Be Fruitful and Multiply

John Locke claimed that “the main intention of nature” is “the increase of mankind and the continuation of the species,” the “preservation of all mankind” being a “law of nature.”[1] Centuries later, Locke’s assumption that an increased population necessarily makes the preservation of the species more likely could be challenged in a way that he could hardly have imagined. The human population reached 8.16 billion at the end of 2023, as compared with only 2 billion of our species having been alive in 1900. The exponential increase of energy-consuming organic hominoids has undoubtedly been a cause of the increased carbon emissions arising from human sources, and therefore of climate change in the Anthropocene. The biblical permission to be fruitful and multiply may have come from an eternal source (i.e., Yahweh), but that the divine decree is to be applied regardless of the size of the population as well as the impact that the human imprint is having on the environment, including the climate, is, I submit, a faulty and foolhardy assumption to make in the twenty-first century. The decree in the biblical narrative could be interpreted as a mandate that the Hebrews, freed from slavery in Egypt, follow to fully occupy the promised land.  Empirically, it may even be time for humanity to take stock of its increased numbers globally.

By suggesting that the human population has grown too much, given the finitude of our planet’s resources, I do not mean that wide swaths of the human population on this planet should be plagued, starved, or blown up. Such a specious ends-justify-the-means rationale for harm is the theme of one of the DaVinci Code movies, wherein the bio-destructive antagonist is clearly crazy. Even the Rev. Thomas Malthus, in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), relegated to Nature the clean-up role of using disease, famine, and increased conflict to get the number of humans on Earth back within ecologizing constraints, which is to say, to get human population down to a number that is consistent with the resources on Earth. In the twenty-first century, we might add, and does not ruin the planet in the process. Theoretically stated, a population growth rate that is behaving like a maximizing variable in mathematics, even if the derivative is negative (i.e., the rate of acceleration is decreasing), is a problem because such a variable has no problem piercing an ecosystem’s boundaries. Yet this is not done with impunity from Nature, according to Malthus.

According to one scholar, Malthus’ main theme is that a species’ population “inevitably grows beyond what the food supply can sustain.”[2] I have also read elsewhere that Malthus only claims that a population can grow beyond what the food supply can sustain. Even this throws a wrench into the deist assumption that a divine designer can be inferred from the order in Nature, so Malthus’ claim was controversial in his day.

Mitigating Nature’s devices to restore a population to good measure, Malthus admits that “the discrepancy between food and population spurs” industry, which in turn can enhance food growth and production such that the gap is closed.[3] But with the population at over 8 billion in 2024, I suspect that Malthus would have warned of impending natural limits to resources such as land and water (especially in the midst of climate change) as being something hard that even human enterprise must accept; the planet’s resources are, after all, finite. Furthermore, even if scientific advancement can render one resource more efficiently used and even augment it, another resource could then become a bottleneck, or hard constraint.

Whether as a divine decree or a natural, non-deist process, a larger human population is not necessarily beneficial for the species. Antedating Malthus’s work on population by about a half-century, however, Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “invokes the invisible hand in arguing that the earth’s increasing fertility benefits humanity as a whole, despite [economic] inequality and the monopolization of land ownership by a few. The landlord can only eat a tiny portion of his land’s produce, the rest of which feeds the people who provide his luxuries.[4] The rich, despite their ‘natural selfishness and rapacity,’ are thus ‘led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessities of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants; and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.’[5] The rich man, motivated by ‘luxury and caprice,’ rather than ‘humanity’ or ‘justice,’[6] thus promotes a salutary ‘end which was no part of his intention.’”[7] In other words, industriousness has the unintended presumably beneficial consequences of advancing civilization and increasing the human population. Whereas a civilizing influence is arguably good under any circumstance, Smith’s assumption that increasing the size of the population is not in our day as unqualifiably beneficial as Smith assumed it to be in population growth from prosperity being limited to being in proportion  to its additional largess.

