Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb

rayne…peace…please.
The math is ominous, even terrifying, but there are variables in the equation, such as the depth of human courage and compassion, that may be impossible to quantify.  I think it is obvious to everyone on this site that our species, our planet, is at a tipping point, the brink of a singularity beyond which it is very difficult to see.  The bottom line is that we are all in this together and the only way anyone is going to make it is that we all have to look out for each other to the best of our ability.  

I apologize for any part my post may have played in your distress.

John G.

We are not just one species. As history teaches us, we can and will see, treat and kill humans from other races, other tribes, other religions, other ideologies or other what ever what, as pests, which we can and should kill, if the opportunity and necessity to do so rises.
We should, as William Catton stated in his book "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change", see Nazi Germany as a bizarre prelude of what may happen in the 21. century.

In German there is a book form the Swiss professor of history, Christian Gerlach, with the Title "Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord. Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg" (War, Food and Genocide. Research on the German extermination policy in WW2").

According to this, after the lost air-battle over Britan, in Sommer 1940, the German Government was faced with very serious resource and food problems. Although they controlled large parts of continental Europe(!), a German undersecretary of food and agriculture in 1940 seems to have calculated, that Germany would have to surrender within in only two years because of food shortages, if no new resources would be found. Futher more, the Hitlers government seems to have been very afraid of a repeat of the famine of of 1917/18, which seems to have been one of the main reasons of the German revolution in November 1918.

Indeed, the Nazis did very much to please the German people with welfare laws (many of them, as the wartime law which granted free health insurance for elderly people, in fact lasted for many decades.)

As Gerlach could prove with his research, the mass killings done be the Germans in WW2, and the death camps like Auschwitz, started in 1941, after food shortages had become a real threat. When the Germans attacked the USSR in 1941, their objectiv was not only to conquer oilfields, but also to conquer arable AND to kill huge parts of the Soviet people by hunger.

Killing tens of millions of people by hunger did not work as planed. The Russians and other people in the USSR seemed to have been able to survive (How they did it should be one great lesson to learn from history). But the Germans were able to kill by hunger in POW-camps. This is one answer to the questions why so incredible many Soviet soldiers died in German POW-camps.

As Gerlachs work shows, the mass killings of Jews too started after the attack on the Soviet Union, in summer 1940. Perhaps for this one should remember, that there too was some strong antisemitism in the Soviet Union and other none German parts of Europe. How ever, the mass killings of Jews too served as a seemingly successful strategy to get rid of "useless" consumers of food which helped to improve the food supply and thus the political stability in Germany itself. Furthermore, by killing the Jews, other resources possessed and consumed by the Jews could be freed and distributed to "more worth full" Germans and their allies.

Thus WW2 and its at least the attacks and crimes of the Germans after 1940, should better not be seen as singularities done by some mad ideologists, but as actions of a well educated, very modern people seeing themselves threatened with resource shortages and famine.

From that viewpoint, it may be a very bad idea to give women equal rights and opportunities to lower their fertility. Instead raising the fertility results in a surplus of young men and thus in warriors, which may be the most important asset when it comes resource wars. Indeed, Europe will be taken over within the next decades by Muslims and by Africans. Europe will die from complexity, loss of faith, in relation to Africa and the Middle East much to low birthrates (and thus to few sons), and to much reliance on technology. 

The white Europeans may face the fate, Hitlers government had planed for the Jews. Although, instead building death camps with all the work and organization they would need, the Europeans, and maybe the Americans too, can best be killed by an EMP-attack with just a few nuclear warheads, or even simpler, by just waiting for a real huge sun storm. After that, those other people with their unequal, poor educated but very fertile women can and will conquer Europe with ease - and will show mankind, that education, schools, universities and equal rights and opportunities for women are not good in the longer term.

The Boko Haram (boko = school, Haram = not good) people, the Pashtun Taliban and the like and their descendants with their simple lifestyles will survive, but we white Westerners, with all our education, technology and knowledge will be defeated and die in the golden, comfortable and obviously very attractive death camps we have build ourselves, while we thought we were building smart and sophisticated social democratic, liberal states and organizations of states.

