‘We have met the enemy and he is us’
Walt Kelly, 1970
‘The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is,
in my opinion, the real source of the evil’
Albert Einstein
The signs of planetary reaction to human interference are increasing inexorably and we are gradually waking up to the reality of what lies ahead with the appearance of more groups such as Extinction Rebellion. This chapter looks at our impacts - everything we are doing to destroy our planet is listed below. If you don’t want reminding of these horrors, skip this Chapter. If you want the facts, read on.
Life, the Universe and Everything
No-one ever dies of overpopulation, but we may start dying from the effects of overpopulation. How is it possible that an intelligent species has knowingly allowed itself to consume and reproduce to excess and to ruin our own planet? How can we put a man on the Moon and yet allow ourselves to destroy our own environment? The Population Bomb, as predicted by Paul Ehrlich, is beginning to explode, but not in the way he predicted – it’s far worse than that.
We are used to seeing the world as it is today, in what we perceive to be the norm. In reality, it is far from the norm, with unnatural manmade constructions everywhere. We are mining and building our way to oblivion, believing we are making a better world. But if you look at a busy city and realise what is happening as you watch the thousands of cars streaming by, each one polluting the air as it goes, then multiply this hundreds of thousands of times across the globe, you can see how it can’t continue and how far out of touch with the natural world we are. We need to realise we are not ‘stuck in a traffic’, we are are traffic. Building ever more roads to fight congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity.
We have been too inventive for our own good. The inventiveness that has enabled us to achieve the luxury and waste of the modern world is the same force that is tipping us over the edge. Each one of us has a tiny individual impact, but when the billions of us are added together the impacts become planet-altering.
For most people, it is a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The changes are invisible, slow and gradual and so just aren’t noticed. For many of us, life has never been so good: more possessions, cheap and plentiful clothes, healthcare and food. Insulated from the outside world in a seemingly stable bubble, many people have no idea of the overuse of resources and the rapidly diminishing natural world. Unless harsh truths are placed directly in front of us and affect us, we aren’t usually aware of their existence. If everyone could see the truth, we would be acting very differently.
The planet we live on is changing fundamentally. Today’s complex system of global human processes means almost everywhere is experiencing some of the impacts they create. The impacts are happening in parallel. News from around the world every day tells us of the latest planetary breakdown event. The effects of overpopulation are entering into every aspect of our lives, with the last 50 years seeing the world change fundamentally. Today a billion of us are each living with the luxuries only royalty of the past would have had. We are causing a breakdown of the natural order.
We know that we are in deep trouble, but we don’t want to look at the approaching tsunami because we’ve never had it so good. It is always someone else’s problem, or something that can wait while there are more immediate things to deal with. Telling people that the party is over and that we have to change doesn’t work: all reason and pleas are ignored or put to the bottom of the list. When everything appears so stable and working so well for those at the top, how can we be made aware that there really is a problem without waiting until the effects become too severe to ignore?
It is possible that the Earth’s resources could cope with 50 billion people if we all consumed a fraction of today’s average. But in the 21st century, we have been encouraged to overconsume and the system relies on our continued and increased consumption. We talk half-heartedly about consuming less, while at the same time being encouraged to consume more in the interests of boosting the economy. While advertising and free-market forces continue unrestrained, our consumption will inevitably continue to increase.
The Catalyst of Capitalism
The catalyst of capitalism is a massive force pushing the increases in consumption and population. It has encouraged us to consume more in a never-ending spiral of greed and gluttony. The markets rely on us consuming and spending as much as possible to keep the wheels of the economy turning. Every politician, economist and businessperson will tell you that growth and profit are the only things that matter.
The current system encourages us to better our lives and consume more, but it has been too successful for its own good, with the by-product of immense collateral damage to the environment. The free-market capitalist cat is out of the bag and can’t be put back in; it is so deeply ingrained that it is almost impossible to change. The juggernaut is charging down the road, yet the whole system is heading for an immense crash unless we can somehow steer ourselves onto a sustainable path.