In Wealth of Nations, “Smith argues that the accumulation of capital and the increase of national wealth help ‘the great body of the people’ to ‘thrive,’ and that population growth is ‘the most decisive mark of prosperity.’”[8] This result of thriving is constrained rather than unlimited, for Smith maintains that, “’Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence.’”[9] An increase in population is an unintended beneficial consequence only in some relation to a period’s economic prosperity. But Smith undercuts Malthus’ claim that industriousness can catch food production up to a given population level because the prosperity resulting from the increase in industriousness or productivity causes the population to increase, albeit proportionately rather than maximally. Prosperity begets more people, perhaps to such an extent that the benefits from improved food-production productivity may not be enough to feed the larger population. Admittedly, Smith’s claim that family planning can be used to keep the standard of living up during a period of industriousness—rather than decreasing as the economic benefits of the additional industriousness are spread thin (i.e., decreasing GNP per capita) as the population increases due to the prosperity—could also mean that the proportioned population growth does not outstrip the enhanced food production. Perhaps it can be realistically said, therefore, that closing the gap between food availability and population can be expected to be problematic.

Similar to the idea that a tax cut can “pay for itself” by stimulating economic activity (GNP) and thus generating more tax revenue going into government coffers—a theory that has been empirically disproved since Reagan’s tax cuts in the U.S. in 1981—growing ourselves economically out of a gap between food production and the global population is too idealistic. Once that population reaches a certain level, “hard” constraints in terms of resources, which were not something that Malthus would have considered given the low population of humans on Earth in 1798 relative to the planet’s abundance, can become relevant in functioning like a “brick wall” that even scientific and technological advancement cannot penetrate. Yet Smith had written of an upper-bound, or “full complement,” of “riches” that is “allowed” in a geographical area by “nature,” such as in the soil, there, but this is geographically limited whereas in the twenty-first century, the human impact on the worsening conditions of the planet’s atmosphere and oceans could essentially move that brick wall closer in, hence narrowing the distance that human industriousness can go.[10] There is a big difference, in other words, between the limits to industry given the nature of a local ecosystem and running up against the limits of resources globally, such as in having drilled up all of the deposits of oil in the earth.

Unfortunately, reducing the extent, or depth, of the human imprint on the planet, whether in terms of the population or its offshoots such as pollution, warmer oceans (and air), and soil erosion, is an externality as far as markets, whether competitive, oligarchical, or monopolistic, are concerned. The political muscle of large concentrations of private wealth, whether of billionaires or large corporations, can styme government regulatory action to protect the overall good. Plato and Aristotle claimed that a passionate crowd is the downside of a demos (i.e., democracy), but perhaps today plutocracy, or the rule of (privately held) wealth, is the downside or even the inexorable eventual result of representative democracy.

So, where are we as a species if even the unintended beneficial consequence in the efficient allocation of resources, goods, and services in a competitive market is not enough to outweigh the baleful consequences of self-interest not only in terms of maximizing the chances of self-preservation, but also the preservation of one’s genes in offspring? Even in their 80s, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, two famous Hollywood actors, became fathers yet again. Lest it be contended that they were selfish in knowingly fathering children that could not be expected to know their respective fathers for many years, the obverse possibility, namely, that science may one day extend the human lifespan even possibly indefinitely, could mean that population size could jump like the burst of new acceleration of a rocket from its second state igniting and adding a jolt of added thrust. No one would seriously contend that economic industriousness could close the gap between such a population size and the natural limits of the planet’s resources.

I submit that countries with low or even declining birth-rates should not feel the need economically or normatively to promote population growth by public policy. Furthermore, China, much of Africa, and especially India should take more seriously the interest of the species in prudently getting its population size down to size while doing so is still possible, and, absent these regions taking an interest in the good of the species, multilateral global governance should be strengthened particularly in terms of enforcement powers in the interest of the species. In this regard, the United Nations is a bad joke—an embarrassment, actually. For the species cannot rely on Smith’s unintended benefits of competitive markets to redress externalities; even Smith recognized the need for government, and he even warned of the likely collusion between business and government at the expense of labor, and, I might add, of the species itself.  For short-term economic prosperity to be more pressing than the longer-term interests of the species can be reckoned as a vulnerability in the very constitution of the human mind itself, and of course corporations like to invest in elected representatives and people tend to vote, both with their wallets and purses in mind.

