WALLACE KLECK: We haven't been especially good stewards of our planet
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Wallace Kleck
We humans just passed a population of 7 billion with little notice and no alarm. We, as a species, also made a choice, and that choice is how human population will be controlled, for it will be controlled! We made our choice while paying little attention: increased infant and elder mortality, increased mortality due to disease, war, and starvation leading to a major population crash.
In addition, we have chosen to continue the overuse and degradation of quality farmland, and the continued degradation of our greatest source of high-quality protein -- the shallow ocean waters of Earth. Because of those activities, we have chosen that our population crash will be significantly worse and last longer than necessary.
Humans are very good at short-term choices -- those less than one lifetime in length. Unfortunately, long-term choices can be very long-term and highly costly over a few thousand years. Most ecological-environmental choices are long-term, and the ultimate cost can be considerable. Just a few examples of short-term-cheap, long-term-costly choices:
* Dumping untreated sewage or industrial wastes into the nearby shallow ocean waters -- destroying them as long-term sources of food; polluters walk away if anyone objects and use someplace else the same way.
* Overfishing the highly productive, shallow ocean waters -- more than a few desirable species are now in dangerously short supply -- as in dangerous to their continued existence.
* Insufficient care in hydrofracking resulting in contamination of groundwater.
* Shortsighted farming practices, as evidenced in the Antelope Valley area: farm it intensely, use up the water and soil, walk away.
* From the extractive industries: dump the bad stuff over there where it doesn't get in the way, and walk away when the valuable material is used up.
What is a sustainable number of humans on Earth? This is turning out to be an extremely difficult question. All current answers are very uncertain, and there are many subsidiary questions, several ifs , ands and buts . Note, our present population is and has been supported, above a sustainable level, by the extensive use of easily extracted, nonrenewable resources -- once they are used up they are gone. One of the important subsidiary questions is: At what level? For example, on a purely subsistence level with widespread slavery, the number would be about 7 billion; for a world in which I would want to live, about 5 billion. For more on this, read "Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update" by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers.
You might say, "Oh, another one of those eco-nuts." That's hardly the case. I am a senior, retired, Ph.D. geologist. I spent the first 16 years of my life as a working farm kid and was an active FFA member through high school, participating as chapter president, on livestock judging teams, in animal showmanship, the co-op quiz and more. I was headed toward being a farmer-rancher, but I decided on a different life for myself.
So, I ask: Why and how did we make such dumb choices? Let's look at two views.
* A philosophical-religious view. God gave us three great gifts: an abstract and reasoned intelligence, an intense curiosity about the world around us, and the stewardship of Earth. We have failed in the use of these gifts and are being punished. The goal for such punishment is to teach so that the next time our population grows, we will have a better chance of getting the choices right and stopping at a sustainable number.
* A philosophical-science view. We, as animals on Earth, have evolved with a strong reproductive drive as well as with a certain type of intelligence and an intense curiosity. These have served us well as our population increased from a few hundred to approximately 5 billion individuals over about 3 million years. Our intellectual development and tendency to use short-term solutions have resulted in our not dealing with our reproductive drive as we exceeded the sustainable population for humans on Earth. Maybe by the time (a few thousand years down the road) of the next major population increase, we will have learned enough to avoid a nasty population crash.
Wallace Kleck of Tehachapi is a retired community college geology teacher.