There is widespread acceptance in the belief that economic growth must be pursued and is the answer to all our problems. But the natural world doesn’t listen to economists who say that the economy must grow forever. Eternal growth is the ideology of a cancer cell, a delusion that leads to instability. Naomi Klein’s 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, highlights the relationship between runaway global capitalism and unrelenting climate breakdown. She emphasises that one of the species that may be headed for elimination from the planet is us: Homo sapiens. After discussing the forecast of rapid climate breakdown due to unrestrained, neoliberal, global, industrial expansion and consumption, she says:
‘These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were heading toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilization in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already doing, which is what the climate scientists have been telling us for years.’
Overconsumption
As consumption increases, natural resources decrease. Oil and water are the two headline resources, but other essential resources are also disappearing rapidly. As population continues to increase, so does per capita consumption, with the rapidly growing consumer class all wanting modern conveniences. The visible excesses of consumption are becoming extreme in their extravagance, with the increasing number of super-rich spending millions on yachts, planes and homes.
Fossil Fuels
Oil is the drug of the industrial age that has been the catalyst behind the impacts of consumption and population. Without oil we could never have erupted as we have. The black gold has powered, and continues to power, our simultaneous expansion and destruction. We rely on oil and will continue to do so until renewable energy finally catches up in the coming decades. But the damage is being done now. We are still on the high. The immense hangover we will have to face will take centuries, if not millennia, to recover from. We will (hopefully) come out the other side and look back at our foolish ways, but with new respect for the world.
The number of oil-drinking and carbon-polluting vehicles in the world has gone from zero to more than a billion in little more than a century – and the number continues to grow as fast as we can produce them. At the same time, the law of diminishing returns for oil has changed. In 1900, it took one unit of energy to produce 100 units of oil energy. Now, with tar sands, for example, it takes 25 units of energy for every 100 units produced: a 25-fold increase in production costs.
Food
When you look at a field of barley in the summer, you’re not looking at a wonderful natural scene; you’re looking at an intense, artificially fertilised monoculture where there was once natural woodland and wildlife.
10,000 years ago, humans made up 1 per cent of the weight of vertebrate land animals: the rest were all wild. Today, wild animals make up just 1 per cent. The other 99 per cent is humans, our farmed animals and our pets. That statistic alone says everything about our overshoot.
Walt Kelly, 1970
‘The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is,
in my opinion, the real source of the evil’
Albert Einstein
The signs of planetary reaction to human interference are increasing inexorably and we are gradually waking up to the reality of what lies ahead with the appearance of more groups such as Extinction Rebellion. This chapter looks at our impacts - everything we are doing to destroy our planet is listed below. If you don’t want reminding of these horrors, skip this Chapter. If you want the facts, read on.
Life, the Universe and Everything
No-one ever dies of overpopulation, but we may start dying from the effects of overpopulation. How is it possible that an intelligent species has knowingly allowed itself to consume and reproduce to excess and to ruin our own planet? How can we put a man on the Moon and yet allow ourselves to destroy our own environment? The Population Bomb, as predicted by Paul Ehrlich, is beginning to explode, but not in the way he predicted – it’s far worse than that.
We are used to seeing the world as it is today, in what we perceive to be the norm. In reality, it is far from the norm, with unnatural manmade constructions everywhere. We are mining and building our way to oblivion, believing we are making a better world. But if you look at a busy city and realise what is happening as you watch the thousands of cars streaming by, each one polluting the air as it goes, then multiply this hundreds of thousands of times across the globe, you can see how it can’t continue and how far out of touch with the natural world we are. We need to realise we are not ‘stuck in a traffic’, we are are traffic. Building ever more roads to fight congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity.
