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(From Chapter 19 Nigelquest - population and the environment)

No country show us the fate of man so well as Haiti. In the last 50 years, population on the island has risen from 3.8 million to 9 million, and during the same period, forest cover declined from 60% to 2%. Population density is 324 people/square kilometer compared to 31 people/square kilometer for the U.S. Although Haiti has 28% arable land (the U.S. has only 18%), erosion, overuse, desertification, flooding and high birth rates (an average of 4 children per woman compared to 2 per woman in the States) condemn most Haitians to a culture much like that of Calhoun’s rats. The numbers say it clearly: infant mortality stands at 60 deaths per 1,000 live births (compared to 3/1,000 for Japan and 6/1,000 for the States), and 80% of Haitians live in poverty.

A collapse of Haiti’s population should result because already mothers there feed their children mud cakes to fill their stomachs and keep them from crying. But the world has come to Haiti’s aid. External contributions of food and the presence of the United Nations Stabilization Mission (soldiers) prevents Haiti deteriorating further, which is a shame because then mankind could see its future since the Earth has no external police force and external food source.

Some combination of the deer model and the rat model will occur to the whole globe. Even if it were possible to limit the size of all families immediately, population would continue to grow for a generation or two because there are so many young people reaching breeding age. No matter what we do, extinctions will continue and resources will deteriorate. The complexity and diversity that make the world so beautiful will loose ground to subdivisions and will be crowded out by ‘development.’ The world as we’ve enjoyed it slips away.

Grandpa, what were elephants like?

Awesome, boy, awesome. Magnificent, actually. And caring. I can take you to a movie. You can see for yourself what wonderful creatures they were.

Why’d they kill them, Grandpa? And why’d they kill the Orkas and the wolves?

The old man was silent for a long time.

Grandma, the young boy said at last, when will the mud cakes be ready?

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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(From Chapter 18 of Nigelquest - population and the environment)

There are those who argue that technological advances in agriculture can make up for the loss of natural food sources. An expanded “green revolution” will increase food production faster than population can grow. With plenty of food, there would be no problem of over-population. Humans are not herd mammals, they insist, not deer or sheep, but family-oriented, competitive creatures that have many more similarities to our favorite research animal.

John Calhoun of the Laboratory of Psychology of the National Institute of Mental Health placed five pregnant rats in a quarter acre pen, and supplied them with enough food and nesting materials for 5,000 rats. Then he sat back and watched.

At first, the mothers and their young huddled near the nests, afraid of the large, unoccupied space. As the population grew, the rats explored and eventually filled the pen. Free of predators and stress-related diseases, all the rats were active and healthy, and fights between males resembled ritual more than combat. It was rat heaven. But still the rats continued to multiply. Soon, a few dominant males staked out huge territories and defended themselves and their mates against all intruders. All the rest of the rats, weak and cowed, crowded into conditions resembling the worst human slums and ghettos. Gang rape and gang warfare were common, females and young died in prodigious numbers, rape of both females and males was frequent, mothers had numerous miscarriages and few rats were healthy or lived long. Cannibalism combined with infant mortality rates as high as 96% underscored the misery. Rat heaven had become rat hell, in spite of there being enough food for 5,000. And the number of rats never exceeded 200.

In the small pen of planet Earth, a few dominant males live on gated estates while the masses proliferate in stifling slums. A few rich people fly in private jets and have golden parachutes while billions sleep in tin-roofed cardboard boxes. The bonds of civil society strain. Humans have overshot the carrying capacity of the land, air and water, and still they breed, just like the deer and the rats. Shouldn’t we be smarter?

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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(From Chapter 18 of "Nigelquest" (blog) dealing with population and the environment)

Biologists placed 29 deer on St. Matthew’s Island in the Bering Sea, and estimated that, based on the amount of vegetation and the absence predators, the population should stabilize between 1700 and 2300 deer. It took about 20 years for the population to reach those numbers. During that time, the population was healthy and active. But the deer still multiplied, exceeding 2300 even as the vegetation was over-browsed. Their numbers reached 3,000, 4,000 and then 5,000. The stressed plants had begun to die and yet the deer, near death themselves from starvation, kept breeding. Temporarily, the population neared 6,000, about three times the sustainable level, and then began a calamitous decline. Within 18 months, there were only 42 deer left, a decline of more than 99%.

If human population tripled again from its current level, to say 20 billion, and then went through an equivalent collapse, there would be about 200 million people left on the earth, or about 2/3rds of the present U.S. population. Do we really want to leave our fate in the hands of Nature? Or God? Or Allah?

We might persuade ourselves that “overshooting” our food supply, as the deer did, could not happen to a species as intelligent as humans.

Unfortunately, thoughtful, educated humans overshoot sustainable resources all the time. When fishermen discover an efficient method for catching a high-value fish, the size and sophistication of the fleet increases and soon fish stocks begin to decline. The fishermen, having to make payments on new equipment, put in more hours in order to catch more fish. Stocks decline further. In spite of scientists’ warnings that a collapse would bankrupt all of them, they petition regulatory agencies to open up the fishing grounds so they can take even more. The resource collapses. Fish stocks, like other depleted resources such as game and lands take decades to recover, and some never do.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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