The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable
.... 6. Summary and Conclusions: It’s Really Quite Simple
“Without
a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very
simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can
decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense…
If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone”
(Vaclav Smil, [
102]).
H. sapiens,
like all other species, are naturally predisposed to grow, reproduce,
and expand into all suitable accessible habitat. Physical growth is
natural, but is only an early phase in the development of individual
organisms; growth in sheer scale, including population growth, is
characteristic of early phases of complex living systems, including
human societies. However, both material and population growth in finite
habitats are ultimately limited by the availability of essential
‘inputs’, by the capacity of the system’s environment to assimilate
(often toxic) outputs, or by various forms of negative feedback as
previously listed. Growth will cease, either by “design or disaster” [
103]
For most of H. sapiens’
evolutionary history, local population growth has, in fact, been
constrained by negative feedback. However, improved population health
(lower death rates) and the use of fossil fuels. particularly since the
early 19th century, enabled a period of unprecedented food and resource
abundance. In nature, any ‘K’-strategic species population enjoying such
favourable conditions will expand exponentially. Growth will generally
continue until excess consumption and habitat degradation once again
lead to food shortages and starvation, or disease and predation take
their toll. The population then falls back below the long-term carrying
capacity of the habitat and negative feedback eases off. Some species
repeatedly exhibit this cycle of population boom and bust.
Humanity is only a partial exception. The abundance generated by fossil fuels enabled
H. sapiens, for the first time, to experience a one-off global population boom−bust cycle (
Figure 1).
It is a ‘one-off’ cycle because it was enabled by vast stocks of both
potentially renewable self-producing resources and finite non-renewable
resources, including fossil fuels, which have been greatly depleted. No
repetition is possible. As Clugston argues, by choosing to
industrialize,
Homo sapiens unwittingly made a commitment to impermanence [
77].
We adopted a self-terminating way of life, in which the finite
resources that enable our industrial existence would inevitably become
insufficient to do so.
The physical mechanisms
are simple. Living systems, from individual cells through whole
organisms to populations and ecosystems, exist in nested hierarchies and
function as far-from-equilibrium dissipative structures [
104].
Each level in the hierarchy depends on the next level up both as a
source for useful resources (negentropy) and as a sink for degraded
wastes (entropy). As Daly [
8,
9]
reminds us, the human enterprise is a wholly-dependent subsystem of the
ecosphere; it produces and maintains itself by extracting negentropic
resources from its host system, the ecosphere, and dumping degraded
en-tropic wastes back into its host. It follows that the increasing
structural and functional complexity of the human sub-system as a
far-from equilibrium-dissipative structure (a node of negentropy) can
occur only at the expense of the accelerated disordering (increas-ing
entropy) of the non-growing ecosphere. Indeed, humanity is in
overshoot—global heating, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation,
tropical deforestation, ocean acidi-fication, fossil fuel and mineral
depletion, the pollution of everything, etc., are indicative of the
increasing disordering of the biosphere/ecosphere. We are at risk of a
chaotic break-down of essential life-support functions [
105].
Little
of this is reflected in contemporary development debates or in
discussions of the population conundrum. The international community’s
response to incipient biospheric collapse is doubly disastrous. MTI
culture’s commitment to material growth, including continued FF use
(Track 1), condemns humanity to the predictably dangerous impacts of
accelerating climate change; at the same time, our pursuit of
alternative energy sources (themselves FF dependent) in order to
maintain the growth-based status quo (Track 2) would, if successful,
assure the continued depletion and dissipation of both self-producing
and non-renewable resources essential for the existence of civilization.
The
mainstream view of population asserts that the growth rate is declining
so “not to worry”—or worry that population decline is bad for the
economy! Even the base assertion is controversial. Jane O’Sullivan
points out that the rate of decline has itself declined in this century.
She argues that UN demographers have thus ‘persistently underestimated
recent global population, due to their over-anticipation of fertility
declines in high-fertility countries’ [
106].
The human population continues to grow at about 80 million per
year—O’Sullivan argues that the number is closer to 90 million—and its
ultimate peak is highly uncertain. Renewed negative feedback may well
end growth well before the population reaches the UN’s expected 10.4
billion in the late 2080s.
