Peak Everything (21 page)
Authors: Richard Heinberg
William Stanton is a retired geologist and contemporary author who has taken up Malthus's mantle in a well-researched but grim and controversial book,
The Rapid Growth of Human Populations, 1750-2000.
In it, he compiles population data on virtually every nation: each page features a country chart accompanied by a paragraph or two describing the unique historical circumstances that caused the line on the graph to assume its particular shape. Want to know the population history of the Maldives? The chart and explanatory paragraphs are on page 196. These typically take up about half of each page; the other half is devoted to the running text, a sometimes highly opinionated discussion of population and resources.
The Rapid Growth of Human Populations, 1750-2000.
In it, he compiles population data on virtually every nation: each page features a country chart accompanied by a paragraph or two describing the unique historical circumstances that caused the line on the graph to assume its particular shape. Want to know the population history of the Maldives? The chart and explanatory paragraphs are on page 196. These typically take up about half of each page; the other half is devoted to the running text, a sometimes highly opinionated discussion of population and resources.
A thorough and proud Malthusian, Stanton also takes an uncompromising stance against multiculturalism, the welfare state, and immigration: he considers conventional liberal attitudes toward these as forms of “sentimentality” that only make humanity's problems worse. Here are some representative passages:
Compassion is a luxury available to people enjoying peace and plenty, who are confident of their place in society.... They apply it to the hungry, needy, or oppressed. It makes them feel virtuous â until the needy try to take advantage of the givers.... Human ârights' often conflict with each other. For example, if a couple insists on their âright' to have lots of babies, the family that results may lose its âright' to enjoy a comfortable standard of living....
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In a more recent essay, “Oil and People,” published in the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) newsletter #55 (July 2005), Stanton writes:
So the population reduction scenario with the best chance of success has to be Darwinian in all its aspects, with none of the sentimentality that shrouded the second half of the 20
th
Century in a dense fog of political correctness.... The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximize the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.
th
Century in a dense fog of political correctness.... The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximize the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.
The scenario is: Immigration is banned. Unauthorized arrivals are treated as criminals. Every woman is entitled to raise one healthy child. No religious or cultural exceptions can be made, but entitlements can be traded. Abortion or infanticide is compulsory if the fetus or baby proves to be handicapped (Darwinian selection weeds out the unfit). When, through old age, accident or disease, an individual becomes more of a burden than a benefit to society, his or her life is humanely ended. Voluntary euthanasia is legal and made easy. Imprisonment is rare, replaced by corporal punishment for lesser offences and painless capital punishment for greater.
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In subsequent online discussions, Stanton was excoriated for these statements. One writer, identified only by pseudonym, accused Stanton of far-right political leanings, using terms I am unable to reprint as they may be considered libelous in some countries.
Colin Campbell, ASPO's founder, had the last word in the discussion:
I think [Stanton] was proposing some sort of managed decline (as for example by hanging criminals) rather than just letting Nature take its course in which the strong eat the weak. I think he was simply suggesting how Britain might react and achieve in isolation the reduction imposed by
Nature. I don't think there was anything particularly xenophobic: the Nigerians would be equally free to solve their same problem however they might....
Nature. I don't think there was anything particularly xenophobic: the Nigerians would be equally free to solve their same problem however they might....
Al Bartlett, retired professor of physics at the University of Colorado, developed a lecture in the early 1970s that he has since delivered over 1,600 times. Titled
Arithmetic, Population, and Energy,
the talk explores the meaning of steady growth (so many percent per year), which is of course the sacred basis of all modern economies.
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As Bartlett makes clear,
no
steady rate of growth in population or resource consumption is sustainable.
Arithmetic, Population, and Energy,
the talk explores the meaning of steady growth (so many percent per year), which is of course the sacred basis of all modern economies.
4
As Bartlett makes clear,
no
steady rate of growth in population or resource consumption is sustainable.
During the course of the lecture, he asks, “Well, what can we do about this? What makes the population problem worse, and what reduces it?” On the screen he projects a slide with two columns of words. In the left-hand column are the principal factors leading to population growth; in the right, factors leading to a decrease of population.
Bartlett notes that population growth will cease at some point: the mathematics assures us of that. Moreover, we need not do anything to solve the population problem; nature will take care of that for us. Sooner or later, from the right-hand column nature will
choose some method or methods of limiting human numbers. But the options chosen may not be to our liking. The only way we can avoid having to live with (or die by) nature's choices is to proactively choose for ourselves which options from the right-hand column we would prefer voluntarily to implement. Hesitating in our choice, or failing to implement it, merely forces nature's hand.
choose some method or methods of limiting human numbers. But the options chosen may not be to our liking. The only way we can avoid having to live with (or die by) nature's choices is to proactively choose for ourselves which options from the right-hand column we would prefer voluntarily to implement. Hesitating in our choice, or failing to implement it, merely forces nature's hand.