This writing draws on my multidisciplinary studies that unfortunately kept me out of the much-siloed ivory towers of American provincialism that have been so populated by epistemological and administrative pedestrians of incrementalism. To be sure, seeing connections between seemingly far-ranging academic areas is not much valued by folks whose eyesight has been trained on minute analytical distinctions that fail the “so what” question yet satisfy Adam Smith’s claim that specialization of labor boosts productivity in business. Even so, I have been writing publicly to apply my eighteen years of formal university education and four more of post-doctoral study under a scholar of historical moral, political, and religious thought for the good of humanity in spite of our species’ narrowness and yet paradoxical arrogance that functions as if on stilts during a flood. Why the inclusion of benevolentia universalis in addition to my interest in connecting seemingly unrelatable ideas or theories and making societal (and global) blind-spots transparent is a question that I have not so far been able to answer. From my multidisciplinary perspective, from theology to political economy, I am struck by how interrelated human phenomena are, and by how much flies under the proverbial radar screen at least in societal public discourse. Both the interrelatedness and the societal and global “blind spots” pertain to population and climate change, as well as to ethics and political economy; Smith’s field, after all, was moral philosophy rather than economics, the latter of which, as a field, subsequently materialized in large part because of Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Why does anyone seek to contribute to the species in spite of its stubborn, selfish refusal to change—to develop—even for its own good? Entrenched ignorance on stilts during a flood is not a very attractive beneficiary of charitable benevolence, and yet perhaps instinctually we feel the urge to help the human gene pool to persevere. Perhaps my judgment is overly negative or pessimistic. Nietzsche wrote that no philosopher is a person of one’s own time. Such creatures tend to dig and travel cognitively, whereas most people remain in their hometowns. Perhaps I have been writing for another and you are along for the ride. Nevertheless, I do hope that my thinking stimulates your own, because I believe our species very much needs new thoughts this century.

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1. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, P. Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), First Treatise, sec. 59 and Second Treatise, sec. 7.
2. Peter Minowitz, Profits, Priests, and Princes: Adam Smith’s Emancipation of Economics from Politics and Religion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 291n31.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 124. Minowitz quotes from Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), IV. I.10.
5. Ibid. Minowitz quotes from Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), IV. I.10.
6. Ibid. Minowitz quotes from Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), IV. I.10.
7. Ibid. Minowitz quotes from Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), IV. I.9.
8. Ibid., p. 127. The passages that Minowitz quotes are from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), I.viii.21-23, 43.
9. Ibid. The passages that Minowitz quotes are from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), I.viii.39-40.
10. Ibid., pp. 126-27. The passages that Minowitz quotes are from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), I.ix.14.

Deforestation in Brazil: Exacerbating Climate Change

On July 17, 2020, satellite data from Brazil's space agency showed that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon was accelerating. "Nearly 3,000 square miles of tree coverage were lost in the 11 months that ended June 30 .That is a 64% increase from the year-earlier period, when 1,772 square miles of forest were destroyed."[1] The deforestation in 2020 was "likely to exceed 2019's total of 3,900 square miles by a 'wide margin," according to a senior scientist at the space agency.[2] Under normal circumstances, which the Wall Street assumed, we would consider the government's claim that not enough troops were available to patrol enough of Brazil's massive Amazon jungle to even slow the acceleration. According to Ricardo Salles, the environment minister, the government wanted to "attract foreign investors to fund sustainable economic development in the jungle."[3] That is to say, the matter boils down to (international) political economy. 

However, the circumstances were not normal. I am not referring to the coronavirus pandemic still ravaging globally, though the refusals of a significant proportion of people to wear masks indoors and on public transportation coupled with the lack of will, competence, knowledge, or ideological inclination to even to enforce the relevant laws, especially in Arizona, reflect the same mindset as that which does not take climate change seriously by electorates and governments around the world. 

