Peak Population

Eight billion miracles are enough!

(from a bumper sticker by Northern Sun Merchandising about 20 years ago that stated
"six billion miracles is enough!)

related page: Peak Grain: Feeding Nine Billion after Peak Oil and Climate Change

Since 9/11, world population has increased from 6.22 billion (2001) to 7.71 billion (2019). This increase of 1.49 billion is greater than the 1.2 billion living in 1859, when the first oil well was drilled.

source: www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/

"The issue is not so much what form of technology is more terrible, but how many people are engaging in the technologies. There appears to be very little thought given to how large a population size is sustainable with a renewable-energy economy."
-- Jan Lundberg (1952-2018)

energyskeptic.com/2016/family-planning-a-special-and-urgent-concern-by-the-rev-martin-luther-king-jr/

Family Planning – A Special and Urgent Concern by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Posted on October 25, 2016 by energyskeptic
[ Below are excerpts from this May 5, 1966 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. after he was awarded the Margaret Sanger Award by Planned Parenthood ]

Why did the environmental movement drop the issue of overpopulation?
energyskeptic.com/2016/why-did-env-movement-drop-population/

Posted on March 24, 2016 by energyskeptic

Roy Beck & Leon Kolankiewicz. The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U. S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998): A First Draft of History

[This is most of the 27 page report. Beck and Kolankiewicz have written this excellent paper explaining why the environmental movement abandoned the goal of keeping population within the carrying capacity of U.S. resources. Systems ecologists such as Paul Erlich, David Pimentel and others estimate the U.S. can support about 100 million people without fossil fuels. That was the population during the Great Depression, when 1 in 4 Americans were farmers, yet still many people were hungry (hence “The Grapes of Wrath”. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com ]

www.resilience.org/stories/2015-02-05/alan-weisman-reviews-overdevelopment-overpopulation-overshoot

In his 1970 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Norman Borlaug, founder of the "Green Revolution" that produced those prolific hybrid grains, warned that saving millions from death by famine also meant that they'd live to bear millions more, who in turn would need even more food, and so on until demographic disaster eventually engulfed us – unless we learned to manage our numbers. For the rest of his life, Borlaug crusaded against overpopulation, including as an advisor to The Population Institute, a co-producer of this book that, vividly and unforgettably, shows exactly what he feared.

http://steadystate.org/maybe-its-time-to-offend-a-few-folks/

I once asked the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network why RAN didn’t discuss the huge number of people on the planet as a factor in rainforest devastation and encourage smaller human families, as everyone in that nonprofit organization probably understands that the demand for resources from 7 billion people on the planet is causing extensive damage to the earth. They know that if the UN projection of 10 billion people on the planet by 2050 is right, it will be disastrous for forests everywhere. She admitted, abashedly, that she did not want to alienate donors.

RAN is an organization whose members break into corporate offices and hang banners out the windows excoriating Big Oil, yet they are afraid to talk about human overpopulation in their pamphlets or on their website. If RAN won’t admit the link between diminishing natural resources and a population that grows by 220,000 people every day, then what large environmental organization will?

It turns out, none.

-- Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

"[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?] "It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies."
-- Issac Asimov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZX-x7sySI

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/ideology-subsumes-empiricism-in-pope-s-climate-encyclical/
Ideology Subsumes Empiricism in Pope's Climate Encyclical
By Lawrence M. Krauss | June 18, 2015

