We need more humans
Our obsessive focus on carbon dioxide distracts from the imminent crisis of population decline
Growth is, for us humans, a sign of life, a sign of vitality and a sign of hope. Parents (mostly) want their kids to grow. Business owners want revenues to grow. Farmers want crops to grow. So long as there is growth, there is the promise that the future will be blessed with more than the present: more abundance, more capacity, more possibilities. More life.
In the absence of growth there is only dying. In this Universe, there is no middle ground, no homeostasis. Stars grow until they don’t anymore, and then they start dying. Trees, plants, animals and people all grow until they stop growing, and then they start dying. Only through growth can things resist, for a time, the entropic norm that defines the dead Universe, which is to say almost all of the Universe. For the more we learn about the space time we inhabit, the more precious and unfathomably rare appears life. And growth.
The regnant elite ideology of our time is based upon the premise that the growth, the flourishing, the prospering of our species is malign. The thrum of the influential among our species barely tolerating its existence can be heard from Washington to Brussels to Davos to university lecture halls to the countless warrens of bureaucratic rule-makers. Never in the annals of life on Earth has a relevant, let along controlling, population of a species come to believe that the species itself is unworthy of growth. Until now.
If left to our own devices, we humans are the greatest obstacle to the reduction of the rate at which carbon dioxide is added to Earth’s atmosphere. Human beings living in modern economies emit carbon dioxide. We do so, in small amounts, by breathing, as we always have. We do so in much larger amounts by indulging in the cherished activities made possible in modernity, primary among them keeping ourselves at a comfortable temperature and moving around much farther and faster than is possible on foot.
If the organizing principle of our species in all its endeavors must be, as we are told, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there are only two options. The first is to materially arrest, on a global scale, the proclivity of human beings to emit carbon dioxide in the furtherance of what they deem to be in their and their families’ best interest. This is the project on which historically unprecedented resources are now being spent in wealthy countries.
That project has not, and will not, achieve the stated goal of reducing global carbon emissions to the point of materially reducing projected future temperatures on Earth. Its success would require people in not-yet-wealthy nations to willingly forego, or at least to delay, the life-prolonging, life-saving and life-improving benefits of modern wealth to please those already enjoying them. No parent will trade the prospect of a longer life for their children and grandchildren for the favor of Greta Thunberg.
The second option to reduce human beings’ emission of carbon dioxide is for there to be fewer human beings. Reducing the growth of the human population on Earth is a longstanding goal of some in the environmental movement, and has witnessed a rebirth in the context of climate change. “Humanity,” biologist Paul Ehrlich told a national TV audience this year, “is not sustainable.” That message resonates with some. Americans are “choosing not to have children because they fear that doing so will amplify climate change.”
Be careful what you wish for. The wealthy West has long fell short of replacing its own population from native births. Japan and Western Europe are losing population. The United States has avoided that fate only due to immigration from its less wealthy neighbors. Even China, the ticking “population bomb” of the 1970s, began losing population in 2022. India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country this year, but its population growth has slowed too, and will follow China’s into decline this century. Experts predict the global population will begin to decline in the latter third of this century.
The reversal of population growth has nothing to do with climate change or scarcity of resources. Rather, it is a result of abundance. There appears to be an iron-clad rule of human nature: when people get wealthy they have fewer children.
A declining global population will result in less wealth, a shorter life expectancy and a less fulfilling life for those who remain. For the capacity of each human being in modern society to derive more value from available resources through application of the intelligence and creativity unique to our species exceeds the strain he or she places on those resources. Human societies facing the prospect of perpetually decreasing populations and wealth and the resulting social chaos will view our current obsession with carbon dioxide and each human being’s emission of it as ridiculous.
In the lifetimes, God willing, of my sons, the human population will stop growing. It will start dying. They and their peers will live in a time in which the fundamental error of our time will be evident. It is not climate change or the scarcity of resources that poses the most dire threat to our species. It is the looming scarcity of our species, insanely welcomed and encouraged by many among us.
A lot of good thoughts packed into a small package. The only thing I would add is: Save us from the wealthy elitists that never fully developed skills to reason and apply their wealth to good.