I was finishing a novel by Sheri Tepper last night. She's one of my favorite writers for a lot of reasons; among other things, she writes about gender issues and overpopulation, and explores these in the context of many, many different settings. Here's the quote that made me sit up and shout 'yes!' last night...this, from her 1993 novel, A Plague of Angels, p. 555:

"Hunagor asked me why man did not learn from the recurrent famines she had sent upon the earth.
"What did you say?"
"I told Hunagor what others had told me: that children are proofs of virility, and solutions that leave virility in doubt were not acceptable; that children are a way of controlling women, and losing control over women was not acceptable; that children grew up to make money or armies, and that not having money or armies was not acceptable. I said that men will not solve a problem unless they can find an 'acceptable' solution, and there are not acceptable solutions for some problems."

And later, on page 556:
"...then Werra asked why man had not been warned by the wars he had created...why men did not change when Seoca first sent (immuno-deficiency diseases) among them;..."
"I gave the same three answers. Man believes what he wants to believe, and he chose to believe war was merely local or temporary or justifiable. Man could have made the hard choices that would have stopped the immune deficiency diseases...but those afflicted demanded other choices, their friends demanded other choices, their kinfolk demanded other choices, no government would take a stand that might lose it support, every faction found some part of the solution unacceptable. And finally, man would not stop destroying the earth until he was forced to do so, for he was reared in the belief he was more important than the earth itself..."

I could go on for pages and pages with quotes equally relevant to the subject of this blog. Ms. Tepper has written at least 25 books and is often described as an 'eco-feminist' writer. I would rather say that she makes plain the root causes and effects of many of the ills we are now reaping.

And here's something sobering!
Check out the ratio of deaths to births, and then tell me we DON'T have a problem.
http://www.worldometers.info/

Effective, safe, available contraception

From the Earth Policy website, an extract from Chapter 7 of Lester R. Brown's Plan B 2.0:Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, 2006. (The follow-up to this, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, is available for sale as of today!)

"The United Nations estimated that meeting the needs of the 201 million women who do not have access to effective contraception could each year prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies, 22 million induced abortions, and 1.4 million infant deaths. Some 142,000 pregnancy-related deaths could also be prevented. The costs to society of not filling the family planning gap are unacceptably high. 28
Reinforcing these U.N. calculations are data from the grassroots showing how access to family planning services helps couples achieve their desired family size. Surveys in Honduras, for example, show poor women (often lacking family planning services) having twice as many children as they want, while women in high socioeconomic groups are quite successful at having the number of children they desire.29"

28. UNFPA, op. cit. note 22, p. 39.

29. Honduran Ministry of Health, Encuesta Nacional de Epidemiología y Salud Familiar
Guzman, “Population, Poverty, and Vulnerability: Mitigating the Effects of Natural Disasters,” in Environmental Change and Security Project Report (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, 2002), pp. 45–68. (National Survey of Epidemiology and Family Health) (Tegucigalpa: 1996), cited in George Martine and Jose Miguel

Train of thought (or was that trainwreck?)

We Americans have been sleeping, and dreaming a pleasant dream. In our dream, there is always more and more and more. More money, more cars. More houses, more hamburgers. More TV shows, more jobs, more speed boats. More opportunities. More gadgets. More bright ideas. More steak dinners with chocolate cake for dessert. More shoes. More toys. More space to put our garbage – hey, infinite space! More people, and more babies. More and more and more.

In this dream, no one ever asks anyone else not to buy one more car, one more steak dinner, or not to have one more baby. In this dream, it’s as if no other way of life has ever existed but that of more, more, more. Anyone who suggests otherwise is asking for crucifixion. The dreamers don’t want to be awakened. They don’t want the dream to end. They don’t even want the dream to change! They don’t even want to think about the dream changing! And they don’t want anyone else to think or talk about it either.

Well, it’s easy to see why they’re threatened by talk of waking from the dream. However, while they were dreaming, the world has changed around them. The walls of their bedroom have crumbled. Their house is on the verge of collapse. Noisome floodwaters are lapping at the foot of their bed. The gas main is heard hissing, hissing in background, along with the sound of their snores. The pilot light is about to go on for the water heater, and they’re just lying there, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of more.

We’re at the point where the short view needs to give way to the long view. The people who are willing to profit by fouling and spoiling the commons are robbing not only our children and grandchildren, but their own. They must not be allowed to bankrupt all of us. It’s not within their rights to damage the system that we all depend upon. It is within no one’s rights to do that.