... An encyclical wouldn’t be an encyclical without theology however, and that is where problems arise. In a chapter entitled “Gospel of Creation” Francis ruminates poetically on the nature of man, the mystery of the cosmos (my own area of study) and the special duty Christians have to respect nature, humanity and the environment. It’s beautifully presented and sounds good in principle. However, his biblical analysis leads to the false conclusion that contraception and population control are not appropriate strategies to help a planet with limited resources.
Here, ideology subsumes empiricism, and the inevitable conflict between science and religion comes to the fore. One can argue until one is blue in the face that God has a preordained plan for every zygote, but the simple fact is that if one is seriously worried about the environment on a global scale population is a problem. A population of 10 billion by 2050 will likely be unsustainable at a level in which all humans have adequate food, water, medicine and security. Moreover, as this pope should particularly appreciate, the environmental problems that overpopulation creates also disproportionately afflict those in poor countries, where access to birth control and abortion is often limited. Ultimately, the surest road out of poverty is to empower women to control their own fertility. Doing so allows them to better provide for themselves and their children, improves access to education and healthcare and, eventually, creates incentives for environmental sustainability.
The problem with basing a public policy framework on outmoded ideas that predate modern science and medicine is that one inevitably proposes bad policies.
No one can fault Pope Francis’s intentions, which are clearly praiseworthy, but his call for action on climate change is compromised by his adherence to doctrines that are based on revelation and not evidence. The Catholic Church and its leaders can never be truly objective and useful arbiters of human behavior until they are willing to dispense with doctrine that can thwart real progress. In this sense, the latest encyclical took several steps forward, and then a leap back.
Lawrence M. Krauss is director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. A cosmologist, he has visited the Vatican to discuss the long-term future of life. His most recent book is A Universe from Nothing. Krauss is also a member of Scientific American's Board of Advisers.

 

Ian Anderson, musician with Jethro Tull

In 1971, I wrote and recorded the song “Locomotive Breath” for the Aqualung album. The lyrical subject matter was the topic of runaway population growth. 

Now, 47 years later, you have the chance to add your voice to the single most pressing problem facing future generations. From increases in global population, all other danger factors threatening our species, including climate change, continue to accrue. Apart from the odd rogue asteroid or black hole, of course. 

In my lifetime alone, the population of the planet has slightly more than tripled. Yes - in one generation!

I have been a supporter of Population Matters for some years - ever since the venerable and much-loved David Attenborough became visibly the first person of real media presence to come out, unafraid to discuss the issues of population growth in our times. 

Tricky and controversial stuff, I know, but don’t think that we concerned voices are about to shout down your right to have children. We are about the sense of responsible family planning and size. Responsibility not just to a nation, ethnic group or continent, but to the precious resource and life-giving spirit of planet Earth itself. No one is about to tell you what to do or not to do; merely to learn, understand and act upon your own conclusions. Responsible, informed choice. Especially for women in the modern world.

 

Jim Garrison led the sole prosecution of one of the perpetrators of the JFK assassination - his book "On the Trail of the Assassins" was depicted in the Oliver Stone film "JFK."

October 1967 interview

PLAYBOY: Many of the professional critics of the Warren Commission appear to be prompted by political motives: Those on the left are anxious to prove Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy within the establishment; and those on the right are eager to prove the assassination was an act of "the international Communist conspiracy." Where would you place yourself on the political spectrum -- right, left of center?

GARRISON: That's a question I've asked myself frequently, especially since this investigation started and I found myself in an incongruous and disillusioning battle with agencies of my own Government. I can't just sit down and add up my political beliefs like a mathematical sum, but I think, in balance, I'd turn up somewhere around the middle. Over the years, I guess I've developed a somewhat conservative attitude -- in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to the thumbscrew-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right -- particularly in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the state and the individual's own responsibilities to humanity. I don't think I've ever tried to formulate this into a coherent political philosophy, but at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society. I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I've always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I'm concerned about all of this because it isn't a German phenomenon; it's a human phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow man. What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution. In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

[emphases added]

can we feed nine billion people after fossil fuels?

"Two views are vying for the allegiance of humankind. One is the status quo -- more industrialized growth, leading to a computerized world of 12 billion people surviving as a global ant heap.  The other is a transformed civilization based on wisdom, restraint and caring."
-- Jerry Brown, Earth Island Journal, Winter 1997

The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime, a hundred years. … So, I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves are toward depletion, we will indeed suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population … that the ecology of the earth will not support. No political program of birth control will avail. The people are already here. The journey back to non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty. We will discover the hard way that population hypergrowth was simply a side effect of the oil age. It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.
-- James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency (2005)

 

www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/02/nine-billion-li.html

Joe Bageant | February 8, 2008 | Category: Essays
Nine Billion Little Feet
On the Highway of the Damned, Are We There Yet, Pa?

