Population growth and consumption go hand in hand, historically and now. For a supposedly intelligent person like Monbiot to say that population growth is somewhere down on a list of disasters facing us is, in my opinion, disingenuous, and smacks of opportunism.

I raise again my assertion that the problem is an imbalance int the brain architecture between intelligence/creativity capacity (cleverness) and sapience (judgment - the mental construct basis of wisdom). As a species we have excelled at clever problem solving, including the ability to rationalize our own emotions. What we have failed to evolve in is the capacity to make wise decisions and have a more realistic view of the world. Sapience is the capacity to view the world strategically as well as systemically. And it involves the ability to view the world as it is rather than as we would wish it to be. It is a-ideological.

These capacities are very weak in the vast majority of human beings (as evidenced by the state of the world today). Real sapience involves an ability to look at the whole picture and not just one part or a limited part. It involves the ability to model the whole and think forward in time to recognize consequences of current decisions in that future.

I maintain that humans lack this ability generally (except for a few in the rightmost tail end of the distribution) and that is exactly why we find ourselves in this predicament.

The only way out is via the same way we got here - evolution. Wisdom has to be selected for strongly enough that we begin to see a shift in the proportion of the population that develops larger (or more complex) prefrontal cortices (the master organizer for sapient consciousness). The big question is how shall that selection be done? It seems to me there are only two choices. Either we let nature take its course, which several here realize could lead to extinction of Homo in a massive die-off. Or we could enter into the evolutionary process and effectively engineer an evolutionary bottleneck.

I fully realize the latter is viewed with abhorrence by many. But that is because of historical thinking along with a rationalization of what the future will be like - more of like today. Most people operate under the assumption that Homo sapiens sapiens is an end product of evolution (that is if they even understand evolution) rather than just a step along the way. But the future will not be the same in profound ways. We cannot simply use history as a guide when the phenomena of interest are global in scale. We have to think differently than we ever have before. Otherwise, thinking, on this planet, may come to a screeching halt.

Also, there is no guarantee that evolution will produce a ‘better’ model of the genus. That there has been something like improvement in information processing ability and adaptability is explained by the increasing complexity of the world as it comes into dynamic equilibrium with the solar flux. Evolution is not under any plan to improve the world, only adapt to growing complexity when needed. So a future human species could be a regression rather than a progression (toward wiser folk).

George

Now, this debate is taking up entirely too much time for me as I have a writing project to attend to. It is also a distraction from Albert Bandura’s excellent article. Yet I cannot leave unanswered on my own blog what is, without question, an erroneous assessment of a highly destructive Monbiot article and comments which only add fuel to the fantasy that population isn’t really an urgent or very important issue. I am therefore going to turn comments off for now to give myself time to focus elsewhere.

Perhaps they’ll go back on when I finish, though the plan is to slow this blog down anyway to free up time for writing, so who knows. Such a move is a first for me, but I have to put my time where I think it will have the most impact, which is not in long debates here.

The model is overly simplistic (e.g. I do not include things like age and gender cohorts) but can at least provide a picture of what the dynamics entail.

Of particular interest, I model what I call Plan Z, a draconian, yet humane (meaning it doesn’t increase the death rate) measure to reduce the birth rate to zero! The point being that that represents a boundary condition. Seeing how long it takes to reduce the population at this rate will (should) start people thinking about how the population size plays into any impact model (footprint).

I submit that until you play around with this kind of model you really can’t have much of an opinion on what needs to be done regarding the IPAT formulation. You have to see these things in action to begin to appreciate the significance of reducing consumption or reducing population (or increasing technology for that matter).

You can find the post at:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/riding-with-ed-an-actor-devoted-to-the-green-life/#comments

Mine is #61.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to play with these simple, boundary-establishing models. But you do need to play with them if you want to form some kind of policy opinion.

George Mobus

Okay, the old wound is reopened, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’d like to find a way of expressing this issue that we could both agree is fair to all.

A Talk with Dr. Paul Ehrlich by Kathy Ricketts Reitinger, July 1999:

Zegrahm News recently traveled to Stanford University to discuss with Dr. Ehrlich his current feelings about the world’s population and his predictions about our future on the planet.

Ricketts: You introduced the equation, I=PAT, which illustrates the impact of any human group upon the environment: Impact = Population x Affluence (consumption) x Technology. When you first proposed this equation, you felt that “P” was the most critical in controlling and reducing human impact on the Earth. Do you still think that population growth is the most critical problem facing us today?

Ehrlich: Not anymore. Although the world is still vastly overpopulated, the past 30 years have shown that population can be controlled. People can be convinced that it may be in their best interest to produce smaller families. However, no one has any idea of how to convince humanity that it is in their best interest to consume less, instead of more. Even if ‘P’ is reduced, the steady rise of ‘A’ in the Impact Equation means that our crushing impact on the Earth will continue to increase.”

I like the way Ehrlich puts it. Rather than pouring salt in the wound like Monbiot does with his “not even near the top of the list” phrase, Ehrlich just notes we have seen progress on population* but none at all on consumption. If I have multiple injuries I hope the EMT takes care of the cut in the femoral artery before tending to my broken arm. If there are two EMT’s around, they can attend to both.

Ehrlich’s advice is to attend to both:

Don’t have families with more than one or two children. Encourage religious institutions to support birth control and family planning; encourage politicians to support the same. Reduce consumption. …In a nutshell, do as much as you can, in whatever arena you can.

*Progress on population: world pop growth rate has been declining for 40 years. Several large countries now have zero or negative native growth rates.