We cannot go on as we have done. Too much trust has been put in the individual, to act in a way that will ensure our common system will not be destroyed. However, individuals have not proven worthy of this trust. Overwhelmingly, individuals have acted in a way that will ensure their own short-term advantage, regardless of the effect these actions have on the system we all must share.

This is why laws exist in our system. We have laws against murder. We have laws against theft. We have laws against slander and defamation, even vandalism. If these crimes against society are considered serious enough to warrant protection by law, how much more serious is the crime of destroying the one natural system that all life on earth must share? Willfully destroying resources that will make it impossible for our grandchildren – yes, in our generation – unable to enjoy clean air, fresh water, abundant food…or elbow room.

Laws exist because people don’t tend to act in the common good, especially if doing so calls for any cutbacks, limitations, or inconvenience to themselves. If there were no laws against thievery, thievery would be rampant. If there were no laws against drunk driving, there would be a great deal of endangerment on the road. Laws exist as a practical matter, to keep jackasses, grifters and rogues from running roughshod over decent folk.

At some point it’s going to become obvious that people who insist on having more than two children per family are not acting in the common interest, in fact they are thieving from the system we all share.

It’s easy for individuals to dismiss this act of overpopulating. In their street, even in their house, there seems to be plenty of room. They have an extra bedroom, perhaps. There is room in the car for another child seat. On a local level, from street to street, it seems that way. However, as one steps back to take a wider view, the problem becomes more and more apparent.

On a town level, the aquifers begin to disappear as exponentially increasing gallons per day are pulled for the use of the growing population, pulled at a rate too fast for rainfall to replenish it. The quality as well as quantity of local water is degraded. The local dump is choked with material and another, larger site must be found. The seepage from the dump further degrades the water table. Runoff from countless fertilized front lawns causes algae bloom, then dieoff, then loss of species in the town’s creeks.

Concrete carpets larger and larger amounts of town land as new neighborhoods are laid out to accommodate the next generation of homeowners; the existing housing isn’t sufficient, both because the younger generation is large and the older generation is living longer than ever, so there is a generational overlap in housing need.

Because of the concrete, a microclimate is created within the town limits, and summertime temperatures there begin to be higher than ever recorded before. Thousands of households respond by switching on their air conditioners, all at the same time.

The additional draw on the power grid due to the air conditioners, due to the concrete, due to the critical mass of new housing, due to the third children born in the town, is enough to justify damming another river upstream to provide hydroelectric power. Or if there is no river upstream, a new coal-fired power plant is brought to bear on the problem.

Loss of habitat, endangerment of species, and loss of quality of living to all the river valley inhabitants are the result of the hydroelectric dam; while the coal-fired power plant generates sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, also known as ambient particulate matter, which is implicated in the deaths of 30,000 people per year in the US, and in the upper respiratory and cardiovascular ill-health of many more.

So, in short, the third child just polluted the air and water that we all share in common. Of course, to say the third child did so is completely erroneous. It is the third child’s parents who have decreed that we all breathe ambient particulate matter, including all those citizens who limited their children to one or two. Thus the community at large is forced to absorb the effects of self-serving actions of some of its members.

With the world’s population standing at 6.5 billion and counting, a large adjustment in population must be made. Sustainable population levels are estimated to be 2 billion for the entire earth. Just legislating a single-child family policy wouldn’t be enough to do it, even if this could be implemented without delay. The fact is, we are so far over the sustainable level that if this earth is going to achieve a stable sustainable population, two out of every three people need to disappear. Then the 2 billion that are left need to keep their population at replacement level only, i.e., 2 children per family.

Ah….then the question necessarily becomes…which one person out of every three remains on Earth, while the other two disappear?

Tough day for research

I can't say I have much to show for myself today, in terms of teasing open the Gordian knot of population issues.

One thing that I don't have to dig for, is that unplanned pregnancies should be minimized. Sex education, including information about contraception, should be offered early and often in our schools. Contraception should be available to anyone who wants it, at no cost, and no questions asked. I read recently that 49% - yes, almost HALF - of US pregnancies are unplanned.

The Catholic church needs to change its mind about contraception. It's trading the life of an egg or a sperm (not even an embryo yet!) for the lives of our grandchildren, and their children. The stakes are higher than it will admit. If the Catholic church could relax its stance on this issue, I think it could alleviate a great deal of human suffering.