We have been too inventive for our own good. The inventiveness that has enabled us to achieve the luxury and waste of the modern world is the same force that is tipping us over the edge. Each one of us has a tiny individual impact, but when the billions of us are added together the impacts become planet-altering.
For most people, it is a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The changes are invisible, slow and gradual and so just aren’t noticed. For many of us, life has never been so good: more possessions, cheap and plentiful clothes, healthcare and food. Insulated from the outside world in a seemingly stable bubble, many people have no idea of the overuse of resources and the rapidly diminishing natural world. Unless harsh truths are placed directly in front of us and affect us, we aren’t usually aware of their existence. If everyone could see the truth, we would be acting very differently.
The planet we live on is changing fundamentally. Today’s complex system of global human processes means almost everywhere is experiencing some of the impacts they create. The impacts are happening in parallel. News from around the world every day tells us of the latest planetary breakdown event. The effects of overpopulation are entering into every aspect of our lives, with the last 50 years seeing the world change fundamentally. Today a billion of us are each living with the luxuries only royalty of the past would have had. We are causing a breakdown of the natural order.
We know that we are in deep trouble, but we don’t want to look at the approaching tsunami because we’ve never had it so good. It is always someone else’s problem, or something that can wait while there are more immediate things to deal with. Telling people that the party is over and that we have to change doesn’t work: all reason and pleas are ignored or put to the bottom of the list. When everything appears so stable and working so well for those at the top, how can we be made aware that there really is a problem without waiting until the effects become too severe to ignore?
It is possible that the Earth’s resources could cope with 50 billion people if we all consumed a fraction of today’s average. But in the 21st century, we have been encouraged to overconsume and the system relies on our continued and increased consumption. We talk half-heartedly about consuming less, while at the same time being encouraged to consume more in the interests of boosting the economy. While advertising and free-market forces continue unrestrained, our consumption will inevitably continue to increase.
The Catalyst of Capitalism
The catalyst of capitalism is a massive force pushing the increases in consumption and population. It has encouraged us to consume more in a never-ending spiral of greed and gluttony. The markets rely on us consuming and spending as much as possible to keep the wheels of the economy turning. Every politician, economist and businessperson will tell you that growth and profit are the only things that matter.
The current system encourages us to better our lives and consume more, but it has been too successful for its own good, with the by-product of immense collateral damage to the environment. The free-market capitalist cat is out of the bag and can’t be put back in; it is so deeply ingrained that it is almost impossible to change. The juggernaut is charging down the road, yet the whole system is heading for an immense crash unless we can somehow steer ourselves onto a sustainable path.
There is widespread acceptance in the belief that economic growth must be pursued and is the answer to all our problems. But the natural world doesn’t listen to economists who say that the economy must grow forever. Eternal growth is the ideology of a cancer cell, a delusion that leads to instability. Naomi Klein’s 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, highlights the relationship between runaway global capitalism and unrelenting climate breakdown. She emphasises that one of the species that may be headed for elimination from the planet is us: Homo sapiens. After discussing the forecast of rapid climate breakdown due to unrestrained, neoliberal, global, industrial expansion and consumption, she says:
‘These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were heading toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilization in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already doing, which is what the climate scientists have been telling us for years.’
Overconsumption
As consumption increases, natural resources decrease. Oil and water are the two headline resources, but other essential resources are also disappearing rapidly. As population continues to increase, so does per capita consumption, with the rapidly growing consumer class all wanting modern conveniences. The visible excesses of consumption are becoming extreme in their extravagance, with the increasing number of super-rich spending millions on yachts, planes and homes.
Fossil Fuels
Oil is the drug of the industrial age that has been the catalyst behind the impacts of consumption and population. Without oil we could never have erupted as we have. The black gold has powered, and continues to power, our simultaneous expansion and destruction. We rely on oil and will continue to do so until renewable energy finally catches up in the coming decades. But the damage is being done now. We are still on the high. The immense hangover we will have to face will take centuries, if not millennia, to recover from. We will (hopefully) come out the other side and look back at our foolish ways, but with new respect for the world.