Overshoot, crash and dieoff is a typical response in nature when species exhaust their carrying capacity

 

The Reindeer of St. Matthews Island: a parable for Earth Island

 

www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/st-matthew-island/
comic: The Reindeer of St. Matthews Island
by Stuart McMillen
February 2011

 

THE INTRODUCTION, INCREASE, AND CRASH OF REINDEER ON ST. MATTHEW ISLAND By David R. Klein www.dieoff.org/page80.htm Without doubt, our civilization is about to end.  We have a decade or two at most.  Don’t waste any tears on this false economy and false culture.  It was based upon a one-time glut of cheap energy and psychotic exploitation of our neighbors and it did more harm to us than good, socially and spiritually speaking.  We can only look to the future.  This particular correction will take everything we have and more just to survive.  It is a good time to believe in miracles.

www.oilcrash.com/articles/petrolm.htm

THE POST PETROLEUM PARADIGM — AND POPULATION
by Walter Youngquist

Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
Volume 20, Number 4, March 1999 © 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
Walter Youngquist, Consulting Geologist
Eugene, OR

The use of oil has changed world economies, social and political structures, and lifestyles beyond the effect of any other substance in such a short time. But oil supplies are limited. The peak of world oil production and the beginning of the irreversible decline of oil availability is clearly in sight. This paper examines the role of oil in two contexts: Its importance in countries almost entirely dependent on oil income, and the role of oil in world agricultural productivity. Possible alternatives to oil and its close associate, natural gas, are also examined. Countries almost solely dependent on oil income are chiefly those of the Persian Gulf region. The prosperity which oil has brought to these nations has resulted in a rapidly growing population which is not sustainable without oil revenues. World agriculture is now highly dependent on oil and natural gas for fertilizers and pesticides. Without these, agricultural productivity would markedly decline. As a base for the production of these materials, oil and natural gas are irreplaceable. Lifestyles and affluence in the post-petroleum paradigm will be quite different from today. World population will have to be reduced if it is to exist at any reasonable standard of living. At that time concern will be much more centered on obtaining basic resources, especially agricultural, by which to survive.

www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot:
Population, the Elephant in the Room

www.greatchange.org/footnotes-overshoot.html

These definitions are from Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William J. Catton, Jr.. Do not read this book if your dream in life is to sit on as much money as Billy Boy Gates #3.

Age of Exuberance: the centuries of growth and progress that followed the sudden enlargement of habitat available to Europeans as a result of voyages of discovery; a period of expansion when a species takes exuberant advantage of the abundant opportunities in a eminently suitable but previously inaccessible habitat. [Imagine a doe and a buck deer placed upon an island covered with forage and where there are no predators. They will happily be fat and multiply as fast as they can. That was what it was like when the Europeans came from over the sea to the new world, the Americas. Their superior weapons and method of social organization allowed them to largely ignore the fact that the Indians were already there.]

Ecological Exuberance: the lavish use of resources by members of a freely expanding population who are, at a given time, significantly fewer in number than the maximum permitted by the carrying capacity of their habitat. [The catfish are jumping, the corn is high; your daddy's rich and your mammy's good lookin'.]

Culture of Exuberance: the total complex of beliefs and practices associated with the opportunities for expansive life in the Age of Exuberance; a culture founded upon the myth of limitlessness. [The American Dream; there will always be more tomorrow of that which we now perceive as wealth than there is today, no matter how many more people there are.]

Myth of Limitlessness: the belief (more implicit than explicit, perhaps) that the world's resources are sufficient to support any conceivable human population engaged in any conceivable way of life for any conceivable duration; derivatively, the belief either that a given resource is inexhaustible or that substitutes can always be found. [The belief that there is enough material and energy for everybody on the Earth to have a car, and a house with three garages, that it's just a matter of working for it. That way, driving a guzzler has absolutely nothing to do with somebody else's poverty.]

Cornucopian Paradigm: a view of past and future human progress that disregards the carrying capacity concept, pays no attention to the finiteness of the world or to differences between takeover and drawdown, and accepts uncritically the myth of limitlessness. [This is the way TV urges most people to think, because the big boys are always after more money, no matter what. There will never be too many people or gasoline guzzlers, too much carbon dioxide, or enough stuff to spend money on.]

Cosmeticism: faith that relatively superficial adjustments in our activities will keep the New World new and will perpetuate the Age of Exuberance.[Thinking that nuclear and wind power, smaller cars, and better light bulbs will allow everything to just keep on truckin' the way it is.]

