We Are Demanding Too Much

Download (PDF, 3.86MB)

INTRODUCTION

A graph showing the explosive rise of human population

When the global population of humans is plotted as a function of time over a period of twelve thousand years, and the uses of fossil fuels is plotted on the same plot, as is shown on the graph (above), the two curves are seen to rise abruptly and simultaneously during the last two or three centuries. In the graph, one sees population plotted as dots, while the use of fossil fuels is shown as a smooth curve. The use of fossil fuels will stop in a few centuries because of depleted resources, but it must stop much more abruptly if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided. The graph raises the question of whether human population is headed for a crash in the post-fossil-fuel era.

We are demanding more from nature than nature can restore

Until the agricultural revolution, and later the industrial revolution, humans were few in number, and lived in balance with nature. However, in recent centuries humans have exploded in numbers. The global population will reach 8 billion in 2022. In order to feed such an enormous population, vast areas of forests have been cut down and converted into farmland. Nevertheless, food prices are starting to rise rapidly, and many parts of the world are threatened with famine.

As glaciers melt in the Himalayas, depriving India and China of summer water supplies; as sea levels rise, drowning the fertile rice fields of Viet Nam and Bangladesh; as drought threatens the productivity of grain-producing regions of North America; and as the end of the fossil fuel era impacts modern high-yield agriculture, there is a threat of wide-spread famine, involving not millions of people, but billions.

Reducing our demands

In order to achieve a sustainable society, and to avoid a catastrophic population crash, we must strive to stabilize and later reduce human numbers. We must also strive to live more modestly, and to reduce our demands.

Read the entire book above or download it here.

We thank John Scales Avery, a renowned intellectual, EACPE board member, and theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen, for giving us permission to reproduce his latest book for EACPE.