Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

3 Population 48
began to climb, leading to famine <strong>and</strong> driving the population excess off
the isl<strong>and</strong>.
Nature, it turns out, is indifferent to our
belief systems.
In the end, personal choice will be important, if we are to tame the
population predicament. Either conditions will be too uncertain to justify
raising children, or we adopt values that place short term personal <strong>and</strong>
human needs into a larger context concerning ecosystems <strong>and</strong> long-term
human happiness.
3.5 Upshot: Everything Depends on Us
We would likely not be discussing a finite planet or limits to growth or
climate change if only one million humans inhabited the planet, even
living at United States st<strong>and</strong>ards. We would perceive no meaningful
limit to natural resources <strong>and</strong> ecosystem services. Conversely, it is not
difficult to imagine that 100 billion people on Earth would place a severe
strain on the planet’s ability to support us—especially if trying to live
like Americans—to the point of likely being impossible. If we had to
pick a single parameter to dial in order to ease our global challenges, it
would be hard to find a more effective one than population.
Maybe we need not take any action. Negative feedback will assert itself
strongly once we have gone too far—either leading to a steady approach
to equilibrium or producing an overshoot/collapse outcome. Nature
will regulate human population one way or another. It just may not be
in a manner to our liking, <strong>and</strong> we have the opportunity to do better via
awareness <strong>and</strong> choice.
A common knee-jerk reaction to a statement
that we would be better off with a smaller
population is to dem<strong>and</strong> an answer to who,
exactly, we propose eliminating. Ideally, we
should be able to discuss an important topic
like population without resorting to accusations
of advocating genocide. Of course
we need to take care of those already alive,
<strong>and</strong> address the problem via future reproductive
choices.
Very few scholars are unconcerned about population pressure. Yet the
issue is consistently thorny due to both its bearing on personal choice
<strong>and</strong> a justified reluctance to “boss” developing nations to stop growing
prior to having an opportunity to naturally undergo a demographic
transition for themselves. Conventional thinking suggests that undergoing
the demographic transition ultimately is the best solution to the
population problem. The question too few ask is whether the planet
can support this path for all, given the associated population surge
<strong>and</strong> concomitant dem<strong>and</strong> on resources. If not, pursuit of the transition
for the world may end up causing more damage <strong>and</strong> suffering than
would otherwise happen due to increased populations competing for
dwindling resources.
3.6 Problems
1. The text accompanying Figure 3.1 says that Earth currently hosts the
equivalent of 25 billion nineteenth-century-level energy consumers.
If we had maintained our nineteenth-century energy appetite but
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.