If the population continues to grow at its current pace, our grandchildren will face an unprecedented environmental crisis
There are millions of species on Earth, but one dominates. This is us. Our intelligence, our ingenuity, our activities have changed almost every part of the planet. Moreover, we have so strongly influenced our world that it is our mind, our ingenuity and our activity that are now behind almost all the global problems that we face. And as the world's population approaches 10 billion, all of these problems intensify. In my opinion, the situation in which we find ourselves can rightly be called an emergency. An unprecedented global emergency.
We emerged as a species about 200,000 years ago. By the standards of geological eras, this is incredibly small. Just 10 thousand years ago there were a million of us. By 1800 - just 200 years ago - already a billion. By 1960 - 50 years ago - three billion. Now there are seven billion of us. By 2050, your children, or your children's children, will be living on the same planet with nine billion other people. By the end of the century, there will be at least 10 billion of us. Maybe even more.
We have come to this state of affairs thanks to a series of "events" that have shaped our civilization and our society. These are primarily the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and - in the West - the public health revolution. By 1980, there were four billion of us on the planet. Just 10 years later - in 1990 - already five billion. It was then that the first consequences of such rapid growth began to appear. In particular, it affected water resources. Our need for water - not only for drinking but also for food and consumer goods - continued to increase. At the same time, something began to happen to the water.
In 1984, reporters talked a lot about the biblical famine that was raging in Ethiopia caused by a severe drought. Unusual droughts and unusual floods began to be noted all over the world: in Australia, Asia, the USA, and Europe. Water - a vital resource that we thought was abundant on Earth - has suddenly become something that could potentially be in short supply.
By 2000, there were six billion of us. The global scientific community was becoming aware that the accumulation of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of the development of agriculture and land use, as well as the production, processing and transportation of what we consume, are changing the climate. It began to realize the problems associated with this. 1998 was the warmest year on record. Moreover, all ten of the warmest years in history are the years after 1998.
We hear the word "climate" every day, so it makes sense to think about what we actually mean by it. Of course, "climate" is not the same as weather. He is one of the fundamental earthly life support systems that determines whether we can live on the planet or not. It is based on four elements: the atmosphere (the air we breathe), the hydrosphere (the water of the planet), the cryosphere (ice caps and glaciers), the biosphere (plants and animals of the planet). Now our activity has begun to change each of these components.
Our CO2 emissions are changing the atmosphere. Our growing water consumption began to change the hydrosphere. The rise in atmospheric and sea surface temperatures have begun to change the cryosphere, which, in particular, leads to an unexpected reduction in Arctic and Greenland ice. Our growing use of land - for agriculture, building cities and roads, mining - and our environmental pollution have begun to change the biosphere. In other words: we started to change the climate.
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There are more than seven billion of us on Earth now. Our numbers continue to grow - and with it our needs for water, food, land, transport and energy. As a result, we are increasing the speed at which we change the climate. In fact, now our activity is not only completely connected with the complex system in which we live - that is, with the Earth - but also interact with it. It is important to understand how these connections work.
Take one important but little-known aspect of rising water consumption - latent water
Latent water is water that is used to make things that we consume but do not usually perceive as containing water. It's about things like chicken and beef, cotton and cars, chocolate and cell phones. For example, producing a burger requires 3,000 liters of water. In 2012, roughly five billion burgers were eaten in Britain alone. That's 15 trillion liters of water consumed - just for burgers. Only in Britain. In 2012, about 14 billion burgers were eaten in the United States. That's about 42 trillion liters of water. For some burgers in the USA. Per year. A chicken is about 9 thousand liters of water. In Britain alone, we ate about a billion chickens in 2012. To produce a kilogram of chocolate, about 27 thousand liters of water are required. That is approximately 2,700 liters of water per tile. This is definitelyit is worth considering when you eat it curled up in your pajamas on the couch.
