This BBC article gives some sense of reassurance to someone like me who is constantly frustrated by people’s desire to see what they want instead of what is right in front of them.

Paraphrasing Aldous Huxley: “facts do not cease to exist because we ignore them”.

The environment is obviously a tremendously important topic for human beings, mostly because we are self-centered and wish to remain alive. So, we have decided that we all need to be keenly aware of maintaining the earth in whatever state is perfect for our life systems to function — oops, sorry, the proper PR line is — “we all need to save the planet”.

(The reason why I think this is absurd is that mother earth, in my opinion, doesn’t care whether her atmosphere is filled with nitrogen and oxygen, or whether it’s filled with methane, and I highly doubt that the planet will be “crying” if temperatures are 10 degrees colder or hotter than they are today. Call the environmental movement what it really is: the “Save Our Asses” movement, and I’ll be happier.)

Anyhow, once you realize that environmental pollution is contributing to hurting humanity — er…I mean…”hurting the planet” — you realize that we are big polluters and that we are wasteful, and whatnot.

So, people put forth solutions, like “we need to have government legislation to require companies to reduce their emissions by 10% over the next 10 years”, or “we need to recycle our plastic cups and metal cans”. I can appreciate the sentiment behind these ideas, but the fact is, it’s a little like trying to clean up New York City with a bucket and mop. Sure, we can make some tiny impact on the effects of our pollution, to feel better about ourselves, but truth is, we’re only slowing a process that was set in motion a long time ago.

The real problem, as the subject of this article understands so astutely, is that there are too many people.

Since we discovered and started using oil in the 1800s, our population has gone up a lot…from less than two billion to over 6 billion in just a hundred years. Humanity had been between one and two billion for millenia, prior to the last century. Obviously, something unnatural is going on, and the real reason why we pollute so much is that…well…we have a lot of polluters.

The fact is, conservationist or not, when you make a baby, you are polluting the earth. Because that baby needs to wear things, eat things, consume things, build things, buy things, and…well…you get the point. All of those things have to be designed and manufactured or grown and transported and sold and stored and all of those steps along the way consume fossil fuels or electricity, or destroy arable land. Sure, you can try to improve the efficiency of one of those links in the chain by 10% along the way, but the real problem is that the baby exists in the first place.

I don’t think, though, that there is a solution for this problem…or, at least, not a solution that we can consciously choose. It’s not like we are going to overcome our biological urge to procreate, and it’s not like we could decide who lived or died in a humane and democratic way. More likely, we will just end up like hamsters in a cage, slowly overflowing the floor space, until we get vicious and nasty and start killing each other. War can be a very effective population controller, and may end up being the only thing that effectively cuts down the population in the long term. Alternatively, some peak oil theorists would argue that we will run out of easy energy, and that will basically curb the population anyway, by reversing the trend that its easy discovery and use afforded us.

However we proceed in the future, it is at least comforting (to me) that there are some vocal people like Chris Rapley who get it, even if they are spreading a message that no one wants to hear.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2006 at 2:20 and is filed under Science, Geopolitics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.