the crowd

Lovelock's, Revenge Of Gaia, introduced me to a new word yesterday, iatrogenic. I shall endeavour to use it obsessively before it slips from memory. If there's one thing I've gotten from reading this book it's clarity and affirmation of what I felt for a while. Basically, human development, though done mainly with good intents, has been a catalogue of mistakes, the worst of which has evolved into an intractable compound of serious errors.

Most of the fears we hear about now - climate change, peak oil, economic failure, disease, poverty, and famine etc. - are all a result of one fundamental cause - the vast and increasing human population. Currently there are about 6 billion human inhabitants on Earth and before this century ends, the projected figure is estimated at 9 billion - half as much again. It doesn't take much imagination to see this as a serious burden both on the planet's ability to sustain that level of human life, and mankind's conscientious drive to ensure prosperity, equality of lifestyle, extended longevity, and growth for each citizen of Earth. We improve our lot to our detriment, it seems.

It can't be the easiest thing to work out but some have come up with the optimum population for a sustainable human existence on a pleasant Earth. Lovelock, for instance, mentions a figure of 1 billion. The Optimum Population Trust gives several figures based on different ''biocapacity'' criteria and further breaks these figures down into different global regions. At a glance, these values are much higher than Lovelock's 1 billion but still much, much lower than present trends. With their new patron, Sir David Attenborough, they have launched a campaign to stabilise the UK population under the slogan, Stop At Two. I don't know why, perhaps it's political correctness, but I can't help thinking it should be, Stop At One. Or even, We Can't Handle No More Kids! Given that the majority of people will ignore this campaign, and even if say 90% went along with it, the population will stay at its current level which is about 4 times their calculated optimum for sustainability. Therefore the campaign appears to favour unsustainability even if enough people take notice and go along with it. Which they won't. Better to stir it up and just say NO.