Steven Earl Salmony
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With remarkable clarity and perhaps too simply, unfalsified ecological science of human population dynamics provides empirical data of a non-recursive biological problem that is independent of economic, political, ethical, social, legal, religious, and cultural considerations. This means human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species. It also means that world human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives population growth, and population growth fuels the misperception, the mistaken impression, the fatally flawed concept that food production needs to be increased to meet the needs of growing population. The data indicate that as we increase food production every year, the number of people goes up, too, in the same way population numbers increase in other species, i.e., as a function of food availability. More food equals more people; no food, no people. No exceptions.
With every passing year, as total global food production is increased leading to an increase in the human population worldwide, millions of people go hungry. Why are those hungry millions not getting fed year after year after year… and future generations of poor people may not ever be fed? Every year the human population grows. All segments of it grow. There are more short people and more tall people. Every year there are more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry and starving. We are not bringing hunger and starvation to an end by increasing food production; we are “producing” more hungry and starving people at the same time we are feeding more people.
It appears that human exceptionalism is the bedrock for much of the confusion about this virtually irrefutable scientific evidence. There are many ways in which human beings correctly choose to view ourselves as exceptional. But we also widely share and consensually validate the false notion that human beings stand somehow above all other species, in a unique position described in many other places as “a little lower than angels.” Lost to many too many of us is the realization that we are an integral part of the Tree of Life of Earth, one of millions of similarly situated, wondrous creatures in a planetary home. In this natural world a sense of our distinctly human creatureliness has been fatefully forgotten.Of all the understandable ways humans think of rightly ourselves as exceptional there is one mistaken impression, one misperception, one fatally flawed conception that appears to have led the human species to precipitate the Sixth Mass Extinction Event. The specious idea to which I want to direct attention is this: Homo sapiens sapiens is exceptional in terms of its population dynamics. We hold tightly to the pernicious notion that human population dynamics is somehow different from the population dynamics of other species; that food is not the independent variable in the food/population relationship, just like other species; and that in terms of its population dynamics humankind is extraordinary. If that is a fact of the human condition, that Homo sapiens is exceptional in terms of its population dynamics, will someone kindly report the scientific evidence that supports such an hypothesis? Thank you.
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The best available science regarding the human population and its patently unsustainable growth ‘trajectory’ need to be widely shared, consensually validated and acted upon wisely. Willfully ignoring ecological science of human population dynamics that makes crystal clear to all that the UN mantra “food production must be increased annually to meet the needs of a growing population,” is part and parcel of a widely shared and consensually validated fool’s errand. If ever the human community is sensibly and meaningfully able to restrain the bacteria-like growth of absolute global human population numbers (recall that human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species), limiting increases only in total food production for human consumption must be a part of any program of action. We know superabundant harvests can be simultaneously redistributed more fairly and equitably so as to assure substantial baseline subsistence to people everywhere on the planet. Such a program of action will lead naturally to population stabilization initially and population reduction in the long term, all the while curtailing human starvation.
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Dear Howard,
An occasional contributor to the MAHB Blog who goes by the name Byron Arnold needs to contacted for his thoughts about your perspective. He is working on the same problem of organizing a workable social world order. Also, Geoffrey Holland is certain to be another remarkable contributor to any discussion of this kind.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
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Take a moment to reflect upon the way in which a thoughtful, effective and systematic redistribution of the world’s abundant food resources, if implemented simultaneously with limits placed on total food production, would feed the human population and stabilize absolute human population numbers. That is to say, limiting “increases only” in the total supply of food for human consumption, when coupled with a sensible food redistribution program, will lead to population stabilization and starvation reduction.
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Dear Julian Cribb,
We possess unfalsified scientific research (Hopfenberg and Pimentel 2001; Hopfenberg 2003) that indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity that humans need to begin immediately to limit increases only in production of the total food supply for human consumption. Increasing food production to meet the needs of a growing is causing the human population explosion. Annual increases in the amount of food must be thoughtfully and systematically limited as the available food supply is redistributed. That every one receives adequate subsistence is the goal.
Somehow I hope we can find a way to discuss openly what looks to me like “the last of the last taboos” regarding the human population. My abiding concern grows out of the realization that some humans could emerge out of “the bottleneck” which E.O. Wilson forecasts in the Future of Life, only to begin once again doing the very same things we are doing now, the things that have evidently precipitated the Global Predicament.
There is a choice. Our descendants could choose either to grow food to meet the needs of a growing population or limit the unrestricted annual growth of the food supply for human consumption, thereby setting in place a regime for stabilizing the growth of absolute human population numbers. If we cannot accurately discern what is causing the recent human population explosion and act accordingly, I cannot see how our descendants are to avoid the same fate — extinction — that the general biological evolutionary process appears to hold in store for all species in the web of life. Can we find and then choose to follow a path forward that makes possible a viable and foreseeable, open ended future for H. sapiens?
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Dear Howard,
Thank you for contributing this uncommon perspective. Your hopeful vision is one I can barely imagine, but one that I cannot see a way to operationalize. What are we to do as a first concrete step toward actually realizing your ideas? How are we to ‘turn the page’, or become camels marching through the eye of a needle, or enter this New World? All I think of at the moment is falling down a rabbit hole and finding myself in a place that reminds me of Alice’s upside down (or better yet, right side up) Wonderland. The human community desperately needs of new vision of humane organization with adequate governance mechanisms. Perhaps this discussion is one way to begin. After all, any kind of new beginning must emanate from the word, I suppose.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
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