Red-Hot Realities for a Finite Planet

FSP  believes the following article by Stephanie Mills to be the best single educational piece about the facts and politics of population issues. It is reprinted here, with some population numbers updated to 1997.

Talking about overpopulation leads you right across a bed of coals--red-hot realities like sex, death, wealth, poverty, power, and morality. There are no easy answers. But having come this far..., you must be willing to consider some of the causes and effects of environmental problems. Arguments rage about maximum sustainable numbers, but it's a truism that the more of us there are on a planet, the less raw material and room to move (or time to plan).

Taking steps to curb population growth courts conflict with a spectacular array of special-interest groups, from anti-abortionists to a handful of radical feminists who regard gestational processes as sacrosanct. Others who take a dim view of population control are members of minority groups and native peoples, who have good reason to worry that limiting their numbers could lead to their extinction.

At first glance, it may be hard to see how overpopulation could be your problem--the effects of overpopulation are seldom evident as such. But population is a factor (although not the only one) in every problem associated with urbanization and industrialization--growth. Complicating our understanding further, there are dramatic regional differences in population growth-rates, and in per-capita resource-consumption rates, which means that the population problem is manifested differently in different parts of the world.

In the developed world, overpopulation makes itself noticeable by compounding the consequences of excess: pollution, solid-waste disposal, automotive congestion, urban sprawl.

In the developing world, the struggle for subsistence--from the land or sea--intensifies with every generation: Increasing numbers of subsistence farmers are driven onto lands that are unsuitable for farming; women are driven further afield in the quest for firewood; and fishery after fishery collapses from contamination and over exploitation. And, according to Zero Population Growth, for the past 25 years the rate of increase in atmospheric CO₂--the greenhouse gas--has matched the rate of population growth almost exactly.

So even in the wilderness you encounter adverse environmental effects, such as acid rain, which have been amplified and multiplied by overpopulation.

Once you grasp the implications of rapid population growth, it becomes difficult not to be strident about it. I know. I broke into the ecology biz back in 1969, announcing in my college commencement address something that seemed to be only common sense: People like myself, who thought that population was becoming an overwhelming problem, ought to do something about it, and not have children.

So I haven't. It seemed simple enough to me. The only thing that's going to reverse overpopulation is reducing family size to below replacement level. All that requires is birth control ... and rather a lot of social change.

The Amazing Mating Machine

But the time and room for debate are shrinking. World population stands at [5.8] billion now, and is expected to double in 39 years according to the Population Reference Bureau. Consider our history: In 35,000 B.C., according to best estimates, our species numbered 3 million. Livelihood was earned by hunting and gathering--very low-tech and sustainable. By 8,000 B.C., gardening had been invented, and our numbers increased to 8 million. With the arrival of the Bronze Age 4,000 years later, the human population reached 86 million. By the beginning of the Common Era, the numbers had increased to 300 million. At the dawn of the Renaissance 1,400 years later, there were 336 million people in the world. Steady growth that was alarming only if you happened to be an aboriginal occupant of a "new world," standing in the path of some empire's expansion. But in recent centuries, the growth has been compounding itself with shocking effect.

"In 1830, 1 billion people inhabited the Earth," writes Population Institute President Werner Fornos, in Technology Review. "A century passed before the population reached 2 billion. Thirty years later, in 1960, it hit 3 billion; 15 years later, 4 billion; and by 1986--only 11 years later-5 billion ... the 6 billion mark could be reached in 1995."

How did this runaway phenomenon come about? The basic constraints on the growth of any population of organisms are food supply, disease, and predation. Using our unique tool- and language-making gifts, we humans have cleverly (if not wisely) evaded these constraints.

Since the days when there were only a few million of us, there have been quantum changes. Early on, we shifted from a nomadic to an agricultural civilization, increasing our food supplies and our ability to store food. This great change also marked the beginning of serious deforestation and the buildup of salt in irrigated lands.

More recently, we tapped into the finite and never-to-be-repeated bonus of fossil fuels, which helped power the industrialization of agriculture and spurred urbanization. Disease control and greater food security decreased infant mortality.

This change in death rates is extremely significant. While human reproductive potential is fairly constant, the question of whether you live to exercise it is not. When the annual birth-rate exceeds the death rate, the population grows. So when family size exceeds two children, population growth follows. Every minute now, 180 people are born and 100 die, for a net gain of about 11,000 souls per hour.

Exponential Growth

Population growth works like compound interest. If a couple has four children (the average number a woman bears today is 3.5), they've replaced themselves twice in one generation. If each of the children follows suit, there will be 16 grandchildren, then 64 great-grandchildren. In four generations, this Adam and Eve have multiplied themselves better than 200 times. (How many showed up at your last family reunion?)

