Part 6: Human overpopulation is the most unheard-of issue in America—Observations to sustainability

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 6:   Observations of our predicament as to sustainability

For over thirty years, I attended lectures at the University of Colorado where Physics professor Dr. Albert Bartlett lectured and promoted discussion on human overpopulation.  His extraordinary lecture on “Arithmetic, Population and Energy”  can be seen at www.albartlett.org .  He presented it over 1,600 times around the world.   While the world ignored his and many other top scientists in the world, including Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, in 2011, the population noose tightens around this civilization’s neck.  Other top experts join the chorus such as Richard Heinberg, Dr. William Catton, Jared Diamond, William Ryerson, Dave Paxson, Aldolpho Doring, Dr. Diana Hull and Amanda Zackem.

HYPOTHESES RELATING TO SUSTAINABILITY

Dr. Bartlett addresses sustainability and how the United States has exceeded it for decades:

1) For the 1994 average global standard of living, the 1994 population of the Earth exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth.

2) For the 1994 average standard of living in the United States, the 1994 population of the United States exceeds the carrying capacity of the United States. (Abernethy, 1993), (Giampietro and Pimentel, 1993)

3) The increasing sizes of populations that result from population growth are the single greatest and most insidious threat to representative democracy.

4) The costs of programs to stop population growth are small compared to the costs of population increases.

5) For society as a whole, population growth never pays for itself. (This is a consequence of the Tragedy of the Commons.)

A) In the U.S. in general, the larger the population of a city, the higher are the municipal per-capita annual taxes. 

6) The time required for a society to make a planned transition to sustainability on its own terms, so it can live within the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, increases with increases in

i) the size of its population

iii) the society’s average per-capita rate of consumption of new resources.

7) The rate (S) at which a society can improve the average standard of living of its people is directly related to the rate of application of new technologies (T) and is inversely related to the rate of growth (R) of the size of the population (the fractional increase per unit time), by a relation with the general properties of the equation,

S = T – A R + B

where A and B are positive constants. 

A) In places in the world in 1994, the value of R (the rate of growth of population) is so large that it is causing S to be negative. Said in other words,

a) Population growth competes with and slows down the rate of improvement of the average standard of living and may cause the average standard of living to decline. In other words, 
b) Population growth interferes with economic growth.

8) Social stability is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for sustainability.

A) Human freedoms depend on social stability.

B) Armed conflict (war) cannot be a part of a sustainable society.

9) In some cases, social stability tends to be inversely related to population density.

10) The per-capita burden of the lowered standard of living that generally results from population growth and from the decline of resources falls most heavily on the poor.

11) When populations are growing, the rate of growth of the fraction of the population that is poor exceeds the rate of growth of the fraction of the population that is wealthy.

12) Environmental problems cannot be solved or ameliorated by increases in population or by increases in the rates of consumption of resources.

A) Probably all environmental problems would be easier to solve if the population were smaller and/or if the rates of consumption of resources were smaller. 

13) Problems of shortages of non-renewable resources cannot be solved or ameliorated by population growth.

14) In general, the environment cannot be enhanced or even preserved through compromises. 

A) Compromises and accommodations between the immediate needs of people and the long-term needs of the environment will generally be resolved in favor of people. For the most part, compromises only reduce the rate of destruction of the environment or they increase the elegance with which the environment is destroyed. 

15) The fractional rate of destruction of the environment that results from human activities will always exceed the fractional rate of increase of our knowledge and understanding of the environment.

A) Every decision affecting the environment will have to be made with less than full knowledge of the risks and consequences of the decision. 

C) It will always be possible for persons to delay the implementation of corrective measures, claiming that our information about the problems is incomplete.

16) By the time overpopulation and shortages of resources are obvious to most people, the carrying capacity has been exceeded. It is then almost too late to think about sustainability.

A) It is difficult to know what to do once one realizes that the population is too large. 

B) Long-range thinking, planning, and leadership, carried out with a full recognition of the laws of nature, is most urgently needed.

17) Importing non-renewable natural resources demonstrates unsustainability; exporting non- renewable natural resources reduces the ultimate sustainable standard of living and/or the carrying capacity of the exporting country.

18) Because of the universal nature of world trade, the concept of “carrying capacity” is difficult to apply to a nation or region.

A) Sustainability is a global problem.

C) If a local official speaks of his/her community being sustainable, it probably is not true.

19) Sustainable agriculture cannot be based on large annual energy inputs from fossil fuels, and in particular from petroleum. 

i) “The food system consumes ten times more energy than it provides to society in food energy.” (Giampietro and Pimentel, 1993)

20) Irrigation of farmland, as it has been practiced throughout history and up to the present time, cannot be sustained. (Abernethy, 1993, p.136) 

i) The lands become poisoned with salts.

