Nearly every day we hear news about the ongoing climate disaster, which is about much more than climate change. It is about environmental destruction, air, soil, and water pollution, food and water shortages, species extinctions, unprecedented floods, fires, storms, and more. They are all related.
We hear about these things, but do our minds really comprehend it all? Media coverage of the looming catastrophe is too limited to have the required impact. Besides, most people have more important things to attend to, like the lives of celebrities and the everyday struggle to survive -- or making a fortune from destroying the environment.
Even if the reporting on climate change was increased considerably, discussion of the problem largely ignores one of its main causes: the pressure of human population.
This is the "elephant in the room." Too many people ignore its connection to major global problems. To name a few: disposal of human wastes, lack of clean water, food shortages, child and spousal abuse, the energy crisis, urban congestion.
For many reasons, some of them good, population control is a highly controversial subject. A media dependent upon advertising revenue tiptoes around it at best, ignores it at worst. The rest of us do so at our peril.
For many millennia, the human population of this globe we inhabit counted in the thousands or millions, not billions as now.
Around 1750, the world entered a period of sustained population rise. By 1800 it was close to a billion for the first time. Few people noticed. In fact, many people believed the human population was declining.
One who disagreed was Thomas Malthus, an Anglican parson. He first published An Essay on Population in 1796. Malthus warned of the tendency of unchecked population growth to outstrip resources, leading to famine, disease, and war. Malthus called these disasters "natural checks" to population growth.
These natural -- and horrible -- checks bring populations back into line with resources for a time. But human beings are forgetful. As soon as things get better, they procreate themselves into a renewed cycle of suffering. Would it not be better, Malthus wrote, to avoid this vicious circle by limiting our numbers by "artificial" checks?
Malthus received abundant criticism. Some observers proclaimed him a Cassandra, a prophet of doom. Others denounced his suggested method of reducing population. He called it "self-restraint." By this he meant, in effect, sexual abstinence. Many critics viewed that as laughable, given the power of human sexual drives.
Some methods of contraception existed even in those days. But they were associated with prostitution, promiscuity, and sin. As a clergyman, Malthus could not or would not suggest artificial contraception. In fact, he denounced all such things as "vice."
Malthus did gain a following. But many of those who accepted his diagnosis of the problem rejected his solution as impractical. These "Neo-Malthusians" argued that the only practical way to limit population was by spreading knowledge of, and improving, methods of contraception.
Disseminating such knowledge was illegal in most countries, however, and could result in fines or imprisonment. In any case, the efforts of the Neo-Malthusians did little to curb the growth of the human population globally.
By 1900, it had reached around close to 2 billion, roughly twice the 1800 population. During the next century, despite two devastating world wars and the worst pandemic in modern history, it soared to more than 6 billion. It is currently (2021), close to 8 billion. Projections vary, but experts estimate that it could reach twice that number by 2100.
Some experts claim that the earth can support far more people than it currently does. That may be true, but at what level of existence? And with what consequences for the rest of the natural world?
Even in prosperous, "peaceful" countries millions struggle merely to survive. In less prosperous nations, about two billion are living in conditions no better than those of the preindustrial world. Often worse, because these unlucky people are packed into festering, fetid slums with inadequate supplies of clean water and sanitation.
A common and humane answer to this is the need to raise their standard of living through education, women's rights, social security, improved housing, health care and the like. No friend of mankind can oppose such improvements. But a few billion new consumers will put additional pressure on an already distressed natural environment.
Malthus's "natural checks" could eventually reduce the human population to environmentally sustainable levels. But such a "solution" would involve immense suffering and may come too late to save the natural world.
We have the means to curb population. Humans must learn to limit their numbers. The superrich will find a way to maintain a high standard of life -- at least until there is no longer a way to be found. I suppose they will go off to Mars at that point. We can do better here on earth, if we will it.
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