However, I also have bad news about pajamas. I'm afraid it took 9,000 liters of water to get your cotton pajamas. To get a cup of coffee, you need 100 liters of water - and without taking into account the water in the drink itself. Over the past year, we British have probably drunk about 20 billion cups of coffee. But a masterpiece of absurdity - to make a liter plastic water bottle requires four liters of water. Last year, in Britain alone, we bought, drank and threw away nine billion of these bottles. This is 36 billion liters of water wasted without any sense. Billions of liters of water are spent on producing water bottles. By the way, each "chip" in your computer, navigator, phone, iPad and car is 72 thousand liters of water. In 2012, more than two billion of these chips were produced. In this way,we spent at least 145 trillion liters of water on semiconductor chips. In short, we use water like food - that is, at a completely unacceptable rate.
The need for land for growing food should at least double by 2050 and at least triple by the end of the century. This means that there will be more and more demands to cut down some of the planet's remaining rainforests, as this is practically the only remaining land that can be used for large-scale agricultural expansion. Unless, of course, Siberia thaws out earlier. By 2050, a billion hectares of land are likely to be cleared of forest to meet the food needs of a growing population. This is more than the territory of the United States. The deforestation process will be accompanied by an increase in CO2 emissions by three extra gigatons per year. If Siberia thaws before we finish deforestation, this will mean the emergence of new agricultural land, the availability of rich sources of minerals,metals, oil and gas, as well as huge changes in world geopolitics. New mineral, agricultural and energy resources will provide Russia with impressive economic and political power. That said, melting Siberian permafrost will almost certainly release large amounts of methane, further exacerbating our climate problems.
By the way, another three billion people will need to live somewhere. By 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in cities. Existing cities will expand, and new ones will appear in addition to them. It is worth noting that of the 19 Brazilian cities whose population has doubled over the past decade, 10 are in the Amazon. All of them will need even more land.
The funds we now know do not allow us to feed 10 billion people at the present level of consumption and under the present system of agriculture. Moreover, in order to simply feed ourselves for the next 40 years, we will need to produce food in quantities that exceed the total agricultural production over the past 10 thousand years. Meanwhile, in reality, food production, on the contrary, will decline - and, perhaps, quite sharply. This is due to climate change, desertification, soil degradation and water scarcity that are actively taking place in many parts of the world. By the end of the century, many places on our planet simply won't have usable water.
At the same time, the global sea and air transport sectors will continue to expand rapidly. Every year ships and planes will carry more and more people around the world and more and more goods that people consume. This means huge problems - more CO2 emissions, more soot, more pollution from resource extraction and production of goods.
Also, keep in mind that as traffic grows, an extremely efficient network is emerging for the spread of potentially fatal diseases. Just 95 years ago, humanity experienced the global pandemic of the Spanish flu, which killed, according to modern estimates, up to 100 million people. At the same time, there was not yet one of the most dubious innovations of our time - low-cost airlines. Now millions of people travel the world every day. At the same time, millions of people live in close proximity to pigs and poultry - and often in the same room with them - which increases the likelihood of a new virus crossing the barrier between species. The combination of these two factors makes a new global pandemic more than a possible event. Unsurprisingly, epidemiologists now increasingly say that this is a “when” rather than an “if” question.
To meet expected demand, we will have to at least triple our energy production by the end of this century. Roughly speaking, this means that we will either have to build 1,800 of the world's largest hydroelectric power plants (or 23,000 nuclear power plants, or 14 million wind turbines, or 36 billion solar panels) - or continue to use mainly oil, gas and coal and build more 36 thousand power plants. The existing reserves of oil, gas and coal are worth trillions of dollars. Will governments and the big oil, gas and coal companies - some of the most powerful corporations in the world - agree to leave that kind of money in the ground amid the relentless rise in energy demand? I doubt it.
In addition, in the future we will face problems with the climate of an absolute new scale for us. It is very likely that we are heading towards a series of tipping points for the global climate system. There is a global challenge set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - to limit the rise in the average temperature in the world to two degrees Celsius. This threshold is justified by the fact that exceeding it carries a significant risk of catastrophic climate change, which is almost guaranteed to lead to irreversible changes in the planetary level - the melting of the Greenland ice shelf, the release of methane from permafrost in the Arctic tundra, and the destruction of forests in the Amazon basin. Meanwhile, the first two trends are already being noted, although the threshold of two degrees Celsius has not yet been crossed.