Just a week earlier, the World Meteorological Organization had announced that the global temperature-increase threshold set in the Paris Accord of 1.5C (2.7F) over preindustrial levels could occur before 2024.[4]  At this level, the impact of the accelerating deforestation means less CO2 being absorbed by vegetation such as trees, and thus more of the gas being left in the atmosphere. Just as the case of governments of Florida, Texas, and Arizona lifting economic restrictions too early in May, 2020 only to have skyrocketing cases of coronavirus in June and July, governments were also failing in not only not reducing carbon emissions, but also permitting them to continue to increase such that the threshold global temperature could come sooner rather than latter. Given the priorities given the lack of political will over economic and political expediency, we could expect other, more dangerous, thresholds whether in terms of pandemics or climate. 

Perhaps it is precisely because of the mentality that heads in the opposite direction from that which leads to the species' viability that Nature's own instruments for constraining and even eliminating such a species were really beginning to kick in by 2020. Whether the Brazilian government was quietly looking the other way as illegal deforestation was occurring or that government could not supply enough military troops to protect the massive jungle is a question that pales in comparison to the observation that the deforestation itself came at the expense of reduced carbon in the atmosphere. The fact that continued deforestation rather than increasing forestation was happening--that humans living in Brazil (or the world) werte not up to the task of stopping the trend--evinces a weakness in our species that may finally render us extinct by Nature's means, which we cannot necessarily control. As with any overpopulated species, Nature's tools are disease, starvation, and war, according to Malthius. It seems that the refusal of humans to adequately protect ourselves (and societies) even in the midst of a raging pandemic and increasingly urgent climate change may have already doomed our species. It is also possible, though not probably, that the species' ineptitude in protecting itself will be countered by technological innovation. Yet even so, making things worse rather than better does not render our species particularly attractive, at least to Nature. 

1. Paulo Thevisani, "Brazil's Forest Losses Quicken," The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Associated Press, "UN Report Predicts the World Could Surpass Dangerous Warming Theshold by 2024," NY Post, July 9, 2020.

China's Population: Demographic Imbalances and the Climate Emergency

In his treatise on Understanding, David Hume posits that we don’t know as much about causation as we think we do. Often times, positive correlation (i.e., two or more things present at the same time) is confused with causation (i.e., one thing causing another). That umbrellas tend to be out when it is raining does not mean that umbrellas cause rain (or that rain causes umbrellas). Rain and umbrellas have their own distinct causes, which Hume would say we don’t understand as well as we think we do. It is very difficult, for example, to determine whether climate change caused by methane and CO2 emissions caused October 2019 to the hottest October globally on record; more data-points covering long stretches of time are needed to distinguish even a few outliers from being part of a broader trend. By October of 2019, not only had scientists obtained and analyzed enough samples over a long enough time-frame to be confident (99%) that climate change had been occurring due to human carbon emissions. Not since roughly 60 million years ago had the carbon parts per million in the atmosphere stood at 410 ppm. In having to repeatedly accelerate their forecasts regarding the various impacts, such as sea-level rise due to melting ice (on land, such as Greenland), scientists had demonstrated that our understanding of the causation on the various impacts was still far from perfect. Even so, 11,000 scientists knew enough by November 2019 to declare unequivocally that humanity was facing a climate-change emergency. That is to say, drastic changes in terms of carbon emissions (e.g., energy sources, lifestyles) would have to be quickly made to avoid the worst-case scenario (e.g., mass food shortages, mass migrations from coastal areas and the loss of cities, and disease). This scenario is in line with Mathias’ theory of population ecology wherein a population of a species increasing without reaching an equilibrium maximum faces an increased risk of war, disease, or starvation. Once a species’ population pierces the semi-permeable constraints of the wider ecosystem (i.e., natural environment), Nature has its own ways of arresting the schizogenic growth of a species if it fails to limit its increase. During the twentieth century, the global increase of our species’ population was expediential, going from 1.6 to 6.1 billion. Sadly, even many policy-makers were oblivious to the fact that such a huge change must surely have consequences, at least some day. China’s one-child policy was an exception, making the relatively unconstrained population growths in India and Africa more noticeable as potentially problematic. Why did China need its policy while India, also with a population of over a billion, did not? In fact, the growth mantra generally subscribed to by countries across the globe acted as an incentive to make matters worse! Even a population with a low birth rate was generally taken as a problem. The negative impacts on a labor force and economic growth more broadly gave governments an incentive to increase birth-rates and thus populations (even though immigration served as an alternative). I want to look further into the case of China as a means of assessing how seriously the world was taking the climate emergency.