It is crucial to
remember that, right or wrong, conventional projections ignore the fact
that the ecosphere is not actually now ‘supporting’ even the present
eight billion people. The human enterprise is growing and maintaining
itself by liquidating and polluting essential ecosystems and material
assets. In short, even average material living standards are corrosively
excessive, yet, in 2019, ‘almost a quarter of the global population…
lived below the US
$3.65 per day poverty line, and almost half, 47 percent, lived below the US
$6.85 poverty line’ [
107]
and the world considers sheer material growth as the means to address
this problem. Following this path, eco-destruction will ramp up,
increasing the probability of a self-induced simplification and
contraction of the human enterprise.
Baring a nuclear holocaust, it is unlikely that
H. sapiens
will go extinct. Wealthy, technologically advanced nations potentially
have more resilience and may be insulated, at least temporarily, from
the worst consequences of global simplification [
108].
That said, rebounding negative feedbacks—climate chaos, food and other
resource shortages, civil disorder, resource wars, etc.—may well
eliminate prospects for an advanced world-wide civilization. In the
event of a seemingly inevitable global population ‘correction’, human
numbers will fall to the point where survivors can once again hope to
thrive within the (much reduced) carrying capacity of the Earth.
Informed estimates put the long-term carrying capacity at as few as 100
million [
109] to as many as three billion people [
110].
It
is uncertain whether much or any of industrial high-tech can persist in
the absence of abundant cheap energy and rich resource reserves, most
of which will have been extracted, used, and dissipated. It may well be
that the best-case future will, in fact, be powered by renewable energy,
but in the form of human muscle, draft horses, mules, and oxen
supplemented by mechanical water-wheels and wind-mills. In the worst
case, the billion (?) or so survivors will face a return to stone-age
life-styles. Should this be humanity’s future, it will not be urban
sophisticates that survive but rather the pre-adapted rural poor and
remaining pockets of indigenous peoples.
Bottom
line: Any reasonable interpretation of previous histories, current
trends, and complex systems dynamics would hold that global MTI culture
is beginning to unravel and that the one-off human population boom is
destined to bust. H. sapiens’ innate
expansionist tendencies have become maladaptive. However, far from
acknowledging and overriding our disadvantageous natural
predispositions, contemporary cultural norms reinforce them. Arguably,
in these circumstances, wide-spread societal collapse cannot be
averted—collapse is not a problem to be solved, but rather the final
stage of a cycle to be endured. Global civilizational collapse will
almost certainly be accompanied by a major human population
‘correction’. In the best of all possible worlds, the whole transition
might actually be managed in ways that prevent unnecessary suffering of
millions (billions?) of people, but this is not happening—and cannot
happen—in a world blind to its own predicament.
....
https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/15/biden-is-risking-war-with-iran-and-the-media-is-ignoring-the-danger/
Biden Is Risking War With Iran — And the Media Is Ignoring the Danger
The Biden administration plans to station Marines on commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. This could trigger war with Iran, but most of the mainstream U.S. press is not paying attention.
The Biden administration is provocatively
risking a military clash with Iran in the Persian Gulf that could even
lead to a wider war. Most of the mainstream U.S. press is paying no
attention at all. The Washington Post did report the news, but
distorted it so badly that if fighting does break out it will look like
Iran is entirely to blame. And Israel’s role in the potential crisis is,
once again, whitewashed.
Here’s what is happening. The Post reported last week that
the U.S. is considering stationing U.S. Marines on board commercial
(not necessarily American) ships in the Persian Gulf region to stop Iran
from seizing them. A month earlier, the Post had briefly reported that
the U.S. Navy had stopped an Iranian effort to seize two commercial oil
tankers — neither of them registered in the U.S. — off the coast of
Oman. Left out of that article was any explanation for Iran’s actions.
And Israel was nowhere mentioned.
You have to look elsewhere, such as the valuable Responsible Statecraft, to learn the larger truth. Trita Parsi, a respected Iranian-American scholar, pointed out that the U.S. has in fact already been confiscating Iranian oil on
the high seas. “Predictably,” Parsi writes, “Iran has responded by
targeting oil supplies of countries that collaborated with Biden on this
matter.” He notes:
This has then prompted Biden to beef up U.S. military presence in the
Persian Gulf to prevent Iranian actions that only began as a result of
Biden’s own policies.
Paul Pillar, another sensible expert, also noted,
“The last time the United States placed armament and military
personnel, ready to fight, on ocean-going commercial vessels was during
the world wars of the 20th Century.” He points out, “It was the United
States, not Iran, that began the latest round of going after another
nation’s tankers and seizing its oil.” And he calmly adds:
With different U.S. policies, this situation could have been avoided.