Ostrichism: obstinately persistent belief in the myth of limitlessness; the unrealistic supposition that nothing basic has changed; refusal to face facts. [Thinking that it doesn't matter if species are increasingly going extinct, the climate getting worse, the poor more desperate, the people more numerous, the moneyed increasingly blind and isolated swamped in their things and power —that is the way the world has always been and always shall be.]

Realism: recognition that the Age of Exuberance is over and that overpopulation and resource depletion must inexorably change human organization and human behavior. [Realizing that the only thing that is going to get us to the other shore beyond the darkness is a great change.]Paradigm: an underlying shared idea of the fundamental nature of whatever it is that a collectivity of minds seeks to understand: an idea that guides inquiry and thought by defining what seems real, how things are presumed to work, and how additional facts about this reality and these processes may presumably be obtained. [The habit of understanding the world that lies even deeper than our awareness. Now, it is belief in the fairness of money and its ability to lead us into the future.]

Ecological Paradigm: in general, a view of the web of life that recognizes a common chemical basis for all types of organisms (including man), emphasizes the dependence of all life processes upon flows of energy and exchanges of chemical substance between organism and environment, and expects living forms inevitably to have effects upon each other by these exchanges; in this book, rejection of the notion of human exemption for ecological principles and affirmation of the view that ecological concepts are essential for understanding human experience. [A way of understanding the world that is only in its beginning; in which we understand our actions upon the ecological systems to have global consequence and our destiny becomes that of a species dependent upon our relations with one another and the biosphere, rather than this current concept fostered by our economic system of isolated individuals, each getting his own.]

Human Exemptionalism: the notion that human beings are so fundamentally unlike other living creatures that principles of ecology (and perhaps many of the principles of other branches of biology, too) are inapplicable to us. [Thinking that the possession of consciousness somehow exempts us from the cycles and consequences of nature, such as being able to overpopulate our planet beyond its long term capacity to support us.]

Drawdown Method of Extending Carrying Capacity: an inherently temporary expedient by which life opportunities for a species are temporarily increased by extracting from the environment for use by that species some significant fraction of an accumulated resource that is not being replaced as fast as it is drawn down. [Creating the possibility for more people to be alive by exhausting resources faster than they are being replaced.]

Detritus Ecosystem: an ecosystem in which detritivores play a major part. As organic detritus accumulates in a given habitat, there is a temporary increase in carrying capacity for detritus consumers. Insofar as these are capable of increasing much faster that the detritus accumulates, however, their introduction to the community after detritus has already accumulated, or their release from some constraint that had earlier held back their use of the accumulation, tends to result in a cycle of bloom and crash. They irrupt and then as the detritus supply is exhausted, they die off. [Species can evolve that learn to feast off of accumulated dead remains, increase their exhaustion of that stored energy rapidly while it exists, run into the peak, and then die off.]

Detritovore: an organism that subsists by consuming detritus; by extension, any organism that uses the accumulated remains of long-dead organisms, including industrial human communities which are "detritovorous" insofar as they depend on massive consumption of the transformed organic remains from the Carboniferous period known as fossil fuels. [We are living off of the supply of dinosaur blood which can only run out because they are no longer walking the Earth, as well as off the other hydrocarbons, all of which are accumulations of dead organic matter.]

Takeover Method of Extending Carrying Capacity: increasing opportunities for one species by reducing opportunities for competing species. [Creating the possibility for more people to be alive by extinguishing other species.]

Carrying Capacity: the maximum population of a given species which a particular habitat can support indefinitely (under specified technology and organization in the case of the human species. [In the case at the beginning of the deer, if there was some way that they could learn to stop increasing their population at a number where the forage grew back as quickly as it was being eaten, then they would have a lifestyle in harmony with the environment, capable of continuing into the future without end. That number would be the carrying capacity of the island. For humans, the carrying capacity can be enlarged within limits with changes in technology and organization. What is important is to see the limits before one runs into them like a brick wall, and to realize which of the two ways of change best promises to fulfill any need to adapt —technology has been given the credit for everything, but it has been upon the back of the dinosaurs. If technology can no longer carry the ball then we are forced toward a different organization, and in all probability, a much smaller population.]