   

Paul Ehrlich made a lot of sense. Population growth of humans is the biggest problem for the planet. Should we really be multiplying like this? Merle2 above mentioned a few good things on this.

I appreciate the mentioning of William Catton's book "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change," mentioned by Antwerp (above) and Helix last week.  (Others have mentioned it too, including CHS and Subprime JD.)
Here is a nice 2 page summary of the book.  The review linked here is very good and echoes much of the foundational principles of The Crash Course.

Of the processes for correction from overshoot we have a couple that are especially worthy of discussion: warfare and genocide.  These are both methods to have someone else's group bear the weight of the correction, while avoiding the experience for our group.

Catton is concerned about the loss of humanity that is possible during the correction from overshoot.  His hope is that 1) we respond proactively to minimize the devastating impact of the correction, and 2) that we remember that the need for a correction cannot be laid at the feet of any group of "others."  


I want to include in this excellent discussion an idea of Ken Wilbur's that bears on the issue of whether we bear the cost of the correction or whether we attempt to foist it off on "others."  

This concept is the developmental process in the sense of who I am and the boundary between "us" and "them."  There is a progression of development from the earliest egocentric stages of a child, to more inclusive states that grow with greater maturity.

Egocentric–I am only interested in myself.

Example:  A typical pre-school aged child or the proverbial person who would "sell his own mother for a nickel."
Genocentric--I am identified with my own immediate genetic family.
Example:  Nicholas Rockefeller is trying to recruit Aaron Russo to his group and tells him "Why are you so worried about the people.  Why don't you just take care of yourself and your family?"
Ethnocentric (or Sociocentric)--I am identified with my own ethnic/religious/tribal group. And of course, God likes our group best.

Worldcentric – I am identified with all people of the world.

Kosmocentric – Identity (and sense of intimacy) with all living things, nature and even the inanimate universe. 

Example:  Albert Einstein in his later years wrote about death explaining that he had become "so identified with all of life" that the passing of his individual body seemed to hold little significance.
Example 2: Poems by Rumi, Kabir, St John of the Cross, Adyanshanti

Meditation

All self forgotten, having no intention of my own,
every breath by the will of God alone. Suffused in the primordial darkness
uncreated and eternal, within the mystic void
subtle streams of stillness move.
All striving ceases. The subtle stream flows unbound
carrying spirit to its source unseen and unknowable.
The primordial ground awakens within itself and flows out in infinite expression.
The myriad forms cannot help smiling
at such good fortune and grace as earth and sky reveal
the living body of radiant being.
The whole universe my intimate companion,
shivering in the night chill— unbound liberation.
~ Adyashanti

---------------------------------------

Migration

We don't have to bear responsibility for overshoot of carrying capacity as long as we are free to migrate.  Should a day come when we, and all of our descendants, must continue to stay "here," then the ownership of overshoot will come home to roost immediately.

For us PPers, what if we knew that the back-up plan of moving-to-somewhere-else-if-things-get-really-bad were suddenly shut down?

We will need to expect influxes of refugees from areas where collapse is hitting first.  Shall we invite them in?  Or refuse and put up barriers?  This is a terrible dilemma for a worldcentric person.  Individually, refugees are (mostly) very good people that under other circumstances we would get to know and consider friends.  But, our sustainable homesteads will become completely unsustainable with a major population influx.

May I suggest a final category S_P?  Theocentric - I identify with and submit to the living God, his values, and his purposes above anything else I identify with (self, family, tribe, world and universe).
We're definitely overshooting right now, and if there were a "new world" to which to move I would've gone by now.  (I have shared the story here before of the wise and wealthy US couple who during the mid 1930's saw that world war was coming and made plans to avoid it and survive.  They sold everything and moved to an idyllic, tropical homestead in THE SOLOMON ISLANDS, at that time a basically unknown place at the edge of the world, only to find themselves smack in the middle of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific Theatre of WWII!! I've considered leaving the US but I don't see anywhere else to go because our predicaments are thoroughly global, though I did consider auditioning for that one-way European scientific expedition to Mars. http://www.mars-one.com/about-mars-one) Plan B is of course to get out of the center of the maelstrom, out to the "edges", hunker down with a small, prepared community and hope to survive and pass down the best of ourselves to whoever comes out on the other side (something like the monasteries of the Dark Ages).  I've picked a place I hope is too cold and harsh to attract many refugees (though I look longingly at Hudson's Bay in that regard). At the same time, it is my intention to live according to my highest values during the dark times as that is more important to me than actually surviving.  Honor and faithfulness first.  Survival second.  I hope I'm up to it.