China’s one-child policy, wherein a couple could only have one child, was instituted in 1980 and abandoned in 2015, when couples could have two children (but not more). With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, China faced the “prospect of fewer and fewer workers to support retirees amid a rising median age.”[1] In other words, the pressure of a temporary demographic bind had come to outweigh concerns about the population level even though 1.3 billion people was a significant part of the species’ distended population level of 7.5 billion.

Considering that as living beings, humans must consume energy, 1.3 billion people cannot but have a considerable impact on how much energy humanity consumes. Even were fossil fuel sources entirely eliminated in China and abroad, food scarcity would still be strained, especially considering that India’s 1.3 billion people are also consuming energy. This goes back to the point that a huge increase in the species’ population must have significant repercussions concerning energy (including food). 

To their credit, even though China’s policy-makers in 2019 were “well aware that a rising crop of retirees threaten[ed] to drain household savings and derail [economic] growth” and that the population could start to decline in 2030, birth limits remained in effect in the two-child policy.[2] Policy-makers argued that technological advances and automation would increase productivity such that fewer young workers would be needed. I submit that the government could step in to increase funding to retirees to take the financial pressure off of their family members who are working. Even absent immigration, demographic tight-points can be managed such that the overall goal of a smaller population is not compromised. Therefore, it is irresponsible to say that China should abandon its two-child policy, even if China’s demographic pinch would turn out to be worse than expected in 2019 when the global population stood at 7.7 billion, heading in the wrong direction!

Given the climate emergency, the scientists strongly advised the world that drastic measures needed to be taken as soon as possible. Correcting for the incredible increase in our species’ population that occurred in the twentieth century can be considered a necessary part of the drastic measures. The world would be wise to offer China assistance (e.g., knowledge) such that the corrective is successful, and to pressure India to make a similar corrective. In the culture of growth, it is important to point out that an economy can be expected to contract as its population decreases significantly. Productivity advances, however, can mean that a lower quality of life does not go with the contraction. Indeed, economic contraction is itself part of the decreased demand for energy that goes with a smaller population. To sustain itself rather than be cut down by natural processes, our species must decrease its demand overall rather than only shift off fossil fuels. The planet contains limited resources, including habitable (and farmable) land. Overpopulation can trigger war, disease, and starvation, and even changes to the atmosphere that could render the planet itself very uncomfortable or even uninhabitable for humans.

Listening to a talk given by a NASA public-relations person, I was stunned that he admitted that in NASA’s view we can no longer rely “on this rock” for the survival of our species. Hence the plans to colonize the Moon and Mars.  My reaction was that those are artificial environments for us, and thus inherent unstable, whereas we are suited naturally to living on Earth—just not 8 billion of us! Getting back in sync with our natural environment seems to me to be vastly superior to relying on artificial environments. The twentieth century—the bloodiest century ever as of its close—can turn out to be a population bubble or a jump in terms of population. The bubble-effect requires our species to push itself back down, whereas a jump goes to a higher-population plateau. China deserves credit for resisting the temptation to see its population increase unabated in the false assumption that economic growth is most important.

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1. Liyan Qi and Fanfan Wang, “China Left One-Child Policy Behind, but It Still Struggles With a Falling Birth Rate,” The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2019.

2. Ibid.

Do You Believe in Global Warming?