Phantom Carrying Capacity: illusory or extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a life form or a way of life; that portion of a population that cannot be permanently supported when temporarily available resources become unavailable. [The millions and millions of houses that have been built around the idea of always having automobiles, and which will be almost worthless without them.]

Redundancy Anxiety: a morbid apprehension arising from population pressure, based on the more or less conscious realization that if there is an excess of population in relation to carrying capacity, the population may include oneself, not just others. [Realizing that if there are too many people in the world, then one's own goose might be cooked.]

Carrying Capacity Deficit, Overshoot: the condition wherein the permanent ability of a given habitat to support a given form of life is less than the quantity of that form already in existence. [The deer multiply beyond the number where the forage can grow back. In their hunger they devour it down to the roots where it grows back even more slowly, and almost all the deer then die off. This happened at St. Matthew Island. It also happened with people at Easter Island.
The way to understand overshoot in terms of human being is to give up for a minute the fantasy that there is nothing that science cannot do. Look around at the degree to which our society is based upon the current supply of dinosaur blood, and imagine that supply declining every year after year from now until forever. Then, reflect upon the attitudes that so many people have and that are so encouraged by the profit seekers: "I've got the money to buy an SUV and to fill the gas tank, and if that's what I want to do that's what I'm going to do";"If they don't have enough money to have a life, it's because they are either lazy or their government is rotten";"If the world is going to run out of oil, then I had better hurry up and use what I can while it's still here";"We can't let jobs and growth be taken away to save some silly endangered specie";"It is God's Will that brings children into the world";"The End of the World is coming and we at least are going to go to heaven, so why worry?" Even if somehow the reality of dinosaur blood exhaustion does not leave us beyond the capacity of the Earth to sustain us, our attitudes surely will. This is overshoot.]

Diachronic Competition: a relationship between generations in which living organisms satisfy their wants at the expense of their descendants.[This is where people don't know what to do with themselves other than want what the TV pushes them toward, such as retiring on golf curses in the desert watered with drinking water. They have to enjoy now the money they've got, regardless of the trashed out world that they leave behind.]

 

DEMOCRACY CANNOT SURVIVE OVERPOPULATION Albert A. Bartlett

Professor Emeritus
Department of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder

ABSTRACT
This article addresses increasing concerns about the decline of democracy at all levels of government. It is shown that overpopulation and technology are major causes of this decline. Because it would be unwise to try to stop the development of technology, it is all the more urgent that we move quickly to address the problems of overpopulation.

INTRODUCTION
We sometimes read the angry statements of citizens who claim that democracy in the United States is being willfully destroyed by evil and sinister public servants. It is easy to share the frustration that these citizens feel, because our lives each year are becoming more regulated and more crowded, our individual freedoms are diminishing, and individually, we seem to be less and less able to affect the flow of the events that diminish our freedoms.

But is this loss of freedom the result of willful actions of our public servants? Probably not. But the loss of freedoms is due in part to negligence of public officials, and this negligence may or may not be willful.

One can see two main causes of this diminution of our freedoms: technology and overpopulation.

TECHNOLOGY AND REGULATION
Technology has given us amazing new ways to annoy each other. These technological "aids to annoyance" range from cans of spray paint, to automobiles, to electronic megaphones, to high speed jet aircraft. One person with a can of spray paint can vandalize buildings; an act that annoys a few people. One careless person driving a car at high speed on a freeway can trigger a chain-reaction collision that involves dozens of cars. Electronic megaphones allow one person to annoy hundreds of people, and a high speed jet aircraft in supersonic flight over the crowded eastern seaboard of the U.S. can generate a sonic boom that affects millions of people.

It is necessary to regulate each new technology that enhances our ability to annoy others. Since science and technology have been characterized as the "endless frontier," (Bush 1960) we can expect that we will see an endless progression of new regulations which become necessary to permit society to cope with the consequences of an unending series of annoying new technologies.

OVERPOPULATION AND THE LOSS OF DEMOCRACY
Let's look at the loss of democracy that results from overpopulation. Here is a portion of an interview that the prominent journalist Bill Moyers conducted with the eminent scientist and science writer, Isaac Asimov: (Moyers 1989)

Bill Moyers: "What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?"