Poverty will only increase with overpopulation. Fewer people are needed to produce the technology that we all use. Perhaps a billion scientists would do! (Dr, Pimentel of Cornell Univ. probably the world's major authority says 1.5 to 2 billion–living at the level of the West) But beyond that, overpopulation is the world's top environmental issue, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) published in Science Daily April 20, 2009. "Overpopulation is the only problem," said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. "If we had 100 million people on Earth - or better, 10 million - no other issues would be problems."
There are some suggestion for reducing poverty and overpopulation in the popular free ebook series “In Search of Utopia” (http://andgulliverreturns.info) but some other information can be found in http://overpopulation,org. But what politician will attack the root cause of most of our planetary problems? And who in the electorate would support a program to reduce population and poverty?

Hate to be pessimistic, but business needs more customers, religions need more souls to save–and more money, and nations want more soldiers. So no help from these groups! The likely result–more famines and disease (due to lack of fresh water and inadequate sewage disposal.) We are already seeing religious terrorism–because there are not enough places for young men to feel adequate, Weapons will become more deadly: chemical, biological then nuclear. Hopefully some will survive to continue the race–but it is more likely to be luck than intelligence that will provide any survivors!

…humans will address this problem.   It would require worldwide consensus and co-operation.
That's IF we could come up with a plan that would work in a timely manner.

I fully expect nature to solve the issue of overpopulation–famine and disease mostly,

with some natural disasters and a little help from humanity in the form of war.

 

As a side note, the most depressing thing mentioned in the interview was that Canada, Australia

and New Zealand have such morons running their countries  (climate deniers, TPP supporters, pro-growthers, etc).

I have every reason to believe that humans will address this problem.  I see it as a simple reapplication of a well  tested socio-economic model employed by humans for millennium.  You will have "aristocrats", (essentially anyone with the wherewithal to field an army), "commoners" (people with some economic value to an aristocrat) and "others".  The transition from were we are now to an environmentally sustainable population will be messy as we sort out who are to be the aristocrats, who are to be the commoners and who are to be the others, given that the others will be killed off or left to die of exposure, starvation and disease.
Problem solved.

Sucks to be an "other".

John G.

Your comment does represent some insight, but it is far from spot-on.
Maybe you didn't know that Hitler wanted Nazi Party members to have four children each.

So, concern about not having enough resources for everybody? Yeah, I think that was present in Germany then. But it wasn't resource scarcity in a vacuum. It was only partly about an awareness of finite resources, but it must have also been largely about HATE.

You don't kill 6 million people without being somehow motivated by hate.

Even if you were correct in saying that the Nazis killed millions because of their enlightenment regarding resource scarcity (which you aren't), what is the point of bringing it up? Should we be proud of sharing their insights? Are you saying we should excuse the concentration camps because there was some logic behind them? The Nazi Holocaust was just plain wrong on a very large scale.

Can resource scarcity become an element in future atrocities? Yes, if we aren't careful to love our neighbor.  

I don't think Antwerp was in any way apologizing for or approving of Hitler and his minions. Hitler wanted lots of Nazis and a lot less of others. Easiest to first go after those for whom you can foment hate (Jews in Hitler's case), especially if they have resources.
The materials he cites indicate that the same motivations will quite likely be present as resource limitations continue to bite in the future, especially for food and water. We need to be aware of what has passed because we are likely to see new versions of the same playbook with different justifications in the future. I don't think that there is any element of pride in these insights or a moral excuse if there was twisted logic behind the concentration camps. We'd be fools not to recognize the drivers and signs of such atrocities though if we want to have a hope of heading them off in the future, else we might find ourselves in or associated with such camps someday.