On September 16, 2012, “Arctic ice covered just 1.32 million square miles—the lowest extent ever recorded. ‘The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heat waves and flooding,’ NSIDC scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve noted in a press release. ‘There's a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public,’ NASA scientist James Hansen said, adding that he believed, ‘unfortunately, that gap is not being closed.’ What the scientific community understands is that Arctic ice is melting at an accelerated rate -- and that humans play a role in these changes. According to the panel, humans are ‘really running out of time’ to prevent atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from reaching levels that would precipitate runaway climate change. Hansen warned that even maintaining current concentrations of approximately 390 parts per million for several centuries ‘guarantees disaster.’”[1] Nevertheless, record amounts of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere in 2016 to at least 2018, and 2016 was the hottest year on the planet as of 2019.[2] What makes an intelligent species, homo sapiens, go in the wrong direction even from the outset of an announced, guaranteed disaster? Timing and mentality have a lot to do with it. 
I suspect the non-scientist public, including the people with vested economic interests in continued pollution, dismissed the warning of disaster in 2012 in part by erroneously considering the scientific knowledge to be belief. Had news of an astroid due to hit the planet in seven years been announced in 2012, I suspect the astronomical knowledge would have been considered as such, rather than mere belief. It is interesting that the timeliness of a disaster, specifically whether it will hit the people living or those yet unborn, bears on whether knowledge is viewed as knowledge or just belief. 

 Ice melting in Greenland.   NYT

The mentality that sustains the gulf between what the scientists know and what the public believes includes the odd belief (held nonetheless as knowledge!) that scentistics only have beliefs regarding the climate might say, “I don’t believe in God,” or “I don’t believe it is going to rain today,” but people don’t usually say, “I don’t believe in math,” or "I don't believe in chemistry." That is to say, belief is not typically applied to replace the appelation of knowledge in fields of knowledge! In effect, the mentality contains a refusal to respect the enterprise of science. This is not only ignorance that can’t be wrong. How can ignorance make such a claim? Anti-foundationalism knows no better example than the arrogance of ignorance that cannot be wrong. The mentality assumes that recognizing knowledge in science would undercut a cherished political ideology. This assumption is an over-reach, as is the application of belief itself.
So the ice has kept melting as our scientific community has been relegated epistemologically into mere opinion or politics by too many people. The astounding implication is that this has occurred even though we as a species do not have the luxury of such a mentality. Even the possibility of “guaranteeing disaster” suggests that we as a society or species cannot afford to ignore the scientific consensus even though science is not perfect. That is to say, science does not prove a hypothesis; rather, successive null hypotheses are rejected, giving us added confidence but not certainty that the remaining hypothesis is valid.

Generally speaking, when even the survival of our species is flagged, or at the very least continued human habitation on Earth is to come with disasters, the rational self-preservation motivated recourse is to err on the side of what the scientific data is telling scientists.  To presume an overarching hegemony of political ideology may in retrospect look reckless. The choice of such a priority may even look pathological. Perhaps this is an element in human nature that could bring the species itself down. It should come as no surprise that the human mind can be a double-edged instrument capable of achievement and self-destruction even of the species itself. Even ideology may be viewed as a double-edged instument capable of giving people something to believe in yet also capable of embellishing arrogance and beligerance. Both the ignorance and ideological tartuffery seem to enjoy presumption when the disater is guaranteed for far-off generations. The basic instinct for self-preservation is more easily subdued or drugged. It would only be just, therefore, for the currently-living to suffer at least some of the effects of the guaranteed disaster themselves. Greed, selfishness, arrogance, and ignorance, which may all be hardwired into human nature, are to blame. Flying so high to the sun on the supposition that man is divine, a human being is bound to fall to the ground in a fiery mass of self-conceit that takes itself to be a falling star but is actually just a confused mess. 

1. Joanna Zelman and James Gerken, “Arctic Sea IceLevels Hit Record Low, Scientists Say We’re ‘Running Out Of Time,” The Huffington Post, September 19, 2012. 
2. Kelly Levin, "New Global CO2 Emissions Numbers Are In. They're Not Good," World Resources Institute, December 5, 2018 (accessed October 21, 2019).

Melting Permafrost Unleashing Killer Bacteria and Viruses: Climate Change Heats Up

As the Northern climes warm, our species may soon be vulnerable to ancient—even beyond ancient— bacteria and viruses. We are familiar with pathogens to which our species has some immunity, built up from repeated prior contact. As a species, we could lose everything from illnesses in which the modern human body has no experience and thus no built-up defenses.

