Brand New Year, Same Old Problems
As 2020 ended, so 2021 has begun: our world is still gripped by a global pandemic while the turmoil arising from the US presidential election in November continues. The release on Thursday night (January 14th) of a large amount of classified information by President Trump will no doubt ensure that, for the foreseeable future, we will continue to live in interesting times.
As our attention is distracted by the pandemic and current political events, the ongoing environmental crisis is being sidelined. But, as our patron Paul Ehrlich pointed out in a recent Guardian interview, this environmental destruction is infinitely more threatening to civilization.
The global catastrophe that is unfolding as humans continue to overrun the world, in the words of our patron Sir David Attenborough, is not news for PIC members. Our newsletters and releases have mentioned or covered a slew of scientific reports about the state we’re in and where we’re headed, including:
- The World Economic Forum report in 2020, which named biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy.
- The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment report, which said 70% of the planet had been altered by humans.
- The 2020 WWF Living Planet report, which warned the average population size of vertebrates had declined 68% in the past five years.
- A 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which said that human activities are estimated to have already caused approximately 1C of global warming above pre-industrial levels and this warming was likely to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052.
- Stark warnings from the world’s leading scientists about the state of the Earth, including a statement by 11,000 scientists in 2019 that people will face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless major changes are made and a 2016 open letter to the world from 375 scientists – including 30 Nobel prize winners – who wrote about their frustrations over political inaction on climate change.
The reports coming from scientists suggest that we may be heading for the collapse that they have been warning about for decades. Such concerns long predate the seminal book Overshoot by William R. Catton, Jr. First published in 1980, this book describes how the tremendous amount of cheap energy provided by the one-off bonanza of easily accessible oil allowed the human population to go into overshoot – to greatly exceed the long-term capacity of the planet – a situation that would inevitably lead to it collapsing. Christopher Clugston’s 2015 book Scarcity meticulously detailed how the non-renewable natural resources (NNRs) that provide the raw material for our industrialized economies are becoming less and less economically viable to extract and will not be able to sustain humanity in the future. He concluded, as the title of his subsequent book suggested, that industrialized humanity would be an historical Blip.
Whether or not we are in the early stages of collapse (or perhaps even in a much more advanced stage than we are aware), the human population is still growing rapidly, by over 80 million annually. Incredibly, despite the dire warnings coming from the World Economic Forum itself (the first bullet above), the economic paradigm of perpetual growth remains unchallenged by mainstream economists.
Therefore, those who understand that “the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment,” in the words of ecological economist Herman Daly, must continue to make No Growth their cause célèbre in 2021. Help us do so by bringing up the ideas of “no growth” and “de-growth” whenever you can and introducing the idea to those who may not be aware of it. The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) provides some useful arguments.
PIC uses social media forums and email releases (feel free to join us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn) to raise awareness of the consequences of overpopulation and consumption and invite engagement. Our followers are understandably frustrated by governments’ unwillingness to abandon the paradigm of perpetual growth, but increasing grassroots awareness will help apply the pressure for them to do so. We must be prepared to educate at the grassroots level for as long as it takes.
We thank all of our members, followers, and supporters for sticking with us. Please keep those discussions going. As we head into what may appear to be a “gathering storm,” we at PIC wish all of you “bon courage” in this new but already turbulent year.
President, Population Institute Canada
Tel: (613) 833-3668
Email: [email protected]
www.populationinstitutecanada.ca
COLLECTIVE RESPONSE REQUIRED / SEEK DEMOCRATIC CHOICE FOR DEGROWTH
I have for years espoused the principle of population degrowth,…. recommending the goal of One Child Per Family (OCPF) for the human family on Earth
I visualize something akin to a global election campaign to gain support for (or rejection of) the necessity of population degrowth.
It would be my hope that during the several-year run up (campaign) to the global election… where each citizen has a vote (yea or nay)…. that proponents for the affirmative (necessity of population degrowth) would have the opportunity to debate in public with the proponents for the negative (arguing against the necessity for population degrowth).
I see the campaign and the looming global election (referendum /plebiscite) as an opportunity to:
a) introduce the people of the world to the concept of overshoot and inevitable collapse … and
b) to air the thinking that is seen to support /or reject the thesis that degrowth is a necessity
Imagine the educational value of simply bringing the problem to the attention of every voting citizen on Earth … and the opportunity to proselytize during a long pre-vote campaign to explain the problem (degrowth proponents) or lack of a problem (pro-growth proponents).
We think that degrowth is going to happen one way or another, and we would much prefer for it to occur voluntarily than be forced on us by nature. Teaching people about the concept of overshoot and promoting the acceptance of degrowth would be steps in the right direction for a more voluntary, organized process of degrowth. Given the many cultural differences among nations, we’re not sure how a global campaign and election would work out or how it would be set up without a huge UN-like bureaucracy. But even having the idea promoted by the UN – and encouraging its member countries to embrace degrowth — would go a long way. In the meantime, each country will have to be responsible for its own population and set its own population policies. Rich countries should support developing countries seeking to stabilize their populations.