Mother Nature doesn't exhibit much tolerance for such growth patterns. In Population Biology, Thomas C. Emmel writes: "Exponential growth is abruptly terminated when the carrying capacity of the environment is surpassed and environmental resistance becomes effective more or less suddenly. Such growth curves are characteristic of rapidly reproducing and maturing annual plants, seasonal insect flushes, and man's population growth in recent years, but in general, they are very short-lived phenomena for obvious reasons."There is a French riddle that illustrates exponential growth. Here's how it appeared in the 1972 classic, Limits to Growth:

"Suppose you own a pond on which a water lily is growing. The lily plant doubles in size each day. If the lily were allowed to grow unchecked, it would completely cover the pond in 30 days, choking off the other forms of life in the water. For a long time, the lily plant seems small, and so you decide not to worry about cutting it back until it covers half the pond. On what day will that be? On the 29th day, of course. You have one day to save the pond."

The More The Merrier?

Well, things are getting pretty thick around the old lily pond, but we're still in denial about the necessity to limit our numbers. You can probably find some reasons in your own personal experience. How could all those perfectly human impulses--to bring forth and love children, to do like mom and dad did (or better)--be anything but good? The prospects of another baby to enjoy and another person to share the work and carry on the family name are compelling to parents, especially in agrarian societies. That can make zero population growth a tough sell in the developing world.

One screeching brake on our developing a useful approach to the population problem is theological. The dominant religions of the West reflect the premise that homo sapiens is the most important critter on the planet. God made man in His own image, after all--and this is reflected in the Biblical injunction to "be fruitful multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." These days there is a lively discussion over the accuracy of that King James translation, but valid or not, generations have read it as a manifest destiny.

Another impediment to perceiving and acting on overpopulation has been conventional economics, which activist and author Hazel Henderson has called "a form of brain damage." For the most part, economists have been so enraptured by growth, and the magic of markets, that they've been blind to growth's downside. The problem with economics is that it only values the things it can count. Much of what constitutes quality of life can't be measured or counted, and so is omitted from the definition of a successful economic system.

For example, economist Julian Simon, whose work has served as a rationalization for recent U.S. population non-policy, maintains that population growth generates its own solutions. An increased number of humans means not only increased inventiveness, but also additional demand, which will drive a search for substitutes for depleted resources, clean air, and fresh water. Even if this worked, however, the resource for which there is no substitute is biodiversity. Dr. Simon's cheery optimism is bad news for other species.

Who's to Blame For Overpopulation?

Even among those who agree overpopulation is a problem, there are strong disagreements. Within the environmental and social-change movements, population debate from the mid-'70s onward drifted into a polarity of contending world views, which I will call the Darwinists and the Marxists. Each defines the problem differently. (My apologies to scholars and devotees of these great thinkers, for employing the names as shorthand.)

To Darwinists, or "biological determinists," as they are sometimes known, the arrival of population equilibrium is an inevitability. The only question is whether it will come about through a decrease in birth rates or an increase in death rates from famine, pandemic disease, and war. Some Darwinists, like Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman, have inferred that starvation and fatal diseases still have their rightful place in human ecology. It's a pretty unpopular view, but it does point out that our reluctance to employ birth control is far exceeded by our reluctance to give up death control.

Darwinists see planet Earth as an ecosystem, and our species as just one among millions, interdependent with all, and subject to the laws of nature. The detachment in this evolutionary view can tip over into an insensitivity to the tragedies of individual lives, and an obtuseness about politics. For one thing, human beings have all the votes on this issue, and it's all too human to place one's individual needs and desires before the good of the whole. For another, although homo sapiens is all one species, disregarding the inequality of means among people falsifies the picture.

The "Marxist" sector views the problem as one of power--who's got it and who doesn't. They conclude that social oppression and economic imperialism are the essential causes of all great ills. The belief that scarcity is socially caused and socially curable has led analysts from this camp to regard any proposal to limit human numbers as an evasion of the real issue--revolutionizing social and economic arrangements .Besides these people, there are feminists, whose claim to an opinion on overpopulation is perhaps the most secure, because it is women's bodies and women's lives that determine--and are mostly determined by--reproduction.

In all this discussion, it is important to remember that childbearing and nurturing have been women's lot, while policy-making has been the domain of men. Women are well aware that childbearing is one of the greatest causes of female mortality, and that generous spacing between births is healthier for all concerned, whether families are rich or poor. Consequently, mothers may have a slightly different take on the advantages of population growth than do merchants, bishops, generals, or kings.

"Overpopulation is just a symptom of a basic human-rights problem," says Hazel Henderson. The general idea is that if women were fully compensated participants in the economic life of their communities, and thus emboldened to control their fertility; and if men assumed equal responsibility for household duties and the nurture of their offspring, smaller families and greater prosperity might well ensue. As it stands now, sexism is such a pervasive force in the world that a preference for male babies even drives Chinese couples into violations of their country's stringent one-child-per family policy. And in most of Asia, North Africa, and Latin America the death rate for young women is higher than that of men as a consequence of neglect.

Carrying Capacity: Recognizing Limits

So, suppose we admit there's a complex interplay of social, cultural, and biological factors driving overpopulation. And that--thanks to the intervention of medicine, technology, and trade -- the consequences of population growth aren't always obvious. That complexity means that any action taken by individuals, communities, nations, and the community of nations will likely offend someone. Nonetheless, on a finite planet, maximizing human reproduction clearly comes at great ecological cost, and a considerable cost in human suffering. What would be a positive goal for humanity in all of this?