Researches have encountered complex ancient viruses in the melting permafrost of Siberia. Bacteria and viruses can lie dormant in permafrost until they are reactivated by warming. Scientists have discovered intact Spanish flu viruses in corpses buried in 1918 in the Alaskan tundra. In 2016 in Siberia, 100 people and 2,300 reindeer were infected with anthrax that scientist believe had been trapped in a frozen reindeer carcass that thawed during the particularly hot summer. Unfortunately, permafrost “appears to the among the systems most vulnerable to global warming,” according to researchers in the journal Nature Climate Change.[1] Global warming in turn is vulnerable to the human production of carbon dioxide, such as from our increasing use of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Behind the economics of use or consumption is the exponential increase in the population of our species. As biological beings, we must consume. Generally speaking, the more humans around, the higher the total consumption. Distribution of resources obviously makes a difference—some people get to consume disproportionately more than others can. Even so, the staggering number of over 7 billion people must involve a considerable amount of consumption.

The extraordinary jump in human population is occurring in a very short period of time. How could there not be huge, unforeseen reverberations? 

The upshot is that Nature has its own measures to correct a species’ failure to control its numbers on a planet of finite resources. As great as the human mind is, we have trouble anticipating the secondary systems that are set in motion. Put another way, the astonishing number of 7 billion can be expected to have repercussions that get beyond our ability to anticipate, let alone manage. As permafrost that has been frozen for millennia (also a big number) melts and the methane and bacteria and viruses that have been trapped escape, we face a huge blindside. As systems effect systems effect systems, we can easily get ahead of ourselves.

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[1] Mary Papenfuss, “As Ice Melts, Dangerous Diseases From The Past Could Rise Again,” The Huffington Post, May 5, 2017.

CO2 Record-Level in Atmosphere: Implications for Human Population

In 2015, average global CO2 levels for the year surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time, the WMO revealed in its 2016 annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. At the time, any scientists regarded that ratio of carbon dioxide to other gases in the atmosphere as a “climate change touchstone.”[1] Curiously, however, 400 ppm was not considered a tipping point. It was still possible to reverse the progression of the ratio—yet no one seems to ask how long that would take. In this regard, the ratio’s accelerating rate is particularly telling. Practically speaking, 400 ppm may in fact be a tipping point.

CO2 concentrations in 2015 “were about 144 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. Other emissions measured in the report, methane and nitrous oxide, were up 256 percent and 121 percent from pre-industrial levels, respectively. Among those, however, CO2 contributes the most to warming and [was] responsible for about 81 percent of the increase in radiative forcing from 2005 to 2015.”[2] Ralph Keeling, who runs the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s carbon dioxide monitoring program, pointed to the irreversibility of the ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere. “[I]t already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year ― or ever again for the indefinite future.”[3] Practically speaking, 400 ppm may be a tipping point in that the likelihood of getting below it again in the foreseeable future is nil.

Lest it be thought that the Paris treaty could turn things around, that the vows are voluntary and without repercussions for failing to adhere to the promised cuts. Moreover, “even if all Paris pledges are fully implemented, predicted emissions in 2030 will still place the world on track for a temperature rise of 2.9 to 3.4 degrees this century,” according to UNEP in 2016.[4] CO2 emissions would have to be cut an additional 25 percent by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.[5] I assume even that would not be enough to get CO2 levels down below 400.

Sadly, we weren’t even going in the right direction at the time of the U.N. Environment Program’s report. In other words, the CO2 ratio’s rate was accelerating. “The increase of CO2 from 2014 to 2015 was larger than that observed from 2013 to 2014 and that averaged over the past 10 years,” the report noted.[6] Predictably—though not in terms of the acceleration—studies at NASA and the University of California at Irvine showed in 2016 that Smith and Pope Glaciers in Antarctica were “growing thinner” and “retreating at the fastest rate ever observed.”[7] Since 1996, “Smith Glacier’s grounding line retreated at an annual rate of 1.24 miles per year and Pope’s at an annual rate of 0.31 mile per year,” according to NASA.[8] Smith Glacier “lost between 984 and 1,607 feet of ice thickness between 2002 and 2009.”[9] That this pace “is nearly six times faster than a previous estimate” is in line with the accelerating ratio of Carbon parts per million in the atmosphere. I contend that the estimates of the impact of the ratio were low because the ratio’s accelerating rate of increase had not been detected. By implication, estimates of how much carbon-emissions should be reduced by have also been too low.

