The End of Doom (40 page)

New technologies and wealth produced by human creativity will spark a vast environmental renewal in this century. Most global trends suggest that by the end of this century, the world will be populated with fewer and much wealthier people living mostly in cities fueled by cheap no-carbon energy sources. As the amount of land and sea needed to supply human needs decreases, both cities and wild nature will expand, with nature occupying or reoccupying the bulk of the land and sea freed up by human ingenuity. Nature will become chiefly an arena for human pleasure and instruction, not a source of raw materials. I don't fear for future generations; instead, I rejoice for them.

 

NOTES

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Introduction

“To end our long, self-imposed exile”:
Jeremy Rifkin,
Algeny: A New Word—A New World.
New York: Penguin, 1984, 252.

Vaclav Smil calculates that:
Vaclav Smil,
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization.
New York: Wiley, 2013.

the Antarctic ozone shows a:
J. Kuttippurath et al., “Antarctic Ozone Loss in 1979–2010: First Sign Of Ozone Recovery.”
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
13 (2013): 1625–1635.
www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/1625/2013/acp-13-1625-2013.pdf
.

“The world is in transition”:
Lester Brown, “New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilizations.” February 7, 2013,
www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2013/fpepch1
.

“What are the chances”:
Paul Ehrlich cited by Kevin Kelley, “UVM Audience Warned of Looming Global Collapse,”
Seven Days Vermont,
May 1, 2013.
www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2013/05/01/uvm-audience-warned-of-looming-global-collapse
.

global oil production had peaked:
Jörg Schindler, “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society.” Energy Watch Group, October 23, 2007.
www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_68545.shtml
.

“The world is at, nearing”:
Richard Heinberg, “Beyond the Limits to Growth.” Post Carbon Institute, 2010.
www.garfieldfoundation.org/resources/docs/PCReader-Heinberg-Limits.pdf
.

“It could be a scary future”:
Center for Biological Diversity, “The Extinction Crisis,” 2014.
www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
.

“Warming of the climate system”:
Thomas Stocker and Qin Dahe, “Overview of the IPCC WGI Report.”
Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis
. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, September 2013.
www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/1_stocker13sbsta.pdf
.

“holds that individuals can be expected”:
Dan M. Kahan et al., “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change” (2011). Temple University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-26; Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 89; Yale Law and Economics Research Paper No. 435; Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 230. Available at SSRN:
ssrn.com/abstract=1871503
or
dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1871503
.

1. Peak Population?

In premodern societies:
Tony Volk and Jeremy Atkinson, “Is Child Death the Crucible of Human Evolution?”
Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology
2.4 (2008): 247.
shell.newpaltz.edu/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSvolkatkinson.pdf
.

Global average life expectancy:
Haidong Wang et al., “Age-Specific and Sex-Specific Mortality in 187 Countries, 1970–2010: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.”
Lancet
380.9859 (2013): 2071–2094.

The upshot will be:
Wolfgang Lutz, William Butz, and K. C. Samir, eds.,
World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century,
“Chapter 10: The Rise of Human Capital and the End of World Population Growth,” 519, Oxford University Press, 2014; and K. C. Samir et al., “Results of New Wittgenstein Centre Population Projections by Age, Sex and Level of Education for 171 Countries,” Joint Eurostat/UNECE Work Session on Demographic Projections, October 29–31, 2013.
staging.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.11/2013/WP_17.2_01.pdf
.

A year earlier:
William Paddock and Paul Paddock,
Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive?
Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.

Back in 1963:
Paul Diehl and Nils Petter Gleditsch,
Environmental Conflict.
Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001.

In 1967, Brown:
Lester Brown, “The World Outlook for Conventional Agriculture,”
Science,
November 3, 1967, 604.

In 1974, Brown:
Lester Brown, “Global Food Insecurity,”
The Futurist
8.2 (1974), 56.

In 1989, Brown:
Lester Brown, “Feeding Six Billion,”
World Watch,
September/October 1989, 32.

Brown contended:
Brown cited in Vaclav Smil,
Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century.
Boston: MIT Press, 2002, 12.

In 1995, Brown:
Lester Brown, “Facing Food Scarcity,”
World Watch,
November/December 1995,
www.worldwatch.org/node/407
.

In 1996, Brown:
Lester Brown,
Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity
. New York: Norton, 1996.
www.ecobooks.com/books/tough.htm
.

In a 2012
Scientific American
:
Lester Brown, “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?”
Scientific American,
May 2009.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/civilization-food-shortages
.

“The world is in transition”:
Lester Brown, “New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilizations.” February 7, 2013,
www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2013/fpepch1
.

“Dr. Paul Ehrlich says”:
New York Times,
November 25, 1969, 19. From Nexis abstract.

During a May 2013:
Tim Johnson, “Are We Doomed? Probably, but Maybe Not.”
Burlington Free Press
, May 2, 2013.

“The world faces”:
David Pimentel, “World Overpopulation.”
Environment, Development and Sustainability
14.2 (2012): 151–152.
www.skil.org/Qxtras_folder-2/david_pimenteleditorial.pdf
.

“The world's biggest problem?”:
Mary Ellen Harte and Anne Ehrlich, “The World's Biggest Problem? Too Many People,”
Los Angeles Times,
July 21, 2011.
articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/21/opinion/la-oe-harte-population-20110721
.