The number of oil-drinking and carbon-polluting vehicles in the world has gone from zero to more than a billion in little more than a century – and the number continues to grow as fast as we can produce them. At the same time, the law of diminishing returns for oil has changed. In 1900, it took one unit of energy to produce 100 units of oil energy. Now, with tar sands, for example, it takes 25 units of energy for every 100 units produced: a 25-fold increase in production costs.
Food
When you look at a field of barley in the summer, you’re not looking at a wonderful natural scene; you’re looking at an intense, artificially fertilised monoculture where there was once natural woodland and wildlife.
10,000 years ago, humans made up 1 per cent of the weight of vertebrate land animals: the rest were all wild. Today, wild animals make up just 1 per cent. The other 99 per cent is humans, our farmed animals and our pets. That statistic alone says everything about our overshoot.
Fig 9. Change in weight of vertebrate land animals from 10,000 years ago to today. (Source: Optimum Population Trust, Smil 2011)
Western food import and export has become a monster of transport, supply and exchange of goods, with centralised distribution centres and supermarkets that have extended their ranges of goods massively over the last few decades. Refrigerated lorries, ships and planes routinely transport goods from one part of the world to another, making previously out-of-season goods available all year round. This creates an unnatural state, giving parts of the world food where naturally there would be none, and putting whole countries at risk of famine should situations change. This system produces between a fifth and a third of the UK’s greenhouse gases. Food distribution, on which we all rely, is on a perpetual knife edge with an ultra-efficient turnaround and reliance on an ‘on-demand’ nature brought about by supermarket competition. Where are the food reserves? What are the plans for crop failures or other disruptions to the chain? The reality is that there aren’t any, or at least none that would cope if things changed abruptly.
Fish
For our entire history until the last two centuries, fish has been an inexhaustible supply of food, but fish stocks have declined by over 50 per cent since 1970 (WWF, 2015). Today we catch a trillion fish per year, or over 90 million tons. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says that 90 per cent of the world’s stocks are now fully or overfished, with a 17 per cent increase in production forecast by 2025. Of the world’s top 30 fish-consuming nations, 22 were in the UN’s ‘low income, food deficit’ category, with 12 per cent of the world’s population relying directly or indirectly on the fisheries industry. Shark numbers have declined by 80 per cent, and a third of shark species are at risk of extinction. The top marine predator isn’t the shark – it’s humans.
Wild capture of fish has stabilised at around 90 million tonnes annually. This stabilisation isn’t because we are using our resources better; it is because there are fewer fish left in the sea than at any time in history and we have reached the maximum available. Aquaculture has taken the place of wild capture as we have begun to farm the oceans. In only 30 years we have turned fish farming into a massive intensive farming industry. The rise of farmed Scottish salmon has switched salmon from an expensive prized rarity of the recent past into the cheap factory-farmed chicken of the sea of today.
Aquaculture causes problems of its own: fish farms are highly polluting. They produce a toxic run-off of slurry that fertilises algae in the oceans, reducing the oxygen available to other species and creating dead zones. Scotland’s salmon-farming industry produces the same amount of nitrogen waste as the untreated sewage of over three million people.
Our actions produce unexpected results - jellyfish numbers are rising sharply as nature fills the gaps left by ecosystem disruption. Jellyfish used to be eaten by their natural predators, which we have overfished – tuna, sharks, swordfish and turtles. Without these to keep their numbers down, jellyfish multiply rapidly – as Mediterranean holiday-makers are finding out, with swarms of jellyfish appearing overnight on beaches. In the 18th and 19th centuries, turtle soup was a delicacy, but today turtles are an endangered species and there aren’t enough to keep the jellyfish in check.