Isaac Asimov: "It will be completely destroyed.
I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor:
If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, Then both have freedom of the bathroom.
You can go to the bathroom anytime you want,
Stay as long as you want, for whatever you need.
And everyone believes in Freedom of the Bathroom;
It should be right there in the Constitution.

But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, Then no matter how much every person
Believes in Freedom of the Bathroom, there's no such thing.
You have to set up times for each person,

You have to bang on the door, 'Aren't you through yet?' And so on."

Asimov continues with what could be one of the most profound observations of the 20th Century:

"In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation; Human dignity cannot survive [overpopulation]; Convenience and decency cannot survive [overpopulation]; As you put more and more people into the world,

The value of life not only declines, it disappears.
It doesn't matter if someone dies,
The more people there are, the less one individual matters."

EXAMPLES
Here are two examples to illustrate the point that Asimov makes so eloquently, namely that democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

Article I of the Constitution of the United States, (1790) describes the House of Representatives, and says that "The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand..." In the year 2000 there are over 600,000 persons per member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Thus in 210 years we have seen democracy at the national level being diluted by a factor of approximately 600,000 / 30,000 = 20. From these figures one can estimate (Bartlett 1993) that since the founding of the United States, the average rate of loss of democracy at the national level has been about 1.4% per year.

Indeed, in the year 2000, the population of the United States is growing at a rate of about 1% per year, but the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives remains constant at 435. Thus one can say that, as we start the 21st Century, the rate of loss of democracy at the national level in the United States is about 1 % per year.

A similar loss also occurs at the local level. In 1950, the population of Boulder, Colorado was approximately 20,000. In the year 2000 the population of Boulder is approximately100,000. Throughout this period from 1950 to 2000, the

size of the elected Boulder City Council has remained constant at 9 persons. So in 50 years, democracy in Boulder has been diluted by about a factor of five. This corresponds to an annual loss of democracy at the local level of approximately 3.2 % per year averaged over the last 50 years. (Bartlett 1993)

We can generalize and state a fundamental law:
In a political subdivision that is governed by an elected representative body of unchanging size, the rate of decline of democracy is approximately equal to the rate of growth of the population of the subdivision.

CAN YOU SPEAK TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES?
The ideal democracy is perhaps the New England Town Meeting, where every citizen is expected to participate in the debates and decisions. As towns become larger, elected representatives carry out many of the functions of governance, and citizens can usually address the governing body. As the towns become cities, citizens who want to address the governing body must sign up in advance of the meeting and then confine their comments to a three-minute period whose end is signaled by a loud buzzer or a flashing light. For the largest domestic governing body, the U.S. Congress, citizens can testify before a committee if they are invited, and addressing the whole Congress is an honor reserved for a few visiting heads of state. At the global level, a powerful governing organization such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), is so large and so remote that ordinary citizens have no input. The objectionable actions of the WTO and the complete absence of participatory democracy in the WTO led to the recent "Battle of Seattle" in early December 1999.

POPULATION GROWTH AND REGULATIONS
The actions of local public bodies to establish zoning and land-use regulations such as urban growth boundaries, are driven by population growth, yet these actions, which are made necessary by population growth, are clear infringements of individual freedoms. People, angered by these losses of freedoms, advocate passage of "Takings Laws" in an attempt to stem the loss of freedoms, but unfortunately neither the takings laws nor their advocates make any recognition of the fact that it is population growth which triggers the actions that take away our treasured freedoms. Ironically, the persons who complain most loudly about these losses of freedom are often those who advocate continued population growth for the self-serving reason that they profit personally from it. People's eagerness to profit from population growth is beautifully explained in Garrett Hardin's essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." (Hardin 1968)

LOSS OF FREEDOM BY BOTH TECHNOLOGY AND POPULATION GROWTH
The loss of freedom that follows gun control is a hotly debated issue. We can see that both technology and population growth play roles in this loss of freedom.

Two hundred years ago one could have had an artillery piece at the site that is now downtown Boulder, Colorado, and one could have fired it in any direction at any time as often as one wished. The range of the gun was so small, the time required to reload it was so long, and the population density here was then so low, that there was little chance that random repeated firings of the gun in any direction would hurt anyone.