I believe that if we aren't able to bring human population down to sustainable levels, that nature will do it for us. The collapse of our supportive natural systems, lack of food, water, severe weather conditions due to ecological imbalance, will cull our numbers, and will do it in a way that guarantees an inconceivable level of suffering. Starvation. Wars over water. Are these really preferable to contraception? I don't think they are. I think if we don't throttle back our own numbers, Nature will do it for us, and it will be very ugly. Contraception, even one-child families, will seem like a walk in the park compared to millions dying of famine.

Sustainable economic systems

The capitalist economy is based on continuous growth of the consumer base, and as such is not sustainable. It is time to look into sustainable economic models - here are some starting points:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html

I mentioned this in the last post, but here it is again:
http://www.steadystate.org/

Also check out the work of Herman Daly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly

Environmental crises such as global warming, depletion of fisheries, pollution, and water scarcity cannot be addressed without acknowledging the cause: overpopulation/overconsumption. US population has a greater negative impact on the environment because our rate of resource consumption per person outstrips that of any other nation.

Stately retreat

"Once tipping points are passed and critical natural thresholds exceeded, however, few populous societies can manage the stately retreat of human numbers needed to return to balance with finite natural resources." - Robert Engelman, MORE, Island Press, 2008

Stately retreat of human numbers. Why is it hard for populous societies to scale back? Part of the difficulty is getting people to look at the problem of overpopulation, to trace the problems to their source: too many people for sustainability. There is a percentage of people who will not look at the problem, who are in denial about the problem, and not only that - they're pissed off that people are even discussing it!

Another factor is that our economic system, at least in the US, is built on an ever-expanding model. It's like a pyramid scheme, where more and more consumers need to be produced (born) so others can be gainfully employed manufacturing goods and services for them to use. Unfortunately, this is not sustainable and many would argue (myself included) that we have already reached unsustainable levels in population/resource use, and need to find a way to scale back.

Luckily I'm not the only person thinking about this stuff. If you look around, you'll find information about what is called steady state economy. If we are going to scale back, an alternative to classic capitalist economy is going to be crucial in that, because our current business model doesn't allow for scaling back...at ALL. I'm also finding information about ecological economics, also known as Green economics.

In general, once you begin to dip your toe into the information available on all the interrelated issues concerning population and sustainability, you realize you're on the shore of a rather large body of water. I'm overwhelmed. I've bookmarked a ton of sites, printed out a lot of .pdf articles, and ordered a stack of books. As I start to digest this glut of information, I'll continue to write about it here.

First post

I grew up in a tiny town in California. For most of my childhood, it had a population of around 1,000. At that time, there was one developed neighborhood of single-family dwellings; the rest of the houses dated from the town's heyday (1860s), with single houses here and there dating from subsequent eras. Most of the flat land surrounding the town ws either range for cattle, or nut orchards. The town was tucked within rolling hills, dotted here and there with the archetypal California Oaks. These hills were beautifully sculpted and immodestly tall for such rounded objects. This painting by Ray Strong gives you the idea:

Around the time I turned 12 or 13, the land developers began buying up all the unoccupied land around our town. They systematically filled it with poorly-made tract homes. No one in the community seemed to care. No one seemed to have any idea about planning to ensure that our town retained its character, that the road into town would be able to bear the traffic, that the community landfill would be able to absorb the garbage generated by these enormous new neighborhoods.

The tract homes filled not only the flat areas, but began creeping up the enormous, preternaturally soft hillsides. Some of the hills were bulldozed flat on top to accommodate homesites for a few penultimate tract mansions (owned by the developer/developer's sons.) Thus the surrounding area was changed, forever for the worse. There were no more orchards. There were no more flocks of sheep in the pastures, roosters stalking through town, or kids on old horses plodding through on their way to the creek. As of the 2000 census, the town had grown to over 10,000. I don't know what the 2008 numbers are...Here is what it ended up looking like:
This was my first experience of the effect of unchecked population growth on an environment.

Now, thirty-five years later, it's not just a case of views being ruined, roads being congested, and a new landfill needed. I'm alarmed at the fact that US population is still growing, rather than stabilizing at a sustainable level. This, because each US citizen uses such a great amount of energy and other resources, and takes this level of usage for granted (in fact, many take it as a God-given right!)that each added US citizen impacts the environment more seriously than a new person born elsewhere. From Wikipedia: "The US consumes 25% of the world's energy (with a share of global productivity at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%)."

In this blog, I'm going to write about my research and exploration of human population, especially US population, and its influence on the environment. There are many many interrelated issues, and I hope to look into as many corners as possible. I want to educate myself on this issue in hopes of gaining a big-picture view of the situation we're in. Wish me luck.

May this work benefit all sentient beings.