Table of Options
| Increase Populations | Decrease Populations |
|---|---|
| Procreation | Abstention |
| Motherhood | Contraception/Abortion |
| Large Families | Small families |
| Immigration | Stopping Immigration |
| Medicine | |
| Public Health | Disease |
| Sanitation | |
| Peace | War |
| Law and Order | Murder/Violence |
| Scientific Agriculture | Famine |
| Accident Prevention | Accidents |
| Clean Air | Pollution (Smoking) |
| Ignorance of the Problem |
Toward the end of his lecture, Bartlett quotes Isaac Asimov, from an interview with Bill Moyers recorded in 1989. Moyers asked Asimov, “What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?” Asimov replied:
It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor: if two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to stay as long as you want for whatever you need. And everyone believes in freedom of the bathroom; it should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang on the door, Aren't you through yet? and so on. In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive [overpopulation]. Convenience and decency cannot survive [overpopulation]. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies, the more people there are, the less one person matters.
Urinetown, indeed.
All of this is dreary and distressing, and that's why most people prefer simply to avoid the topic. None of us
wants
to have to choose anything from Bartlett's second column. Even the most agreeable
items (abstention, abortion, contraception, and small families) are controversial, especially if proposed as anything other than individual, voluntary options. Controlling immigration, which is essential to enabling any nation to control domestic population growth, is enormously controversial, as immigrants already often face discrimination in many forms. In each case, one or another group would object that human rights are being sacrificed. Yet nature does not negotiate: the Earth is a bounded sphere, and human population growth and consumption growth
will
be reined in. So it appears we must give up at least
some
human rights if we are to avoid nature's solutions â which have traditionally consisted of famine and disease, as well as the instinctive human response to fight over scarce resources.
wants
to have to choose anything from Bartlett's second column. Even the most agreeable
items (abstention, abortion, contraception, and small families) are controversial, especially if proposed as anything other than individual, voluntary options. Controlling immigration, which is essential to enabling any nation to control domestic population growth, is enormously controversial, as immigrants already often face discrimination in many forms. In each case, one or another group would object that human rights are being sacrificed. Yet nature does not negotiate: the Earth is a bounded sphere, and human population growth and consumption growth
will
be reined in. So it appears we must give up at least
some
human rights if we are to avoid nature's solutions â which have traditionally consisted of famine and disease, as well as the instinctive human response to fight over scarce resources.
Should we then throw human rights to the wind, as Stanton seems to do? Capital punishment, compulsory infanticide, or abortion â wouldn't adopting these as policy be equivalent to rolling back two or more centuries of gains in humanitarian thinking and social practice? And could such policies ever gain hold in a truly democratic society, or does the avoidance of demographic collapse thus also imply authoritarian governance?
I don't think it has to. And I'm not about to give up on humanitarianism. But there is an essential lesson here. If we want peace, democracy, and human rights, we must work to create the ecological condition essential for these things to exist: i.e., a stable human population at â or
less than
â the environment's long-term carrying capacity.
less than
â the environment's long-term carrying capacity.
This is a lesson that earlier humans internalized, to one degree or another. But during the first half of the fossil-fuel era we could afford to forget it: we were creating new temporary carrying capacity left and right. We could dream of “freedom of the bathroom” â human rights to food, education, health care, housing, and so on â no matter how many of us there were. Now, as that phantom carrying capacity is set to disappear, and as the human population is overshooting the natural limits of topsoil, water, fish, and fuels, the ideals we have come to hold are being threatened.
I do not advocate an absolute ecological determinism (as Stanton seems very close to doing): faced with population pressure
and resource depletion, some societies do better than others (at least temporarily) at maintaining a humane social environment. Peak Oil won't necessarily lead to
Soylent Green
â unless we ignore the lesson.
and resource depletion, some societies do better than others (at least temporarily) at maintaining a humane social environment. Peak Oil won't necessarily lead to
Soylent Green
â unless we ignore the lesson.
To do so â to think that we can advocate for human rights, peace, and social justice while ignoring their necessary ecological basis â is both intellectually dishonest and ultimately self-defeating.
The longer we put off choosing the nicer methods of achieving demographic stability, the more likely the nasty ones become, whether imposed by nature or by some fascistic regime. Urine Good Company might represent a mild version of what could actually be in store if we let the marketplace, corporations, and secretive, militaristic governments come up with eugenic solutions to our population dilemma.
The proponents of fascistic “solutions” (I'm not suggesting that Stanton is in that category, by the way) are likely to justify their calls for war and ethnic cleansing with an appeal to human nature: we must abandon our recently acquired squeamishness and sentimentality and do what any self-respecting caveman would have done when faced with a resource crisis â make sure that it is
they
who starve or are exterminated, and that it is
our
children who survive, and thus
our
genes that are passed along.
they
who starve or are exterminated, and that it is
our
children who survive, and thus
our
genes that are passed along.
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