Let's hope that we can show more humanity on the way down the resource curve than we have on the way up it. The one thing we may be armed with that our predecessors weren't is the knowledge of the depths to which we may fall.

Peace,

Mark

 

Are these really Swedes if they no longer come under Swedish law? This is going to end badly.
https://youtu.be/thXCb1VUBDg

Hi.
Thanks for responding to my post. I pretty much agree with it and I didn't completely misread Antwerp's post the first time. He doesn't excuse Hitler, but he does come close to doing that.

Thus WW2 and its at least the attacks and crimes of the Germans after 1940, should better not be seen as singularities done by some mad ideologists, but as actions of a well educated, very modern people seeing themselves threatened with resource shortages and famine.
On the one hand, a very controversial thing to write, but the insight is well taken by us at Peak Prosperity. I agree with the insight behind it. I would agree that people of all ethnicities are capable of doing ill on a mass scale. At the same time, the real sadism and hatred of the Nazis remains unpalatable to me and I still think it should be acknowledged in posts like these.

The issue we're discussing, of course, is having enough resources per capita on the earth. The significance of controlling human population then becomes obvious to us here at this site.

Many believe that the way to keep population under control is to give women more education and more "equality." Antwerp disagrees

From that viewpoint, it may be a very bad idea to give women equal rights and opportunities to lower their fertility. Instead raising the fertility results in a surplus of young men and thus in warriors, which may be the most important asset when it comes resource wars. 
Is he saying that we solve the population problem by having more babies? Since 50% of them will be men and men fight the wars? I guess he has an us vs. them mindset in which there are winners and losers and, on a national or ethnic level, you try to be a "winner." But I have to admit, I may have misread Antwerp here. Antwerp, you aren't completely clear in my opinion.

Hello Pyranablade,
I'm getting in one comment per country as I try to wing my way home.

The Nazi's actions were unconscionable and the fact that they tried to hide their activities indicates that they  knew this very well as they perpetrated the atrocities. That said, I think that in the first quote from Antwerp that you give above, the bit where it says "not be seen as singularities" is saying we shouldn't see the Nazi's as an unrepeatable phenomenon but more as a symptom of the length to which some people will make justifications for any actions when fear of resource scarcity strikes. The point seemed to be that our own well educated cultures could be susceptible to the same rationalizations.

Antwerp will have to speak to his own motivations but his statement in the second quote was qualified with "From that viewpoint" meaning that it isn't necessarily his/her(?) viewpoint. The logic being that if a nation (or maniacs in control) decide to see the dilemma as a winner takes all zero sum game for resources then they want to have as many fighters (hence population) as possible to take what they want and kill who they don't want. The rest of the post looks like equal parts provocation and despair. It is noteworthy to point out that Hitler and his cronies lost while destroying the lives of millions. Any group/country that tries to dominate the world is likely to face the same fate as nothing unites allies as much as certain annihilation.  

What I do know is that both you and Antwerp have made me think more thoroughly about this issue. I think that most people in this discussion and perhaps in general agree that we have too many people for this planet to support. I raise this issue in my classes. However it is one thing to discuss the issue academically and another to actually try to do something about it. As I say in class "Even if we all agree that the human population is too big for the Earth to carry, there are very few of us who are personally offering to get off the planet today (Arthur excluded!).

Mark

I'm sure many have seen this article already.  You almost don't have to read the article; for me, all I saw was the pictures.  Many countries are facing the challenge of large increases in migrants.  Among others, Greece, France and the U.K. have been in the news recently.  Certainly the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, and just the beginning end-game of a growing world population and resource limits, in my opinion.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193541/Europe-s-migrant-crisis-turns-violent-Police-Kos-attack-refugees-batons-fire-extinguishers-fights-broke-1-500-strong-sit-protest-demanding-food-shelter-registration.html

I'm outlining here the main issues I am seeing.  This is just what I imagine.  If others see other aspects of this or simply disagree, I would like to hear about it.  This is bleak!

  1.  The foundational assumption:  The Earth's ecosystem cannot carry long term nearly then numbers of people that are currently here.  A very large percentage of the human beings will be dying in the near to moderately-near future.  [Please correct me if I anyone has a different understanding, as this is my foundational assumption.]

