Whether or not you believe that Climate Change is real…  Whether or not you believe that climate change is a direct result of human activity…  Whether or not you believe that humans can replace fossil fuels with renewable energy…  Whether you believe in hydrogen cars, electric cars or no cars at all…  Whether you believe in infinite-growth… or whether you believe that humans should reduce their consumption of everything – especially energy…

Whatever your stance on the question of the earth’s changing climate, there is a factor which is common to all symptoms and all solutions; an issue which is rarely discussed and never addressed: the size of the human population.

The physical size of the planet earth is, according to NASA, statistically unchanged from year to year. Although the earth is not a completely closed system, it may be safe to treat it as such as there seems to be little evidence of significant imports from areas outside the earth.   It would follow logically then, that some or all of the elements of the natural world (the things humans consider to be resources!) are limited.  If the supply of [X] is limited (either permanently or temporally), it can only be used by a certain number of individuals that use [X].  Any species that uses [X] for living therefore, must too find itself limited.

And humans use up an awful lot of [X]…  in point of fact…  humans use up an awful lot of everything.

Not all of the elements of the natural world are empirically limited; some are considered as replenishable; life-forms such as plants and animals fall into this category.  However, even replenishable elements of life on earth may be limited in their volume over any specific time-frame.  Certainly trees can grow, but for that they need land, minerals, nutrients, sunshine and water, etc. all of which may also be subject to their own limitations.

According to the UK NGO Global Change Data Lab, 71% of the land on the earth is habitable, and humans already use 50% of that land for agriculture.  2% of the remaining 50% is either human urban areas or freshwater – with the rest being forest/ scrubland.  It is conceivable of course that this forest/ scrub be removed to make way for more agriculture or urban areas…  however this would have a knock-on effect on the amount of oxygen, one of those annoying little things that humans need to live…

Humans have striven to ‘get around’ any annoying such limitations through the use of machinery and chemicals – which themselves require their own supply of natural elements for production.  In fact, technology always seems to be the go-to solution for humans for any issue; rather than address the actual problem itself.  Under such a philosophy, ‘not enough food to live’ translates into ‘how can we grow more food’ rather than ‘are there too many of us for this environment to support’.

There is an interesting paradox in this: humans clearly understand the need to limit the population sizes of certain species due to the impacts that this has on the immediate environment, and yet at the same time they completely ignore the need to limit their own population!

And yet this is the ONE thing that would address multiple issues…  just consider, that even without changing civilisation as we know it today if there were only less humans, there would be less: traffic, pollution, noise, light, energy use, deforestation, over-fishing, agriculture… There would be less competition for land, which (I hope) would lead to less conflict.  Humans would be using less fossil fuels for energy and making less CO².  Using less land for agriculture would result in a reduced need for chemicals and would leave space perhaps for more animals and more trees.  And the thing here is that no matter what technological or chemical solutions humans find to any of the issues that they face…  unless the question of population control is addressed then none of it will make any difference at all.

Ever-expanding populations require expansion into new areas to acquire new or more natural resources in order to sustain itself.  The earth is a closed system, the amount of any given thing is limited either physically or temporally – so either humans leave the earth or their population will have to stop expanding: either voluntarily or through a simple inability to survive on the planet.  Yet in contrast to this, modern society continues to expound the values of growth and expansion; even going so far as to ‘reward’ its citizens who have children.  Human vision is so limited that individual countries cannot see beyond the need to compete with their neighbour, cannot see that in fact this burning desire to become ever more powerful and ever richer will bring the entire human population down – including themselves.

I would love to see the human race stop talking only about its freedoms and for it to start thinking about its obligations – or even simply the freedoms of all other living things on this planet.  Personally, I can’t see it happening… human society is geared up to limit change as much as possible and the priority for all societies now is financial rather than moral (just look how countries prioritise ‘the economy’ during a pandemic).

I write all of this as a parent of a young girl, only a single additional individual, but an addition nonetheless.  I can appreciate therefore the desire to become a parent and understand how hard a question this is to address: but address it we must, because the alternative is the ultimate extinction of all humans – irrespective of their age.