In a recently published paper in Nature Sustainability, a group of scientists concluded that the Earth can support, at best, only 7 billion people at the subsistence level (up from 7.6 billion this June). Achieving a “high level of life satisfaction” for everyone will push the biophysical boundaries of the Earth to the limit and lead to ecological collapse.
Despite the seeming scientific accuracy of such statements, they are no longer new - the fact that population and consumption may soon exceed the fixed "carrying capacity" of the Earth, they have been talking for a long time and confidently. This concept seems to have its origins in 19th century sea transportation when reference was made to the carrying capacity of steamboats. This concept came to land at the end of the 19th century, when they began to refer to the maximum number of livestock that could be supported by ecosystems of pastures and grazing lands.
When applied to ecology, this concept is problematic. The cargo does not multiply at will. And the capacity of an ecosystem cannot be determined by the drawings of an engineer. However, environmental scientists for decades have applied this concept to human societies with a claimed precision that belies its vague nature.
Ecologist William Vogt first did so in the 1940s, predicting that overuse of agricultural land would lead to soil depletion and then disaster. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Paul Ehrlich focused on food production and the Club of Rome on material resources. Environmentalists and activists of our time pay more attention to the consequences of pollution and destruction of the environment, on which human well-being depends.
But they all share the same neo-Malthusian view of human fertility and consumption. Echoing the arguments of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus of the 18th century, the prophets of ecological doom promised that in response to the abundance of resources, people would bear more children and consume more. As protozoa or fruit flies, we continue to multiply and consume until the resources that allow us to continue growing are depleted.
In fact, fertility and human consumption have nothing to do. The rise in prosperity and modernization lead to a fall, not an increase in the birth rate. As our material conditions improve, we have fewer children, not more. The population explosion over the past 200 years has not been the result of rising birth rates, but rather a decline in mortality. With improvements in public health, nutrition, physical infrastructure and public safety, we live much longer.
Today in the United States, Europe, Japan, most of Latin America and even parts of India, fertility rates are below replacement, that is, the average number of children born per woman is less than two. Much of the rest of the world is likely to follow suit over the next few decades. Most demographers predict that the human population will peak and then decline slowly until the end of the century.
For this reason, today's warnings of impending environmental collapse are mainly aimed at increasing consumption rather than population growth. As many admit today, our social biology may not function like the protozoa, but capitalism can. He cannot survive without the endless growth of material consumption.
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There is no particularly solid foundation for such claims, nor is there evidence to the contrary. The long-term trend in market economies has been towards slower and less resource intensive growth. Per capita consumption increases dramatically as people move from rural agrarian economies to modern industrial economies. But then it ends. Today Western Europe and the United States are struggling to maintain 2 percent annual growth.
The composition of prosperous economies is also changing. Over the same period, in most developed countries, production accounted for 20 percent or more of output and employment. Today it is only 10 percent, with the vast majority of economic products coming from knowledge and services with significantly lower levels of material and energy performance.
For decades, every increase in economic growth in developed countries led to a decrease in resource and energy consumption. This is because the demand for material goods and services is being saturated. Few of us need or want to consume more than 3,000 calories per day or live in a 1,500 square meter home. Our appetites for material goods may be great, but they also have a limit.
However, this does not mean that we will not exceed the planet's carrying capacity. Some environmental scientists argue that we have already exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity. But this view has no historical support, since it assumes that the Earth's carrying capacity remains static.
In fact, we have been changing our environment so that it more productively meets human needs, over tens of thousands of years. We have cleared forests for meadows and agriculture. We selected and bred animals and plants that were more nutritious, fertile and abundant. 9,000 years ago, it took six times more farmland to feed one person than it does today, although we eat a lot. Paleoarchaeological records indicate that our carrying capacity, that is, the ability of our planet to accommodate and feed people, is not fixed. And it is many orders of magnitude larger than it was when we began our journey on this planet.
There is no reason to believe that we will not be able to further increase the planet's carrying capacity. Nuclear and solar energy are clearly capable of providing more energy for more people without producing a lot of carbon emissions. Modern intensive farming systems are also able to meet the dietary needs of many people. A planet with far more chickens, corn, and nuclear power may not appear to be ideal, but it can certainly support more people consuming more resources.
Such a future, however, is anathema for many supporters of planetary limits and at the same time emphasizes their limitations. When approached with optimism, the conviction is born that with the wisdom and ingenuity of humanity, it will flourish. Demanding to confine human society to planetary limits, scientists and environmentalists are offering a dark future for humanity.
Seeing people in this light is like assimilating them to single-celled organisms or insects. Malthus believed that laws designed to protect the poor only encouraged the poor to reproduce. Ehrlich opposed food aid to poor countries for the same reasons and for the brutal measures to control the population. Today, calls for the observance of planetary limits are formulated in redistributive and egalitarian rhetoric, that is, their observance will in no way lead to the emergence of billions of poor people. But they say little about how social engineering on such an extraordinary scale will be imposed in a democratic or just way.
Ultimately, one cannot unreasonably claim that people will consume more if this goes against the obvious, but it is also not worth believing that the lack of dialogue about the limitations of our planet will be beneficial.
But the threats of social collapse, based on the belief that the planet's carrying capacity is fixed, are neither scientific nor fair. We are not fruit flies programmed to reproduce until the population collapses. We are not cattle that need to be controlled. You need to understand that we are remaking the planet over and over again to meet our needs and our dreams. The aspirations of billions of people depend on the continuation of this process.
Ilya Khel