Human Population

Starvation is now past a billion people according to Oxfam[1] and, as mentioned, about 6 million children die each year due to lack of elementary health care which could be supplied at virtually no cost,[2] a number equaling the Jewish holocaust of the Second World War. At the same time, in the world today, 62 of the world's richest persons, a group small enough to easily fit into a single double-decker bus, own as much resources as the poorest half of the world's population.[3] This situation is easily changed if the current monetary system controlled by the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO is abolished and replaced by a Resource Based Economy described later, and by a Constructive Reward System as I will present in the chapter about work and reward.

"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings."[4] - Nelson Mandela

The human population was pedagogically compared by Jared Diamond to bacteria in a Petri dish.[5] A bacterial culture can live in great prosperity for a short time by consuming at a greater rate than the nutrition can be replenished, but ultimately it will lead to a collapse when the nutrition descends to lower levels than what is needed to sustain the culture. In the bacterial world it leads to the death of the bacteria. For us, starvation and conflicts for resources will be a natural symptom. When we find a natural resource, it is already at a certain level, and then it might appear as if there is a lot for all, and in the beginning there is, but the key is to investigate at which rate it regenerates and adapt to the that level or find a new source that meets the same needs before the first one runs out. Otherwise we'll face the same destiny as the Easter Islanders. As I mentioned before: Today we need 1.5 Earth to support our current way of life[6] and if we keep on business as usual we'll probably need 2 by the year 2030[7] and 3 by 2050[8] - So we're already living beyond the means of our environment to sustain us, and thus we're heading for collapse, and thus immediate action must be taken.

The Living Planet Report shows that if everyone in the world lived like the average citizen of the European Union, the equivalent of 2.8 Earths would be required to keep up with current natural resource depletion rates and carbon dioxide emissions.[9] In a BBC Horizon documentary Sir David Attenborough mentions that If we had an impact on the environment such as the Indians the earth could support a population of 15 billion, 18 billion if we lived as in Rwanda. 2,2 as in Britain 1,5 billion population if all lived as they do in the US. He also mentions that there are 3 ways to change this trend;

1. Consume less

2. Technology

3. Limit population.

We probably need to do all three. How to limit the population is covered in chapter 11 of the third volume.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIID0140-6736(05)66777-3/abstract

For more info see: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00120-8/fulltext

[2] www.oxfam.org/en/issues

[3]https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/01/18/the-richest-62-people-are-as-wealthy-as-half-the-worlds-population-combined-infographic/&refURL=https://www.forbes.com/&referrer=https://www.forbes.com/

[4] https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4232603.stm

[5] TED - Jared Diamond - Why do societies collapse?

[6] BBC Horizon - How many people can live on planet Earth?

[7] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/05/16/wwf-warns-that-we-will-need-two-earths-by-2030_n_1520449.html

[8] https://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_design_final_131021.pdf

[9] https://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2010/2010-10-14-01.html