Water
The essential liquid for our existence is taken for granted. It is everywhere and abundant, the most precious resource on which all life depends. Unlike oil, water is something we can’t do without. We have exploited sources of water everywhere we can find them. We are using it inefficiently and unsustainably and it is becoming scarcer as our population grows. As we use more water, less is remaining for nature. We trap it, divert it, pollute it and degrade it.
The planet is in the midst of what the United Nations calls a ‘global water crisis’. Freshwater is the most fundamental and finite resource. It is essential to our existence and has no substitute, yet we are consuming fresh water ten times faster than it is being replenished in regions of northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, and the United States. According to the World Resources Institute, freshwater ecosystems – the diverse communities found in lakes, rivers and wetlands – may be the most endangered of all. The demand for fresh water is predicted to increase six-fold in the next 70 years. By 2050, half of the world’s population will be living without direct access to fresh water (UNFPA State of the World Population).
A report produced by more than two dozen UN bodies states that, ‘By 2030, nearly half of the world's people will be living in areas of acute water shortage.’ (UNESCO, 2009) More than four billion people will live in regions short of water by 2050. Ancient aquifers are depleting, while other water sources are being polluted. Water is being exploited to extremes and the overshoot cannot continue.
‘Hidden water’ is water used to manufacture goods and produce food that we don’t see and yet use huge amounts of water. It takes 1,700 litres of water to produce a 100-gram bar of chocolate. One cup of coffee requires 140 litres. A T-shirt uses 2,700 litres. It takes 4 litres of water to produce one litre of bottled water. The US produced 50 billion plastic water bottles in 2016. In 2008, the Stockholm International Water Institute calculated that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet agricultural, industrial and environmental needs. One person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water.
Such is the scale of water scarcity that Dubai has proposed towing icebergs from the Indian Ocean to the Gulf. Each iceberg would hold around 20 billion gallons of fresh water that could be harvested without costly desalination. In 2018, Cape Town was the first large modern city to experience a true water scarcity crisis: most of the city’s taps were turned off for long periods to conserve what was left in its depleted aquifers as it hoped for rain.
Western food import and export has become a monster of transport, supply and exchange of goods, with centralised distribution centres and supermarkets that have extended their ranges of goods massively over the last few decades. Refrigerated lorries, ships and planes routinely transport goods from one part of the world to another, making previously out-of-season goods available all year round. This creates an unnatural state, giving parts of the world food where naturally there would be none, and putting whole countries at risk of famine should situations change. This system produces between a fifth and a third of the UK’s greenhouse gases. Food distribution, on which we all rely, is on a perpetual knife edge with an ultra-efficient turnaround and reliance on an ‘on-demand’ nature brought about by supermarket competition. Where are the food reserves? What are the plans for crop failures or other disruptions to the chain? The reality is that there aren’t any, or at least none that would cope if things changed abruptly.
Fish
For our entire history until the last two centuries, fish has been an inexhaustible supply of food, but fish stocks have declined by over 50 per cent since 1970 (WWF, 2015). Today we catch a trillion fish per year, or over 90 million tons. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says that 90 per cent of the world’s stocks are now fully or overfished, with a 17 per cent increase in production forecast by 2025. Of the world’s top 30 fish-consuming nations, 22 were in the UN’s ‘low income, food deficit’ category, with 12 per cent of the world’s population relying directly or indirectly on the fisheries industry. Shark numbers have declined by 80 per cent, and a third of shark species are at risk of extinction. The top marine predator isn’t the shark – it’s humans.
Wild capture of fish has stabilised at around 90 million tonnes annually. This stabilisation isn’t because we are using our resources better; it is because there are fewer fish left in the sea than at any time in history and we have reached the maximum available. Aquaculture has taken the place of wild capture as we have begun to farm the oceans. In only 30 years we have turned fish farming into a massive intensive farming industry. The rise of farmed Scottish salmon has switched salmon from an expensive prized rarity of the recent past into the cheap factory-farmed chicken of the sea of today.