But now technology has given us guns with greater range, which can be reloaded and refired automatically in a fraction of a second. The population density in Boulder is now so high that there are always lots of people within the range of a gun. Consequently we have to have regulations to the effect that it is illegal for individuals to fire artillery in Boulder. Another freedom has fallen victim to population growth and to advances in technology.

Because of the present high population density, the gun situation is one where people lose freedoms no matter what happens in terms of gun control. If guns are controlled, those who oppose control have lost their freedom to have unrestricted access to artillery. If guns are not controlled, those who wish to live safely in a non-violent society have lost this freedom.

The total cost of the present lack of gun control is enormous. The headline said, "America 'in trouble' Violence Panel Warns." (Lichtblau 1999) The article said that a new report:
"...issued by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation... said violence is much more prevalent today than 30 years ago, and the odds of dying in a violent crime remain much higher in the United States than in almost any other industrialized nation. In part, the report suggested, this is because the number of firearms has doubled to nearly 200 million - many of them high-powered easily concealed models 'with no other logical function than to kill humans.'"

Bearing on Asimov's observation that:
"... human dignity cannot survive overpopulation; convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation..."

is the statement in the report:
"Prisons have become our nation's substitute for effective policies on crime, drugs, mental illness, housing, poverty, and employment of the hardest to employ."

OVERPOPULATION AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
The widespread concern about campaign finance reform is a reaction to the perceived decline of democracy, in which power is shifted from the many to the powerful few who use their wealth to buy influence in the halls of our "democratic" government. One of the reasons for the increased role of money in politics is the dilution of democracy which results from overpopulation. As has been shown, overpopulation causes a decline in the role of the individual in participatory democracy. The consequent partial political vacuum leaves the way open for an increase in the role of dollars in democracy. Politicians like to talk to people, but because of overpopulation, they can't talk to everyone. So they talk to a few, a self-selecting small group of wealthy and influential people. Because of this dilution, the old statement, "One person, one vote," is now being replaced by "One dollar, one vote."

DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY BY THE PRIVATE SECTOR
Powerful forces in the private sector in our communities use population growth as an excuse to find more effective ways to destroy our democracy. In an article, "Western Cities Grapple with Rapid Growth," (Parker 1999) we read that "In Scenic Colorado Springs, Groups Battle Builders to Preserve Lifestyle." The story tells how the real estate developers are battling "community groups [that are] concerned about preserving the natural beauty of their surroundings." The second paragraph of the story in the Wall Street Journal quotes one of the Colorado Springs builders as follows:
"...local officials have allowed community groups to hijack the development process. Neighborhood groups 'shouldn't be in control of what happens,' he says. 'You can't be an elected official and let people dictate the law of the land.'" Wealthy influential developers are good at getting pretty much what they want from public officials, so when citizens organize to protect themselves from the rapid degradation of the environment that is the consequence of the continued population growth and development, it is said that the citizens are "hijacking" the development process. In Colorado Springs, the pressure for continued population growth is so intense that a local leader in the private sector is saying that we can no longer "let people dictate the law of the land."

LIBERALS vs. CONSERVATIVES
The liberal philosophy of government suggests that the government, under the guidance of "experts," should do more to control the flow of events, while the conservative philosophy suggests that government should do less. Although the

person who said it would probably claim to be a conservative, the suggestion that we can't "let people dictate the law of the land" presents a profoundly liberal point of view, both from the advocacy of governance by an elite few, but also as an implied expression of the belief that population growth is no problem, that resources are so enormous that there is no need to reduce consumption or to conserve. In contrast, true conservatives (who are usually called liberals) worry about the effects of population growth, they practice conservation, and they advocate a reduction of our consumption of resources so that some resources are saved for our children and grandchildren.

It should not be surprising that the traditional political labels of "liberal" and "conservative" are reversed in a world where powerful people seem to be happy with continued population growth and the resulting overpopulation.