  2.  I am very very, very, sorry to say, that I fear that all of the rest of this discussion is working out the details of WHO will be the ones who die ("depopulate") first.  Naturally, each of us would like to not be "depopulated."  (I expect chaos to ensue and who depopulates in the second and third cohorts will drift out of anyones control.)

  3.  Collapse will happen sequentially "from the outside in" hitting the most marginal areas first.  (Water, food, high friction political systems, etc.) 

  4.  People in the collapsing area will do their best to migrate to somewhere that is currently in a lesser state of collapse.

  5.  Some areas will instinctively refuse admission to refugees.  They are the gated communities and gated nations.  This may be due to their own ethnocentric developmental stage or because they can foresee the longer term problems the floods of refugees will bring.

  6.  Other areas that are world-centric, GREEN Meme (Spiral Dynamics) such as Sweden (in the above video), will empathize with the tragic plight of the fellow human beings who find themselves "refugees" and invite them in as brothers and sisters in need.  Some refugees will assimilate and many will not (as most  refugees are ethno-centric themselves) but will live in pockets/neighborhoods where their own group's developmental level, languages' and religions' predominate.  (Much of Africa is a RED and RED/BLUE level.)  These unassimilated pockets will bring the problems of the RED and BLUE, ethnocentric thinking to the GREEN world-centric nation.  And the resources of the accepting nation will be overwhelmed, moving it closer to collapse also.

  7.  The refugee communities demand more political power and resources and begin to demonstrate and riot.  If the accepting nation is not completely destroyed first, it finally will have had enough and must regrettably say "no" and send in the domestic military.  Lots of people are killed.  Belatedly, the GREEN nation creates a wall and enforces it.  [In Spiral Dynamics terms, this is the type of crisis predictably resulting from the GREEN way of thinking that forces GREEN to evolve.]


Sometimes I hear people assert with indignation "The elites are trying to depopulate us!"

Well of course they are!  So in this sense "the elites" are just like all of us hoping to escape the worst of the depopulation process personally, yet knowing that it will happen ferociously in general.

After all, The Limits of Growth report was published by the Club of Rome, a sister organization to the CFR.  This is "the elites."

From this perspective, were I an elite, I might try to keep control by establishing an "Overly Organized Society" also.


Right now, an out-of-the-way, small, subsistence-level farm is looking really good!

 It is noteworthy to point out that Hitler and his cronies lost while destroying the lives of millions.
I was reading the recent book about Adolf Eichman a few weeks ago and it said that the Germans would have fared better in the war and might have even won it if they had been more focused on fighting the war and less hellbent on exterminating the Jews.

If we can avoid future wars and genocides it will be less difficult to focus on fighting overpopulation and resource scarcity. Nevertheless, Antwerp's point is still well taken: the stresses of resource scarcity will continue to make wars and genocides more likely. I think that we all agree on that. 

[quote]I was reading the recent book about Adolf Eichman a few weeks ago and it said that the Germans would have fared better in the war and might have even won it if they had been more focused on fighting the war and less hellbent on exterminating the Jews.[/quote]
I find that thesis to be a bit implausible given two decisions that determined the fate of the Nazis and Japan.  For Germany the decision to invade Russia was pure folly given historic precedence.  The Russians paid a heavy price (20 million dead) but ultimately marched into Germany victorious.  For the Axis powers generally the entrance of the US into the war was determinative.  We were a manufacturing behemoth that turned out massive amounts of war machinery to fight a two front war successfully.  That manufacturing power was protected by two oceans the Axis powers could not penetrate.

Regardless of the humanitarian implications, the Allies obliterated the German and Japanese abilities to manufacture weapons and cut off their access to fuel.  It was just a matter of time and numbers once that happened.

From the German standpoint the holocaust was psychologically important in that it gave the citizens a focus for xenophobia and the Aryan myth.  However, logistically I doubt it diverted enough men and materiel from the war effort to make a decisive difference.

Burbling on confidently about "Aryian myths", let us look at what the Aryan tales may be telling us.
I include a composition from my correspondence. 