In fact, even the focus on reducing carbon-emissions may be insufficient. The accelerating rate of the ratio as well as the likelihood that we won’t see anything less than 400 ppm may indicate that we have not yet gotten to the underlying causes. According to the WMO’s report, the bulk of the increase in the ratio was due to unbridled human activities ranging from “growing population, intensified agricultural practices, increase in land use and deforestation, industrialization and associated energy use from fossil sources.”[10] Even among these causes, that of growing population is most fundamental. The human being necessarily takes energy from the environment and expends waste, including pollution. Simply put, our species has been too successful genetically; we have multiplied. Yet the climatic data suggests that we have over-multiplied.

Crucially, the rate of increase in the global population has been increasing. It took 123 years for the total to go from 1 to 2 billion, then only 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960.[11] The population reached 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, and 7 billion in 2011.[12] How could there not be an astounding impact on the planet’s climate? As a maximizing variable, human population may be out of control, with the ecosystems bearing the brunt. An analysis in 2014 claims there is a 70% chance that the human population “will rise continuously” from 7 billion in 2014 to 11 billion in 2011.[13] This poses “grave challenges for food supplies, healthcare and social cohesion”—not to mention climate change.[14] The head of the research team stressed that population should return to the top of the international agenda.

Unfortunately, population decrease is typically viewed as a problem in many countries, while those with the largest populations—China and India—have not set population decline as a policy goal. To be sure, decreasing population too fast presents social problems, such as not having enough wage-earners to support retired people. Even so, the accelerating feature of the CO2 ratio and its effects on the climate—most notably, on glaciers and oceans more generally—suggests that serious attempts to reduce reproduction-rates globally—and especially where the rates are highest—are warranted. In addition to international agreements to decrease CO2 emissions, declining population targets should also be negotiated. Both individually and as a group, governments can no longer afford to skirt the underlying cause of the problem, which looks increasingly likely to result in the extinction of our species.

Genetically speaking, our species has been very successful in terms of multiplying our DNA in many, many individual members, yet this very success may be short-lived; it may be breeding extinction, which is failure in genetic terms. Put another way, our short-term thinking that reigns on Wall Street may apply even genetically. It may be up to the people serving in governments around the world to make hard choices in order to extend our species’ perspective enough that we can self-regulate our species back to a reasonable number rather than continue to spiral out of control and be at the mercy of nature’s constraints rather than those of our own choosing. Considering the population growth during the twentieth century alone, we can no longer afford as a species to skip over the underlying cause of climate change, for the acceleration is not limited to the ratio of CO2 and glacier-melt. Add in the lifespan-extending advances in medical science, and it becomes clear just how severe we need to be as a species in limiting our reproduction.

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[1] Lydia O’Connor, “The Planet Just Crossed Another Major Carbon Milestone,” The Huffington Post, October 25, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, italics added.

[4] Nick Visser and Dominique Mosbergen, “UN: Paris Deal Won’t Be ‘Enough’ To Stave Off Worst Effects Of Climate Change,” The Huffington Post, November 3, 2016.

[5] Ibid.

[6] O’Connor, “The Planet.”

[7] David Freeman, “Glaciers’ Rapic Retreat Should Be ‘Alarm Bell to Everyone’s Ears,’” The Huffington Post, October 26, 2016.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] O’Connor, “The Planet.”

[11] “The World at Six Billion: Introduction,” United Nations (1999).

[12] Jasmin Coleman, “World’s ‘Seventh Billionth Baby’ Is Born,” The Guardian, October 31, 2011.

[13] Damian Carrington, “World Population to Hit 11bn in 2100—with 70% Chance of Continuous Rise,” The Guardian, September 18, 2014.

[14] Ibid.