An exception to this reversal of labels is Fred C. Ikle, who is a bona fide political conservative, having served as an undersecretary in the Reagan administration. Ikle argues (Ikle 1994) that "It is the unintended consequences that these conservatives ignore [when they argue for more population growth]," and he points out that more growth results in more government and more governmental regulations. Writing as a political conservative, Ikle summarizes his arguments with these words:

"Population growth is the paramount, the most elemental anti-conservative force. It unleashes a flood of social change that will cascade onto every level of society. It creates irresistible pressures for farflung, and usually irreversible government interventions, allegedly to cope with all the social changes that rapid population growth has unleashed. It thus helps the radical left to garner political support for its social engineering schemes. It dilutes the reach of religious institutions that seek to preserve society's moral fiber. It empowers the unprincipled and the rootless to tear down vastly more civilizing tradition and riches of culture than they will ever create."

POPULATION GROWTH AND TECHNOLOGY
The main things that are robbing us of our democratic freedoms are continued population growth and the advancement of technology. The advance of technology has redeeming features: it contributes to higher quality of life for those who are able to afford the latest technological devices. In contrast, population growth has no redeeming features, yet, as our political leaders struggle to find solutions to the problems caused by population growth, they neglect to identify population growth as the cause of the problems. Even more distressing is the fact that the watchdogs of the Free Press seem never to speak out about this neglect.

The lack of redeeming features in population growth is illustrated by the following challenge: (Bartlett 1997)

Can you think of any problem
On any scale, from microscopic to global,
Whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way,
Aided, assisted, or advanced,
By having larger populations at the local, state, national, or global levels?

Even more important, population growth is not sustainable, (Bartlett 1994) yet the sustainability gurus provide glib recipes for sustainability that talk about everything except overpopulation.

CONCLUSION
It is a shame that those who are most vocal about their loss of freedom almost invariably blame the loss on alleged conspiracies of persons in government. Our loss of freedoms are probably not the result of actions of evil people who are plotting the demise of democracy, but rather are due to negligent people in government (and it's nearly all of them) who willfully ignore the problem of overpopulation and the destructive consequences of this negligence. When people

are denied their rights to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, they are predictably unpredictable, and history is full of examples of violence that has been precipitated by those who feel they have been disenfranchised. Such are some of the costs of overpopulation.

Thus, several lines of evidence point to population growth as being a major causal factor in the decline of democracy in the United States, yet, as Garrett Hardin observes: (Hardin 1993)
"No one ever blames it on overpopulation."

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I no longer remember who it was that called my attention to Bill Moyers' interview with Isaac Asimov, but I am deeply grateful for his calling this important text to my attention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartlett, A.A., 1993: For a tutorial on the calculation of these average growth rates, see: A.A. Bartlett, "The Arithmetic of Growth, Methods of Calculation"
Population & Environment, Vol. 14, March 1993, Pgs. 359-387

Bartlett, A.A., 1994 "Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth and the Environment" Population & Environment, Vol. 16, No. 1, September 1994, Pgs. 5-35
Reprinted in:
Renewable Resources Journal, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 1997-1998, Pgs. 6-23

Bartlett, A.A., 1997, "Is There a Population Problem?" Wild Earth, Vol. 7, No. 3, Fall 1997, Pgs. 88-90

Bush, Vannevar, 1960, "Science, the Endless Frontier: A Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research"

United States: Office of Scientific Research and Development

Hardin, Garrett, 1968, "The Tragedy of the Commons" Science, Vol. 162, Pages 1243-1248

Hardin, Garrett, 1993, "Living Within Limits", Oxford University Press
Much of this book is devoted to documenting the lengths to which people go to deny that overpopulation is a

problem.

Ikle, Fred Charles, 1994, "Our Perpetual Growth Utopia,"
National Review, (Cover Story) Vol. 46, March 7, 1994, Pages 36-44 Reprinted in Focus, (Carrying Capacity Network, Washington, D.C.) Vol. 4, No. 2, 1994, Pages 13-17

Lichtblau, Eric, "America 'In Trouble' Violence Panel Warns"
Denver Post, December 6, 1999, Page 1A
The byline identified the author as writing for the Los Angeles Times

Moyers, Bill, 1989: "A World of Ideas" Doubleday, New York City 1989, Page 276

Parker, V.L. 1989, "Western Cities Grapple With Rapid Growth" Wall Street Journal, September 22, 1999, Page B14