Aquaculture causes problems of its own: fish farms are highly polluting. They produce a toxic run-off of slurry that fertilises algae in the oceans, reducing the oxygen available to other species and creating dead zones. Scotland’s salmon-farming industry produces the same amount of nitrogen waste as the untreated sewage of over three million people.
Our actions produce unexpected results - jellyfish numbers are rising sharply as nature fills the gaps left by ecosystem disruption. Jellyfish used to be eaten by their natural predators, which we have overfished – tuna, sharks, swordfish and turtles. Without these to keep their numbers down, jellyfish multiply rapidly – as Mediterranean holiday-makers are finding out, with swarms of jellyfish appearing overnight on beaches. In the 18th and 19th centuries, turtle soup was a delicacy, but today turtles are an endangered species and there aren’t enough to keep the jellyfish in check.
Water
The essential liquid for our existence is taken for granted. It is everywhere and abundant, the most precious resource on which all life depends. Unlike oil, water is something we can’t do without. We have exploited sources of water everywhere we can find them. We are using it inefficiently and unsustainably and it is becoming scarcer as our population grows. As we use more water, less is remaining for nature. We trap it, divert it, pollute it and degrade it.
The planet is in the midst of what the United Nations calls a ‘global water crisis’. Freshwater is the most fundamental and finite resource. It is essential to our existence and has no substitute, yet we are consuming fresh water ten times faster than it is being replenished in regions of northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, and the United States. According to the World Resources Institute, freshwater ecosystems – the diverse communities found in lakes, rivers and wetlands – may be the most endangered of all. The demand for fresh water is predicted to increase six-fold in the next 70 years. By 2050, half of the world’s population will be living without direct access to fresh water (UNFPA State of the World Population).
A report produced by more than two dozen UN bodies states that, ‘By 2030, nearly half of the world's people will be living in areas of acute water shortage.’ (UNESCO, 2009) More than four billion people will live in regions short of water by 2050. Ancient aquifers are depleting, while other water sources are being polluted. Water is being exploited to extremes and the overshoot cannot continue.
‘Hidden water’ is water used to manufacture goods and produce food that we don’t see and yet use huge amounts of water. It takes 1,700 litres of water to produce a 100-gram bar of chocolate. One cup of coffee requires 140 litres. A T-shirt uses 2,700 litres. It takes 4 litres of water to produce one litre of bottled water. The US produced 50 billion plastic water bottles in 2016. In 2008, the Stockholm International Water Institute calculated that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet agricultural, industrial and environmental needs. One person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water.
Such is the scale of water scarcity that Dubai has proposed towing icebergs from the Indian Ocean to the Gulf. Each iceberg would hold around 20 billion gallons of fresh water that could be harvested without costly desalination. In 2018, Cape Town was the first large modern city to experience a true water scarcity crisis: most of the city’s taps were turned off for long periods to conserve what was left in its depleted aquifers as it hoped for rain.
Fig 10. Freshwater stress. (Source: United Nations Environmental Programme)
Only 2.5 per cent of the world’s water is freshwater. 70 per cent of this freshwater is made up of glaciers and ice caps; the remaining 30 per cent is land surface water, such as rivers, lakes, ponds and groundwater. Most of the freshwater resources are either unreachable or too polluted, leaving less than 1 per cent of the world’s freshwater, or about 0.003 per cent of all water on Earth, readily accessible for direct human use. According to the Global Outlook for Water Resources to the Year 2025, it is estimated that, by 2025, more than half of the world’s population will be facing water-based vulnerability, and human demand for water will account for 70 per cent of all available freshwater.
Land
‘Destroying a rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal’
EO Wilson
Forests are the lungs of the planet. A mature tree is priceless but not valued. A tree can live for hundreds of years and take decades to mature, and yet it can be cut down in minutes. Once it has been cut down, it’s gone forever.