21) Hydroelectric power generated from reservoirs created by construction of large dams, cannot be sustained.

i) The reservoirs fill with silt.

OBSERVATIONS RELATING TO SUSTAINABILITY

1) The first and most important effort that must be made in order to move toward a sustainable society is to stop population growth. This will require the initiation of major comprehensive educational, technical, and outreach programs in the areas of social responsibility, contraception, family planning, and immigration control. The greater the degree to which themcarrying capacity has been exceeded, the more probable it is that coercion will become a factor in these programs.

2) The food chain is nature’s equilibrium mechanism. It functions to prevent unlimited expansion of populations of flora and fauna. Primitive human societies were able to maintain approximately constant populations and to live within the carrying capacity of their ecosystems. The methods used were often cruel and inhumane. Technology has given many people the feeling that humans are exempt from the constraint of limited carrying capacities.

3) Ancient civilizations have vanished, in part because they grew too large and their size exceeded the carrying capacity of the ecosystems on which they depended for support. 

a) Civilizations today show considerable tendency to repeat the mistakes of earlier civilizations, but on a much larger scale. 

4) The complete era of the use of fossil fuels by humans will be a vanishingly short fraction of the span of human existence on the Earth. 

5) The supplies of all non-renewable resources will effectively expire when the costs (in cash, in energy, in ecological and societal disruption) of making available a quantity of the resource exceed the value of the quantity of the resource.

6) Comprehensive educational, technical, and outreach programs in the areas of efficient use of resources will be needed in order to help achieve sustainability.

7) A major use of technology is, and has been, to accommodate the growth of populations, and to remove the recognition of the importance of living within the carrying capacity of the environment. (See Boulding’s Utterly Dismal Theorem and Eric Sevareid’s Law)

A) This use of technology has had the effect of encouraging population growth. 

C) An essential condition for sustainability is that technology be redirected toward the improvement of the quality of life and away from its use to increase the quantity of life.

8) Creating jobs increases the number of people out of work.

In a city or state, creating jobs increases the population, of which 5% to 7% are always unemployed. It follows that the increase in population that is the result of the creation of jobs is always reflected as an increase in the number of people out of work. This is the direct consequence of the ease with which people can move from places with high unemployment to places with low unemployment. In this regard, the movement of people is like the movement of molecules of an ideal gas, that tend to move until they achieve a constant pressure throughout a closed vessel.

A) If it is desired to maintain an “island” of low unemployment, in a nation, a state, or a community, one must erect barriers to prevent the in-migration of unemployed people. 

You may contact Dr. Bartlett at www.albartlett.org

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In a five minute astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration, Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director of www.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation.  Take five minutes to see for yourself:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE&feature=player_embedded

“Immigration by the numbers—off the chart” by Roy Beck

This 10 minute demonstration shows Americans the results of unending mass immigration on the quality of life and sustainability for future generations: in a word “Mind boggling!”  www.NumbersUSA.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

This is the best website to start:  www.numbersusa.org ; watch Roy Beck’s “Immigration by the Numbers” at 14 minutes. Bi-partisan and very effective. Become a faxer of pre-written letters to your reps to make positive  change.

Visit www.TheSocialContract.com for the best information on what we face as a civilization as to overpopulation, energy, immigration and much more.

Canada www.immigrationwatchcanada.org ; in Australia www.population.org.au and[email protected]; in Great Britain www.populationmatters.org ; and dozens of other sites accessed at www.frostywooldridge.com.   In Florida, www.flimen.org .

Must see DVD: “Blind Spot” www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ , This movie illustrates America’s future without oil, water and other resources to keep this civilization functioning. It’s a brilliant educational movie! www.blindspotdoc.com

Must see: Rapid Population Decline, seven minute video by Dr. Jack Alpert-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0

Must see and funny: www.growthbusters.org ; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSTrW_dARc
Dave Gardner’s Polar Bear in Bedroom:

growthbusters.org/2010/03/save-the-polar-bear-in-your-bedroom ; Dave Gardner, President, Citizen-Powered Media ; Producing the Documentary, GROWTH BUSTERS; presents Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, Join the cause at www.growthbusters.org ;760 Wycliffe Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 USA; +1 719-576-5565

Check out this link with Wooldridge on bicycle and Lester Brown and panel discussion:

www.upnorthmedia.org/watchupnorthtv.asp?SDBFid=1631

Tomorrow’s Americaproject on www.youtube.com/contemporarylearning.

Producer: GEORGE A. COLBURNwww.tomorrowsamerica.com

DC: 202-258-4887

Email: [email protected]

Link to www.tomorrowsamerica.com for more discussions on America’s predicament.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.starbrightmediacorp.com

www.tomorrowsamerica.com

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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715