Part 3 -Musings on Population, Extinction and Consumption

Our planet is nearing several tipping points. The stable climate of the Holocene that gave rise to civilization is rapidly approaching its end. If the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctic collapse, methane from global permafrost is released and ecosystem decline continues, we will begin a rapid transition towards an unknown climate and state of our planet. Our most important fight now, is to stay in the climatic boundaries of the Holocene. The climate crisis is our world war. An important question being asked is what is an appropriate limit to the human population? However, the more important question to be asked is, what is the limit of human consumption? There will be a trade off to be made between the size of the human population and living standards. The earth can only provide for so many people, we must decide how many people we want on our planet and what their resource allocation would look like. 

The sum of all environmental catastrophes; climate change, plastic pollution, biodiversity collapse, ocean acidification, eutrophication etc. are all driven at present by our being as a species. If we leave humans out of the equation, nature will return to its natural state of harmony where every other species will reach its potential. So we must ask an important question, can humans truly live in harmony with nature? Can we live in a world without taking from it? There is a spectrum of integration with nature. At one end is the present state of the majority of our population, where every action is in conflict with natural systems. At the other end are humans at the beginning of the Holocene where we played a role in an ecosystem just as other species did. We must get to a place on this spectrum where there is no conflict with nature. But we can’t go back to society as it was before the Holocene, so we must define a new role for humans in global ecosystems, where we are integrated, giving as much as we take, like any other species is.  

If we were to replace all fossil fuel consumption with biofuels we would need 400 earths (10). Naturally earth can only provide us with so much energy. While we can use energy with a lower ecological impact there is a fundamental question that needs to be asked - how much energy given current technology can the world provide us with? From this we can determine an appropriate energy allocation to each individual annually around the world within earth's biophysical boundaries. For example flight which is incredibly energy intensive. Would flight use up a considerable amount of a hypothetical individual's annual energy budget? Perhaps there is enough energy to allow every individual a few flights per year, or perhaps flight is too energy intensive given current technology. This is a scary question, but even as more ‘sustainable’ energy forms come to market, there will always be a cost to energy consumption, at a minimum the cost is the opportunity cost of consumption. Will intensive uses of energy be possible in a sustainable future? What are realistic levels of consumption and energy production in the future for each human? These are the fundamental questions we must be asking. A key to maximise our energy allocation is to minimise waste. I was presented with an interesting thought the other day, the idea that waste is a human construct. Before humans there was quite simply no waste, poop was an asset and decaying life was food. An important vision for the future is one without waste, where everything is circular and energy use is finite. 

Our resources use must be capped, divided appropriately and tradable to create incentive for value creation. One problem we will have is in determining how an equitable market economy will alleviate unnecessary inequality. There is a balance in making sure highly skilled individuals are rewarded and allowing some individuals to compile huge stocks of resources or capital. This age-old political question must be revisited now as the state may need to play a larger role in disaster response to the climate and ecological crisis. How can we stop our resources pooling into possession of select actors while maintaining incentive for hard work? The inequality failure is highlighted in the US where currently three people have the same wealth as 50% of Americans (11). If we wanted to allocate these resources to optimise welfare in an equitable society, clearly the doubling of 150 million incomes would generate more welfare than for just three people. Some argue big philanthropy is more efficient and has more impact than state allocation of resources. People think of the Gates foundation and easily draw this conclusion, that private sector philanthropy is more efficient in improving welfare than the state. However, we have elected the state not the wealthy to allocate resources. Charity and inherently big philanthropy, is a sign of failure from the state. This critical question for our future remains unanswered, how do we avoid resource pooling while maintaining reward for incentive? And does a more equitable society have lower consumption and footprint than a more less equitable society? 

We have a difficult challenge in the coming decades. Not only must we make all our actions neutral in their impact on our planet, but they must be restorative to our planet. This may be a unique point in human history. For a long time, humans evolved in synergy to ecosystems. Then as a species, we reached a point where our actions harmed global ecosystems. Now for the first time in our planet's history, a species must actively work to heal our ecosystems. Not only will the next generation on earth have to be the first generation to have a neutral impact on the environment in millenia, but they will also have to be the first to have a positive impact and they will have to do it with lower stocks of natural capital than ever before. We now must realise an inflection point where our species’ actions turn from harming the planet to healing it - this will change everything and as such, everything must change. We must be at peace with and embrace the idea that all we know will and must change rapidly. These radical changes will create opportunities in a transition we must embrace on our path to a new state of being for our species.

10 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030703349?fbclid=IwAR2V3YdCdtvr5ZbeAPbKwirzeTBjLIaXUnhcSgQmpQq96M26py0UXJrsgx8#:~:text=This%20book%20is%20a%20reality,half%20a%20million%20other%20products

11 https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/?sh=1d1b3bcc3cf8