Eco-troubles

The world is beset by economic troubles that have dominated news reports on TV, radio and print media for months. Much less discussed in the media are the demographic and ecological stresses that are ultimately responsible for at least part of the economic trouble the world is experiencing. For at least twenty years perhaps much longer, depending upon definitions, indicators and methods of measurement, humans have been extracting ecological goods and services from the planet at a faster rate than the planet can produce these goods and services - and two prominent components of the goods, carbon-based fuels and prime agricultural land, are non-renewable. Our 'free market' economy is based on the untenable premise that perpetual economic growth is desirable and possible. As I've said elsewhere, perpetual economic growth is no more possible than perpetual motion, the fanciful dream of the scientifically illiterate. We have reached 'Peak Oil,' where the cost and difficulty of extracting and refining this most convenient portable source of energy exceed the economic benefits of its use.Yesterday the International Energy Agency, a rather obscure United Nations agency, released a report stating that energy use is out-pacing energy production. I haven't seen a clear statement about loss of agricultural land to desertification, urban sprawl, sea level rise, soil pollution, but world food reserves have shrunk from about 100 days 40 years ago to less than 20-25 days last time I looked. Smart-aleck scientists say that the short-fall can be made up by hydroponic crop production; but I think that is another fanciful dream, like the unachievable fanciful dream, carbon capture and storage. Nobody is connecting the dots. The blunt truth is that there are too many people. We passed 7 billion last month. An increasing number of the 7 billion, optimistically projected to be 9 billion by 2050, face a miserable lot in life, as well as consuming their portion (I won't call it a share) of the planet's finite resources. Humanity has hit the wall, the irresistible force of human reproduction has hit the immovable object of finite planetary resources. The Public Health Agency of Canada has asked me to open next month a meeting of pandemic control specialists with a few remarks about the history of pandemics. I plan to say a little about the history, and also offer my forecast for the future. I hope for the sake of the future of life on earth that this future will include fairly soon a major pandemic or two that will reduce the surplus population by at least one order of magnitude. That seems to me to be the least undesirable of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Two other Horsemen, famine and war, would be much worse, more disruptive, although it remains to be seen how avoidable they ultimately are.