"Good to hear from you. I was worried that the cyclone may have done you mischief.
 
I am dismayed and angrerd (sic) by the cyber attack upon you. There is no doubt in my mind that somebody recognizes our special attributes and is very keen to exterminate them. How profoundly stupid to destroy the most creative race on this planet.
 
How special are we?
 
I found this paragraph in wiki about the contribution by the Jötun. (Remember that the Jötun had bigger brains than the humans, and the Norsemen readily admitted that they were outsmarted by them. Thor had a Jötun lover.)
 
"demonstrating that the best model was a recent admixture event that was preceded by a bottleneck event among modern humans—thus confirming recent admixture as the most parsimonious and plausible explanation for the observed excess of genetic similarities between modern non-African humans and Neanderthals.[5] A recent admixture event is likewise confirmed by data on the basis of linkage disequilibrium.[6]"
 
Source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans
 
 
Translation. The humans from Africa were nearly exterminated by the last Ice Ages. (Norse Ice Giants) we bred with the Jötun recently (within 5000 years).
 
Conclusion Non-hybrids instinctively recognise us as being different and want either to have a piece of that difference or to exterminate us.
 
Because we ARE different. Race is not just skin colour. It is multi-faceted.  As an example modern medicines often have different consequences for different races.
 
Somehow we must continue to survive."
 
So there you have it. Somehow we must continue to survive. Or not. Choose. 
 
Edit: Thor's Jötun lover either had all sons or was barren for there is no Jötun mitochondrial DNA in modern humans. It would appear that our fathers were Jötun, never our mothers.
 

(double post)

Time2help, I see your chart on post 10, and yes, the rapid rise of deaths in the future (black line) is scary. But notice that beside the rising black line is a rapid rise of births (red line). That is even scarier, for at a time when your chart predicts deaths will soar and population will decrease, your chart also predicts that births will skyrocket.
So your chart echoes the concerns expressed in post 3. What will happen to future birth rates? When the going gets tough, will the tough make babies? Will the birth rate go up? It is hard to predict human reactions. Please note that the makers of your chart predict that the birth rate will soar when times get tough.

This is the point that I would like Ehrlich to address. He emphasizes that increased opportunity for women will cause birth rates to come down, but he doesn't address whether the post peak world can indeed be expected to have more opportunity.And if opportunity for women goes way down in the post peak world, will birth rates soar as the chart in post 10 predicts?

Also I would like to know how low Ehrlich expects his plan of giving women more opportunity, education, and control of their lives would bring the birth rate. Assume the best. Assume everybody does exactly what Ehrlich suggests, and women worldwide live highly fulfilling lives with plenty of opportunity. How low does he expect the birth rate to go in this best possible scenario? Is he predicting about 1.8 to 2 children average per couple worldwide? If so his plan does nothing to decrease world population significantly in the next century or two, but at best holds population nearly constant. Is that sufficient?

There is also the issue with population momentum. There are more younger people alive today than elderly, due to high birth rates in the past. If the birth rate goes down to 2 per couple, the population still rises for a while.

I see a number of comments here expecting that future population post peak will need to be significantly lower than the population today. And I see a number of comments saying that government action or organized efforts will have no serious effect on the population. And I see concerns that birth rate may actually go up. Put that all together, and we seem to be saying that we will continue to cram more and more people into this Volkswagon Beetle of a planet we live on, and that there is nothing we can do to stop it. In this metaphor, when the car gets too full and people die from overcrowding, well then the suggestion seems to be that the few remaining living people will throw the corpses out of the Beetle and drive off happily into the sunset.

But it is difficult to look at such a scenario and call it a message of hope. Yes, the survivors of the future population crash go on happily, living off the land in vibrant rural communities, living a happy simple low-energy life while maintaining some limited forms of telecommunications and other modern conveniences. Yes, I can see that end result can be a message of hope, if we ignore the means of getting there. But have we no other message of how we will get there, other than we will continue to cram and overshoot the planet until calamity occurs, and then hope for the best as the survivors go about establishing a new era of the good life in the post peak world?

Serious questions, these. And I would love to see somebody like Ehrlich address them further.