We can choose to limit:
Alan Weisman,
Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
Boston: Little, Brown, 2013, 40.

“To ecologists who”:
Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich,
The Population Explosion.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990, 34.

“The problem of human”:
Russell Hopfenberg, “Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability.”
Population and Environment
25.2 (November 2003): 1–7.
panearth.org/WVPI/Papers/CarryingCapacity.pdf
.

Of the nineteen countries:
Population Reference Bureau, 2013 World Population Data Sheet.

Ehrlich doubled down:
Paul Ehrlich, “Eco-Catastrophe.”
Ramparts,
1969, 25.

Both Pakistan and India:
Economic Times of India,
“India Likely to Export 18 Million Tonnes Rice, Wheat in 2013/14: Report,” February 24, 2014.
articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-02-24/news/47635825_1_top-rice-exporter-global-wheat-prices-government-warehouses
.

The FAO … reports:
FAOSTAT.
faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/download/O/OA/E
.

per capita consumption:
Mette Wik, Prabhu Pingali, and Sumiter Broca, “Global Agricultural Performance: Past Trends and Future Prospects,” background paper for the World Development Report 2008, World Bank.
siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2008/Resources/2795087-1191427986785/Pingali-Global_Agricultural_Performance.pdf
.

“plant breeding efforts”:
Keith W. Jaggard, Aiming Qi, and Eric S. Ober, “Possible Changes to Arable Crop Yields by 2050.”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
365 (August 16, 2010): 2835–2851.
rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/2835.full
.

“if during the next”:
Paul Waggoner, “How Much Land Can Ten Billion Spare for Nature?” Jesse H. Ausubel and H. Dale Langford, eds.,
Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment,
National Academy of Engineering, 1997, 56–73.
www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4767&page=56
.

India produces 31 bushels:
Ronald Phillips, “Mobilizing Science to Break Yield Barriers.” Background paper to the CGIAR 2009 Science Forum workshop: “Beyond the Yield Curve: Exerting the Power of Genetics, Genomics and Synthetic Biology,” “2009, 17.
www.scienceforum2009.nl/Portals/11/BGWS4.pdf
.

that past population growth:
Julio A. Gonzalo, F
é
lix-Fernando Mu
ñ
oz, David J. Santos, “Using a Rate Equations Approach to Model World Population Trends.”
Simulation: Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International
89 (February 2013): 192–198.

“Overpopulation was a spectre”:
“A Model Predicts That the World's Populations Will Stop Growing in 2050.”
Phys.org
.
4 (April 2013).
phys.org/news/2013-04-world-populations.html
.

“there is around”:
Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson, and Sergei Scherbov, “The End of World Population Growth.”
Nature
412 (August 2, 2001): 543–545.

“most existing world”:
Stuart Basten, Wolfgang Lutz, and Sergei Scherbov, “Very Long Range Global Population Scenarios to 2300 and the Implications of Sustained Low Fertility.”
Demographic Research
28 (May 30, 2013): 1145–1166.

In another 2013 study:
K. C. Samir et al., “Results of New Wittgenstein Centre Population Projections by Age, Sex and Level of Education for 171 Countries.” Joint Eurostat/UNECE Work Session on Demographic Projections, October 29–31, 2013.
staging.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.11/2013/WP_17.2_01.pdf
.

projections are way too high:
Sanjeev Sanjay, “Predictions of a Rogue Demographer.”
The Wide Angle,
Deutsche Bank, September 9, 2013.

world population stabilization:
Patrick Gerland et al., “World Population Stabilization Unlikely This Century.”
Science
346.6206 (September 18, 2014): 234–237.
www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6206/234.abstract
.

In their November 2014 study:
Wolfgang Lutz, William P. Butz, and Samir, K. C. eds.,
2014
World Population and Global Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/XO-14-031.pdf
.

This approach suggests:
Bobbi S. Low et al., “Influences on Women's Reproductive Lives: Unexpected Ecological Underpinnings.”
Cross-Cultural Research
42.3 (2008): 201–219.

Another study in 2013:
Bobbi S. Low et al., “Life Expectancy, Fertility, and Women's Lives: A Life-History Perspective.”
Cross-Cultural Research
47.2 (2013): 198–225.

University of Connecticut anthropologists:
Nicola L. Bulled and Richard Sosis, “Examining the Relationship Between Life Expectancy, Reproduction, and Educational Attainment.”
Human Nature
21.3 (2010): 269–289.

US fertility rates:
Michael Haines, “Fertility and Mortality in the United States.”
EH.Net
Encyclopedia, Robert Whaples, ed., March 19, 2008.
eh.net/encyclopedia/fertility-and-mortality-in-the-united-states
.

“further increases in the rate”:
Oded Galor, “The Demographic Transition: Causes and Consequences.” Discussion Paper series, 2012,
Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit,
No. 6334.
www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/58611/1/715373668.pdf
.

OECD economist:
Fabrice Murtin, “On the Demographic Transition 1870–2000.” Paris School of Economics Working Paper (2009).

Lutz calculates that:
Wolfgang Lutz, “Toward a 21st Century Population Policy Paradigm.” International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, February 2, 2013.

As Galor noted:
World Trade Organization:
www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2002_e/chp_2_e.pdf
.

as global fertility declined:
John A. Doces, “Globalization and Population: International Trade and the Demographic Transition.”
International Interactions
37 (May 2011): 127–146.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03050629.2011.568838#preview
.