Overpopulation and overconsumption are the roots of the climate crisis, peak oil, mass extinctions, habitat loss, and all of the other ecological and resource crises of our time. They are also the root cause of neofeudalism.
The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, described quantitative methods for determining the impacts of exponential economic growth on finite resources. The authors did not intend to make specific predictions, but one conclusion was clear: continued increase in population and consumption levels would produce ecological overshoot that would necessarily lead to collapse over the course of the 21st century.
Mainstream economists howled, but subsquent updates have only reinforced the original conclusion, and the data on climate change have given us indications of the shape of things to come.
If you were on a ship and a fellow passenger, perhaps a physicist or mechanical engineer, pointed out an iceberg and showed you calculations demonstrating that the ship could not possibly turn in time to avoid it, what would you do? If you were a big strong guy, and you knew that the ship had enough lifeboats for about 2/3 of the passengers, what would you do for yourself and your family...?
E.C.S.T.A.S.Y. — End Consumption, Save The Air & Sea, Y'all!
Discussion and support for kicking the habits of consumption that are killing our planet.
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?
-Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"
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Our story includes a guy by the name of David Stockman, and ends with a cliff-hanger in which the main characters are a bunch of serfs, among them you and I.
But for today we'll tell the backstory: from Fertile Crescent to Haber-Bosch.
The once-fertile Crescent.
The Fertile Crescent was once, as its name suggests, a lush green paradise of early agriculture and a birthplace of civilization. It was also an early example of population overshoot of local carrying capacity.
As population grew, excessive irrigation brought salinization of the soil; forests were cut and hillsides denuded. The result was the spread of desert to encompass the region, and the collapse of carrying capacity.
With desertification comes the shift of ecosystems toward simpler species; insect pests attack food crops while emerging diseases attack domesticated animals and humans. Decline in available resources notably food and water, leads to resource wars. Over time, hunger becomes endemic. Taken together, these events produce a dieback of human population to a level that can be locally sustained.
These events and the human misery that occurred as they proceeded, would have been known in the accounts of regional history available to the founders of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this light, the Biblical Revelations of St. John can be seen as an insightful rendition of the effects of ecological catastrophe: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death on a vast scale; the Four Horsemen of overshoot and collapse.
Fast-forward: Malthus, Darwin, and Respite.
The American Revolution occurs in 1776 - 1783, and the US Constitution is adopted five years later in 1788.
Ten years after that, Thomas Malthus publishes his first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, and his sixth edition in 1826. In essence Malthus argues that populations grow exponentially until they exceed the limits of food supplies, at which point they suffer catastrophic dieoffs. His proposed solution is for people to voluntarily delay marriage and childbearing, a natural form of birth control (assuming, as he did, that "virtue" would preclude sex before marriage). He also warns that overpopulation creates poverty, a point that has since been misinterpreted to imply that poverty and immiseration are natural and therefore acceptable.
Charles Darwin reads Malthus in October 1838, finds that it agrees with his observations of other species, and concludes, "it at once struck me that under these circumstances (of overshoot and collapse), favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then, I had at last got a theory by which to work..."
(from Darwin's autobiography, quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/... )
By 1850, the Earth's population of humans is about 1.26 billion.
By 1900, population has increased to 1.65 billion, and is approaching the limits of the supply of natural fertilizers and agriculture powered by horses and coal. It appears to many that a Malthusian crisis is on its way.
A few years later, all of this would change.
The 20th Century in two discoveries:
On 10 January, 1901, a ragtag crew of Texas visionaries hits the world's first gusher of oil. In those days, a gusher was something to celebrate. A few years later, Spindletop Texas looks like this:
In 1909, Fritz Haber demonstrates artificial synthesis of ammonia, and the process is developed to industrial scale by Carl Bosch in 1913. This becomes the basis of the synthetic fertilizer industry.
Today, world population is about 6.7 billion humans.
According to various estimates, every calorie of food eaten today contains on average ten calories of fossil fuel energy that was used to produce it. As with the teeming masses in Eugene Zamyatin's WE (a book that was largely the inspiration for Orwell's 1984), we are eating "petroleum food."
The food supply of 1/3 of humanity today is directly dependent upon synthetic fertilizers produced by the Haber-Bosch process. The primary input to that process is natural gas.
That is to say, without the synthetic fertilizers produced from natural gas (not even counting the contribution of petroleum-fueled agricultural machinery), the limit of human population would be about 2/3 of what it is today.
I'll close for today with the cold equation:
6.7 billion x 2/3 = about 4.5 billion.
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You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, Am I right, Am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, My God! What have I done?
-Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"
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Here are a few important links:
- Annie Leonard's crucial movie, The Story of Stuff.
- An invaluable tool for calculating the ecological footprint of your lifestyle, from the good folks at Redefining Progress. What's your score?
- The Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
- SCRAP - a creative reuse center, store and workshop space.
Donations of high quality, low cost, re-usable materials such as textiles, paper, jewelry findings, wood, buttons and plastics are collected from businesses, institutions and individuals then sorted, displayed and distributed by SCRAP for artists, educational and community groups.
For more creative reuse centers around the country, click here.
- Philosophical perspectives on sustainability, civilization and the role of human nature from Jason Godesky.
- Freecycle.
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,793 groups with 7,208,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!
If you have a resource that should be included in ECSTASY diaries, please include the link and a few words about it in the comments.
ECSTASY diaries will appear most often on weekends and Thursday evenings. All diaries dealing with the problems of living in a Consumerist society are potential candidates. If you think you've got something to contribute, please contact WarrenS and he'll schedule you in.
The next diary planned is expected on Sunday, May 16, when Milly Watt will tell us about some experiences that have made her a true believer in the power-saving potential of monitoring energy consumption.
The ECSTASY series thus far:
February 28: Introducing ECSTASY.
March 7: The Work of Julian Lee and Juliet Schor: Two Voices of Sanity.
March 10: G2Geek's Measure The Power.
March 14: Earthfire promoted Annie Leonard's appearance in Washington, DC.
March 21: RL Miller tells us about Chickens.
March 24: G2Geek prompts an unbelievable discussion about the
difference between Consumerist Time and Hunter-Gatherer Time.
March 28: citisven shares a thought-provoking and aesthetically satisfying look at the ways that one person's trash is another person's art materials.
April 4: WarrenS gives us the good word on Making Homemade Musical Instruments.
April 7: G2geek talks about what makes for robust and sustainable technology.
April 11: B Amer tells us how to find ECSTASY on our bicycles.
April 18: rb137 reviews Judith Levine's book, "Not Buying It!"
April 25: mwmwm's powerful rumination on our collective complicity in consumerism.
April 29: G2geek discusses the need for a new economic and emotional narrative.
May 2: WarrenS offers Eight Thoughts About Timescale.
May 6: G2geek talks about the ecological implications of Where You Keep Your Money.
May 9: rb137 gives us a powerful review of the role of "blood metals" in our consumer electronics — "Your Cellphone is Killing People!"