(Author: G.
Creative Commons: attribution and share-alike.)

(If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, please do so first; this is a series that will make more sense if read in chronological order.)

The finite carrying capacity of the Earth presents us with a tradeoff between population and consumption. A smaller population can sustain a higher per-capita level of consumption; or a larger population can sustain a lower per-capita level of consumption. Think of food at a dinner party: if unexpected guests show up, everyone eats less. If fewer people show up than expected, everyone eats more. (If needed, I may write a backstory to this series, to explain issues of population and carrying capacity.)

Here are the tradeoffs:

At North American standards of living, the sustainable population is 1 - 2 billion humans.

At Western European standards of living, sustainable population is 2 - 3 billion.

At Eastern European standards, approximately 4 - 5 billion.

With 6 billion humans, the sustainable standard of living is approximately that of Cuba: a life where private automobiles are rare, and rural electricity systems provide each household with a 1-amp circuit: just enough for a couple of lights and a radio. No one starves and everyone knows how to read and write, but the hand of the writer is held and constrained by the hand of the state.

Whether or not we in the Western democracies could preserve the liberty we value more than life itself, under such stringent economic conditions, remains to be seen. In the 1930s Depression there were calls for communism and calls for fascism. We ducked the bullet that time.

Presumably there is another choice, of 7 - 9 billion humans living for the most part in conditions like those of Somalia or Iraq, and you really don’t want to go there.

One can, of course, redistribute the wealth. The more-powerful can loot, rob, and pillage the less powerful, and claim that this is the natural order of things, as if humans hadn’t evolved past the stage of cannibalism. I make this point deliberately: we normally think of “redistributing the wealth” as the forcible leveling-downward of communism; however it is no less so to use coercive means to shift wealth upward. Stealing is stealing. Getting someone else to steal for you is also stealing, just as surely as if you had done it with your own hands.

We could attempt to continue to live in a stratified world, reinforced by walls and wracked by warfare. That course of action will fail. It will fail, as respected military theorist John Robb has pointed out numerous times, due to the proliferation of biological technologies to all corners of the globe. Desperate people plus DNA splicing kits equal the potential for a small group of fanatics to unleash a plague that our walls and our warriors cannot stop. This outcome is inevitable so long as biotechnology continues to advance, the level of desperation continues to grow, and fanatical ideologies remain unchecked by reason.

Beyond that, we cannot wall ourselves off from the ecological and resource impacts of what others do. To the extent that any of us think ourselves exempt from nature’s limits, we encourage others to do likewise. To the extent that we as a species fail to muster the will to reduce global population and consumption levels, climate instability will crash the systems upon which we depend for our lives and our existence as a species. When a lifeboat is so crowded that it barely bobs above the waterline, it only takes one strong wave or one person recklessly jumping up and down to cause it to sink.

The blunt fact is that we really are all in this together. We must size up the cold equations and make our choices. We must make those choices knowing full well that any choice we make will also require us to make our own sacrifices. If we don’t make those sacrifices voluntarily, they will be imposed upon us by nature, or by the desperation of others.

There is no escaping this.

(Author: G.
Creative Commons: attribution and share-alike.)

Occasionally each person gets sick, and in due course each person will die. How you face these eventualities is a measure of your character.

Facing illness, do you shriek and thrash about? Whine and make demands? Facing death, do you squander your savings? Burn down your house? Probably not, and one of the things that prevents you doing so is simple consideration for your family, friends, and neighbors. If you have children, you are also thinking of their future.

Far better to face illness with calm resolve, face death with equanimity and dignity, and provide what you can for those who come after you. For the healthy and the living, far better to provide the sick and the dying with compassionate care.

These are the kinds of values that we refer to when we speak of what makes us human.

They are about to be put to the test of all time.

According to the best available estimates, we have less than a decade to reverse our impact on the Earth’s climate. Otherwise we will cross one or more tipping points into positive feedback cycles that will result in a radical decline of the Earth’s carrying capacity. If you talk to climate scientists behind the scenes, for example after hours at professional conferences, many if not most of them will tell you, in their unguarded moments: We don’t have anything like ten years. We’ve already blown it. Game over. Reboot.

To the best of our knowledge, we are facing a rise of two to three degrees Celsius during the course of this century, probably more if we don’t reverse course immediately. The consequences of even a two to three degree rise will include a radical decrease in global food production capacity, spread of emerging diseases from tropical areas into what are now temperate zones, the decline of available fresh water supplies in a number of highly populated areas, and resource wars both large and small. At plus five to six degrees Celsius, most of the Earth will become uninhabitable by humans.

As of this writing, world population has passed the 6.6 billion mark, and “all other factors equal,” is projected to climb to about 9 billion by the middle of this century. We’re not going to make it to nine billion. Scenarios vary, but all have this in common: we are headed for a dieoff of large magnitude. This is the inescapable outcome of overpopulation and overconsumption. The fact that overshoot must be followed by collapse is as inexorable as the law of gravity.

This is about learning acceptance while at the same time fighting with all we’ve got.

The test of our character as a species will be how we face these eventualities: the global sickness of climate instability, the deaths too many to count, the enormous scale of human suffering that could have been prevented if only we had acted in time.

If we use our brains, our muscles, and our sheer will, we can reverse our misdeeds and reduce their consequences to some degree. Our ancestors have survived worse since the time when they first swung down from the trees and figured out what their opposable thumbs were for. We are the product of their success. That track record will serve us well.

However this is about more than our survival as a species. It is about our potential. It is about continuing to build upon that which makes us truly worthy of our existence. The test of our character is about whether we can, in the hour of most dire circumstances, muster the calm resolve, the compassion, and the equanimity that will be needed. The test of our character is whether we can recognize that altruism is truly in our self interest.

We are faced with what might be called an evolutionary challenge. Meeting that challenge will require not only strength of will but good will.

The only way out is up.