As for the third point, we do not need global warming for this - we can cope on our own, simply by cutting down forests. Recent studies, meanwhile, show that the rise in temperature is more - and significantly more - than two degrees Celsius is practically guaranteed for us. It is quite possible that we will talk about four or even six degrees. It would be a real disaster and would mean rapid climate change that is radically changing the planet. In this case, the earth will simply turn into hell. For decades we will face unprecedented weather surges, fires, floods, heat waves, loss of forests and crops, water shortages and rising sea levels. The situation in a large part of Africa will be disastrous. The Amazon basin can turn into a savannah or desert. The entire agricultural system will be under an unprecedented threat.
The more "fortunate" countries - such as Britain, the United States and most of Europe - may be militarized. They will have to defend their borders against an influx of millions of people from countries that will become impossible to live in, lack water or food, or will rage conflicts over dwindling resources. These people will become "climate migrants" - and we will hear this expression more and more often. Those who think that such a situation will not serve as a potential source of civil and international conflict are simply deceiving themselves. It is no coincidence that lately, almost all scientific conferences on climate change that I attend have a new type of participants - the military.
A planet of 10 billion people looks like a nightmare from any point of view. But what, then, do we have options for action?
The only way out left for us is to change our behavior. Radically, globally and at all levels. In short, we desperately need to consume less. Much less. Cardinally less. At the same time, we must protect the environment more. A lot more. Such a radical change in behavior requires an equally radical government action. In this respect, however, politicians are still part of the problem, not part of the solution - they understand all too well that such a measure would be extremely unpopular.
Accordingly, they prefer to limit themselves to failed diplomatic initiatives. Here are some examples. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has been in force for 20 years and aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, is a failure. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which has been in effect for almost 20 years and aimed at preventing soil degradation and turning land into deserts, is a failure. The Convention on Biological Diversity, in force for the same 20 years and aimed at reducing the rate of loss of biological diversity, is a failure. These are just three of a dauntingly long list of failed global initiatives. To justify their inaction, governments constantly appeal to public opinion and hint at the uncertainty of scientific data. They used to say: “Let's wait until science proves that the climate,really is changing. " Well, now it has certainly been proven, and what are we hearing? "Let's wait until scientists can say exactly what awaits us and how much it will cost." And one more thing: "We will wait until public opinion supports us." However, climate models are never completely free of uncertainty. As for public opinion, politicians, when they need it, do not hesitate to ignore it. Wars, banker bonuses, and health care reforms illustrate this. As for public opinion, politicians, when they need it, do not hesitate to ignore it. Wars, banker bonuses, and health care reforms illustrate this. As for public opinion, politicians, when they need it, do not hesitate to ignore it. Wars, banker bonuses, and health care reforms illustrate this.
What politicians and governments say about their willingness to tackle climate change is in stark contrast to what they are doing in this area.
What about business? In 2008, a group of renowned scientists led by Deutsche Bank senior economist Pavan Sukhdev analyzed the economic impact of biodiversity loss. Experts have concluded that the damage caused to nature and the environment by the activities of the world's 3,000 largest corporations now amounts to $ 2.2 trillion per year - and continues to grow. Our children and grandchildren will have to pay these costs in the future. “There is an urgent need to change the rules of doing business so that companies compete in innovation, resource conservation and shareholder demand, rather than influencing governments, evading taxes and receiving subsidies for harmful activities that maximize shareholder returns.” wrote Sukhdev. Are you counting on it? Me not. But okay, what can we say about us, private people?
I'm already tired of reading in Sunday newspapers - although I confess, at one time it made me pretty funny - as another star says: “I sold my SUV and bought a Prius. Am I helping to preserve the environment? " Of course not, they don't help anything. But this is not their fault. The trouble is that they - or rather, we - are poorly informed. We are not getting the information we need. We are simply not informed about the scale or essence of the problem. What we are encouraged to do is usually ridiculous. For example, this is what we have been urged to lately by "ecology-conscious" celebrities and governments who, of course, should not be spreading such nonsense: turn off the phone chargers, pee in the shower (brilliant idea), buy electric cars (but this is better don't), use two sheets of toilet paper, not three. These are all symbolic gesturesonly masking the fundamental fact that we are now faced with huge, unprecedented in scale and essence and, perhaps, have no solution to the problem.