Iran has not intercepted shipping because Iranians have some genetic
malice that compels them to do such things. As with many other Iranian
policies and actions, this practice is reactive.
Also completely ignored in the minimal mainstream reporting is
Israel’s violent years-long campaign against Iran, including attacks on
the high seas and extensive sabotage efforts inside Iran, even including the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Israel’s aim all along has been to provoke the U.S. into an armed
clash with Iran, in large part as an effort to set back or destroy
Tehran’s nuclear program. Less than two months ago, optimism for
a U.S./Iran agreement was
growing as Iran edged toward pausing its nuclear enrichment program in
return for some relief from U.S.-imposed economic sanctions. Now that
U.S. Marines may be stationed on oil tankers and shooting at Iranians,
that de facto deal looks like it may be off.
The mainstream U.S. media failure is truly hard to believe. The
media’s anti-Iran bias is no surprise. The erasure of Israel’s role,
including its violent campaign against Tehran, is similarly to be
expected. But the fact that so far only a single newspaper has even
published a report about the dangerous U.S. escalation is a real
jaw-dropper.
Sina Toossi is another respected Iranian-American scholar (who, like
Parsi, is no supporter of the present regime in Tehran). He didn’t hide his disappointment with the U.S. administration:
Biden’s Iran policy is a betrayal of his campaign promises. He is
escalating the economic war on 85 million Iranians & provoking a
military confrontation in the Persian Gulf. He promised a foreign policy
for the middle class, not for the war hawks in Washington.
....
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/08/14/the-destruction-of-american-health-care/
The Destruction of American Health Care
In the US medical boards are in many respects agents of Big Pharma. They serve to punish doctors who don’t abide by Big Pharma’s money-grubbing protocols.
The Ohio Medical Board is a good example. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
testified in June 2021 to the Ohio House of Representatives Health
Committee about the dangers of the so-called “Covid vaccines.” Her testimony was based on published studies in medical journals. Her
testimony was at a time when the full press was on to have the entire
population injected with an experimental dose of no one knew what. Big
Pharma and American medicine that it controls didn’t want anyone
getting in the way of huge profits and whatever other agendas were at
work. Big Pharma orchestrated a number of complaints to be made about Dr. Tenpenny. The Ohio Medical Board responded to its master’s call.
The vaccinators were unhappy when 2 years and 2 months ago Dr.
Tenpenny said that the so-called “vaccine” was causing heart
inflammation. Her statement, controversial at the time, is now accepted as true. But the Ohio Medical Board is nevertheless punishing her for being correct. By
telling the truth, the Ohio Medical Board thinks Dr. Tenpenny violated
the State’s Medical Practices Act. Big Pharma’s Ohio Medical Board has
suspended Dr. Tenpenny’s medical license.
This is how corrupt medicine is today in the United States. Over the
course of my life I have watched the collapse of medical practice in the
US. Doctors were in private practice. You had a personal relationship with them. They knew how to diagnose. Poor people weren’t charged. The doctors added a little to rich people’s bills. The doctor was focused on your health, not his pocketbook.
Today medical schools teach doctors, who are increasingly corporate
employees thanks to Obamacare and other legislation designed to destroy
private practice, to type the patients reported symptoms into his laptop
and prescribe the drugs that Big Pharma recommends. This kind of medicine can be automated.
In the US doctors have become employees. They cannot use their judgment but must follow protocols. Doctors who rejected the death-dealing Covid protocols and saved patients’ lives with Ivermectin and HCQ were fired. If they were in private practice, they were hauled before corrupt medical boards whose pockets were lined by Big Pharma.
Cat scans, MRIs, and blood analysis are wonderful tests for
diagnostics, but technology aside medical practice in the US is failing
fast. With the rapid expansion of corporate medicine doctors are being turned into profit centers. Their job is to hand the patient a Big Pharma prescription and rush to the next patient.
One way that Big Pharma, using its political campaign contributions,
is closing down private medical practice is by getting Congress to pass
legislation that results in corporate billings to insurance companies
and Medicare being paid a larger percentage of the billed amount than
private practices. The consequence has been the sale of private practices and their incorporation into corporate medicine.
What this means is that “our representatives” in Congress are not our representatives. They are Big Pharma’s representatives and representatives for others who finance their election campaigns. Big
Pharma’s representatives have centralized our health care and turned it
against us by turning health care into just another monetized
commodity.
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