against slipping into this dangerous assumption the earth can sustain us infinitely - "bring our population into a closer balance with earth's carrying capacity for our species". Many advocate the illusion of “sustainable-growth”, which is a demented oxymoron designed to appease those trying to raise the real questions. Peters quotes Kenneth Boulding’s brilliant comment on the different views of Earth’s carrying capacity, neatly quipped as such; "anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist". Yet despite brilliant works such as ‘The Spirit Level’ or ‘Limits to Growth’, many still remain blind to the seemingly obvious view that beyond a certain threshold, wealth does little more to increase our happiness. 

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/magazine/ngm-food-anthem

Whereas "the economy (may) ha(ve) gotten bigger, the ecosystem has not" (Athanasiou, 1998), our continued expansion continues to encroach on the planet’s health, and certainly on its biodiversity, with more and more fears of a sixth mass extinction resulting from anthropogenic activity. As Peters aptly puts it, "it is not politically correct today to suggest that population growth may be straining the planet beyond its capacity to provide for human needs and wants without considerable suffering", but population is THE elephant in the room, as Cohen said in 1995 that we will soon, if not already surpassed, the point where Earth can support us to a quality of life we would wish our grandchildren to enjoy. The current UN projections fortunately show a stabilising at around 10bn by century’s end, but with Climate Change already looming overhead, can we risk this uncertainty and push the planet beyond it’s limits? Will we be able to cooperate on a global scale and address this rapidly mounting issue, it IS an inconvenient truth that is unpopular and politically incorrect, but an irrefutable disaster waiting to happen. 

An interesting article - 

‘As population size increases… individuals begin to compete for resources and there is a corresponding decrease in the rate of population increase. Eventually, the population stabilises at a level where resources are used at the same rate as they are supplied (known as the carrying capacity)’ - Richard J. Ladle and Lindsey Gillson (2009)

Run Like Hell

As the basis for this research blog, my focus will be on the theories and myths of the Earth's "Carrying Capacity"; the disagreements, discrepancies, and potential dangers of unchecked population growth on a finite planet (Meadows, Meadows, Randers and Behrens III, 1972; Harding, 2006). In definition: 'The maximum population, also called Earth's carrying capacity, is the maximum number of people that can live on the food and other resources available on planet Earth' (Franck, von Bloh, Müller, Bondeau, and Sakschewski, 2011). It is a balance between 'totality of ecological services the Earth system can provide (“supply side”)' against 'totality of ecological human needs according to judicious minimum standards (“demand side”)' (Franck et al., 2011). 

Figure 1: The graph to the right is a median projection of the Earth's population trajectory (UN), by the end of the 21stC heading towards stabilising between 9 and 10bn people on earth, a very popular and widely used image. Not shown on this graph, was the margin of error given to this calculation, showing a 3bn range either side of this path, even heading further beyond 12bn.  

Franck et al. admitted their results did not account for other limitations besides very intensive land use. Particularly such crucial problems as water consumption, nutrients, crop protection, energy, and land-use patterns. I would include resource wars, disease, climate change, cataclysms (super-volcano, meteor impact etc), that would potentially have devastating consequences on not only our species and the earth, but our capabilities and overall CC.

In the"Anthropocene", the fact that humans have re-defined natural processes into a new geological epoch (where we sift more material than natural processes for example). 'Humans, with their unrivalled capacity for ecosystem engineering' (Ellis, 2011: 1029), particularly in the past 300 years overwhelming data supports the theory of we have/are turning the biosphere into an interconnected web of Anthromes (anthropogenic-biomes) (Ellis, 2011). 'This transformation (to an anthropogenic biosphere) remains incomplete, as significant wildlands persist … novel ecosystems (have been) altered significantly but not completely' (Ellis, 2011: 1029). 

Since 1970 the global population has doubled (reaching 7bn in October 2012), and is seen as a sign of a healthy global economy (Peters, 2011), but even in 1995 demographers such as Cohen were claiming 'the possibility must be considered seriously that the number of people on the Earth has reached, or will reach within half a century, the maximum number the Earth can support in modes of life that we and our children and their children will choose to want' (p112-113). It is not only a strain on our own species, in fact 'the sheer magnitude of the human population has profound implications because of the demands placed on the environment'  on the Earth in its entirety.