We need to determine an optimum human carrying-capacity for Spaceship Earth, then limit our numbers to that. Then we must get on with the colossal tasks of sustainable development in the third and fourth world, and sustainable de-development in the first. The number-crunching for this modest proposal began in earnest nearly 20 years ago.

The aforementioned Limits to Growth was the report of a global modeling study that explored Earth's human-carrying capacity. Using systems analysis, computer projections, and a veritable world of data, the authors played out numerous scenarios for the human future, based on different trends in food production, resources, population, industrial output, and pollution. Assuming no change in present patterns, the authors predicted a crash in both population and industrial capacity by the next century. That was the bad news. The good news was that the Earth could sustain indefinitely a population of 6 billion at a European standard of comfort. We're [nearing] that 6 billion mark [now], however.

Besides the sheer number of us, our environmental impact has also to do with the choices that we, industry, and government make about resource consumption and waste disposal; about land use and transportation; about energy generation and conservation. Decisions about all those things can magnify or modify the impact of the in human numbers.

Ecologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, in their recent book, The Population Explosion, suggest the following equation for thinking about some of these interactions: Impact equals Population X Affluence X Technology, or I = PAT. Understood that way, there's no single culprit. I = PAT helps explain why population is not just a problem of the developing countries. Although countries like the U.S. and Japan have relatively low populations, this is counteracted by the abundance of affluence and technology.

According to the Ehrlich equation, the environmental impact of a baby born in the U.S. will be 35 times that of an Indian baby, and 280 times that of a Haitian child. Therefore it makes both practical and moral sense for people on the affluent side of the equation to reduce their impacts on the environment by reducing waste and, ultimately, consumption, as well as by reducing family size.

Overpopulation: Why Is It Hard to Talk about?

Of course, if there is to be such a thing as family planning, let alone population control, there will have to be good sex education and unlimited access to contraception and abortion (because no contraceptive method is 100-percent effective).

I notice that now I feel rather nervous making that assertion, which was commonplace during the '70s. It's a measure of the chill and fear that the antiabortion movement has imposed on the discourse. I am not, I confess, very eager to confront their unreason and occasional violence.

Their lobby has had disastrous effects: a 42-percent reduction in domestic family-planning funds; an increased incidence of teenage motherhood; a thwarted introduction to the U.S. of RU 486, a promising abortifacient drug widely used in France; and the reversal of our international population policy.

A 1985 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act eliminated U.S. funding to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and severely reduced our support of the international Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) on the grounds that they supported programs that condoned abortion. The funding cutoff hit UNFPA and IPPF at a time when the vast majority of countries in the developing world had subscribed to the voluntary reduction of population growth and the promotion of family planning, and were ready for help.

Few are immune to the fear. As a Congressman and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, George Bush spoke of the need to curb the world's fertility. But [as President] he wimped out..., giving ... Albert Gore [when he was Senator] cause to note that "An objective observer would have to conclude that Bush probably changed his mind on this question because he is politically scared of a tiny minority within the right-to-life movement." Perhaps not all terrorists live offshore.

Suppose we can muster the political backbone to weather the controversy, to preserve reproductive rights, and to support international family planning (a big if, but suppose). The promising news is that, despite overpopulation being a touchy subject for polite conversation, among the thinkers who confront it, the old polarity seems to be shifting.

A consensus seems to have emerged. Thus we find that Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the premier population bombers of our time, have become very explicit in their advocacy of solutions that are embedded in a larger social context. The Ehrlichs maintain that the essentials of reduced fertility are "adequate nutrition, proper sanitation, basic health care, education of women, and equal rights for women."

It's hard to imagine a principled and humane person disagreeing with this approach (although Marxists and Darwinists might differ on significant details of population-control programs--say, incentives and punishments around family size). Coming up with the understanding, will, and wealth to act on the problem may seem impossible, however. The price tag for bringing about a stable population of 8 billion in the year 2050 would be about $300 billion, writes Chicago bioregionalist Beatrice Briggs, in the magazine Conscious Choice.

"While this is a staggering sum," she continues, "it is useful to consider that in the U.S. each year we spend $2 billion on firearms and hunting equipment, $4 billion on athletic footwear, $118 billion on advertising, and $300 billion on defense." If that doesn't put the price of population control in perspective, just try to imagine the necessities imposed by decently accommodating twice the Earth's current population, 39 years hence.

Stephanie Mills has been a prolific writer and speaker on issues of population and bioregionalism for decades. She is the author of Whatever Happened to Ecology, in part a recounting of her early days as "a population bomber." Mills is the editor of In Praise of Nature, the author of over eighty articles which have appeared in a variety of periodicals. Mills's third book, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land, was published by Beacon Press in 1995. New Age Journal called this book "A terrifically inspiring and beautifully written book about grassroots efforts to help nature heal."

Mills lives on 35 acres of Scotch pines near Maple City, Michigan.

This article appeared in the May/June 1991 issue of Garbage Magazine, Vol. 5, Article #33, and Florida Population Forum, with permission of Dovetale Publishers.

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