The required behavioral changes are so significant that no one wants to implement them. What are they all about? First, we need to start consuming less. Much less. Less food, less energy, less goods. Fewer cars, fewer electric vehicles, fewer cotton T-shirts, fewer computers, fewer new phones. Least of all, anything. Moreover, it is worth noting that "we" in this case are people living in the western and northern parts of the world. Almost three billion people now live on Earth, who, on the contrary, urgently need to consume more: more water, more food, more energy. Now about one more aspect: to urge not to have children, of course, is simply ridiculous. This runs counter to what our genetic code dictates to us, contradicts our most important (and most pleasant) motives. However the worst iswhat we (in the global sense of the word) can do is continue to multiply at the current pace. If they persist, by the 22nd century we will not be 10 billion. According to the UN, by the end of this century, the population of Zambia is expected to increase by 941% and the population of Nigeria by 349%, that is, to 730 million people.
Afghanistan's population is expected to grow by 242%.
Democratic Republic of the Congo - 213%.
Gambia - by 242%.
Guatemala - 369%.
Iraq - by 344%.
Kenya - by 284%.
Liberia by 300%.
Malawi up 741%.
Mali - by 408%.
Niger - by 766%.
Somalia - 663%.
Uganda - 396%.
Yemen - by 299%.
Even the population of the United States, which stood at 315 million in 2012, is expected to grow by 54% by 2100 to 478 million. It should be noted that at such a world rate of reproduction by the end of the century there will be not even 10 billion, but 28 billion of us.
Where does all this lead us?
Let's look at what is happening like this: suppose we learned that an asteroid is flying towards us. Since physics is, in essence, a very simple science, we were able to accurately calculate that he would collide with our planet on June 3, 2072. We also understand that collision with it will destroy 70% of life on Earth. In such a situation, governments around the world would surely take unprecedented measures and attract scientists and engineers, universities and businesses. Half of the experts would think about how to stop the asteroid, and the other half would think about how our species would survive and recover if the former failed. Now we are in almost the same situation - only we do not have an exact date, and we are not talking about an asteroid, but the problem lies in ourselves. Why are we doing so little against this background - given the scale of the problem and its urgency -I just can't figure it out. We're spending € 8 billion on CERN to find evidence for the Higgs boson, a particle that may or may not explain the phenomenon of mass and partially validate the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN officials say this is the largest and most important experiment on Earth. It is not true. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the experiment that we are all doing right now on Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.to find evidence for the Higgs boson, a particle that ultimately may or may not explain the phenomenon of mass and partially confirm the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN officials say this is the largest and most important experiment on Earth. It is not true. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the experiment that we are all doing right now on Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.to find evidence for the Higgs boson, a particle that ultimately may or may not explain the phenomenon of mass and partially confirm the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN officials say this is the largest and most important experiment on Earth. It is not true. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the experiment that we are all doing right now on Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.which in the end may explain (or may not explain) the phenomenon of mass and partially confirm the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN officials say this is the largest and most important experiment on Earth. It is not true. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the experiment that we are all doing right now on Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.which in the end may explain (or may not explain) the phenomenon of mass and partially confirm the Standard Model of particle physics. CERN officials say this is the largest and most important experiment on Earth. It is not true. The biggest and most important experiment on Earth is the experiment that we are all doing right now on Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.which we all now put above the Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.which we all now put above the Earth itself. Only an idiot will deny that there is a certain limit on the number of people that our planet can feed. The question is, what is it - seven billion (the current number of humanity), 10 billion, 28 billion? Personally, I think that we have already crossed this threshold, and quite a long time ago.
Science is, at its core, organized skepticism. All my life I have been trying to prove that I am wrong and looking for alternative explanations for my results. This is called the Popper falsifiability criterion. I hope I am wrong. But scientific evidence indicates that I am most likely right. We have the right to call the situation in which we find ourselves an unprecedented emergency. We urgently need to do - I mean really do - something drastic to avoid a global catastrophe. But I don’t think we will do it. In my opinion, we are in the ass. I once asked one of the smartest and most rational people I know - a young scientist, my colleague and coworker - if he could do only one thing to cope with the situation, what would he do? You knowwhat did he answer? "I would teach my son to shoot."
This article is an edited excerpt from Stephen Emmott's "Ten Billion", published by Penguin.
Stephen Emmott