Agriculture occupies about one-third of Earth’s total land area and accounts for 70 per cent of all freshwater use. The UN calls the global food crisis a ‘silent tsunami’. Food is a basic essential, taken for granted by most people as something that magically appears in the supermarket. The more of us there are, the more food we need – but as our population increases, so does land degradation. Over half of the land used for agriculture is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation. Drought and desertification cause 12 million hectares to be lost each year, where 20 million tons of grain could have been grown. (United Nations, 2015)
Desertification occurs when trees and bushes are stripped away for fuel wood and timber, or to clear land for cultivation. 25 billion tons of topsoil are lost per year due to industrial agricultural practices. In the past 40 years, the Earth has lost a third of its arable land to erosion and degradation. As overshoot continues, so does deforestation. The Sahara was once forested; now it is a manmade desert that is still expanding.
Geomorphologist David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and 2008 recipient of a MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship, calculates that human activities are eroding topsoil ten times faster than it can be replenished: ‘Just when we need more soil to feed the 10 billion people of the future’, he says, ‘we'll actually have less – only a quarter of an acre of cropland per person in 2050, versus the half-acre we use today on the most efficient farms’. In ‘The End of Plenty’, National Geographic warns that even a new green revolution of ‘synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds’ may fail.
Only 2.5 per cent of the world’s water is freshwater. 70 per cent of this freshwater is made up of glaciers and ice caps; the remaining 30 per cent is land surface water, such as rivers, lakes, ponds and groundwater. Most of the freshwater resources are either unreachable or too polluted, leaving less than 1 per cent of the world’s freshwater, or about 0.003 per cent of all water on Earth, readily accessible for direct human use. According to the Global Outlook for Water Resources to the Year 2025, it is estimated that, by 2025, more than half of the world’s population will be facing water-based vulnerability, and human demand for water will account for 70 per cent of all available freshwater.
Land
‘Destroying a rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal’
EO Wilson
Forests are the lungs of the planet. A mature tree is priceless but not valued. A tree can live for hundreds of years and take decades to mature, and yet it can be cut down in minutes. Once it has been cut down, it’s gone forever.
Agriculture occupies about one-third of Earth’s total land area and accounts for 70 per cent of all freshwater use. The UN calls the global food crisis a ‘silent tsunami’. Food is a basic essential, taken for granted by most people as something that magically appears in the supermarket. The more of us there are, the more food we need – but as our population increases, so does land degradation. Over half of the land used for agriculture is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation. Drought and desertification cause 12 million hectares to be lost each year, where 20 million tons of grain could have been grown. (United Nations, 2015)
Desertification occurs when trees and bushes are stripped away for fuel wood and timber, or to clear land for cultivation. 25 billion tons of topsoil are lost per year due to industrial agricultural practices. In the past 40 years, the Earth has lost a third of its arable land to erosion and degradation. As overshoot continues, so does deforestation. The Sahara was once forested; now it is a manmade desert that is still expanding.
Geomorphologist David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and 2008 recipient of a MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship, calculates that human activities are eroding topsoil ten times faster than it can be replenished: ‘Just when we need more soil to feed the 10 billion people of the future’, he says, ‘we'll actually have less – only a quarter of an acre of cropland per person in 2050, versus the half-acre we use today on the most efficient farms’. In ‘The End of Plenty’, National Geographic warns that even a new green revolution of ‘synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds’ may fail.
Paradise Lost
We live on the most beautiful planet. Nature’s intricate beauty has been shaped and perfected over millions of years. We are destroying it at an incredible rate and once a species is gone, it’s gone forever. Day to day we don’t notice the changes, they seem gradual, but ask anyone of over a certain age and they will tell you how different things were in their youth.
The strains being put on the natural environment are increasing constantly. Our efforts to address them are superficial tinkering around the edges while we carry on with the main businesses of building and farming. The impacts are manifesting themselves in hundreds of ways simultaneously. They are all increasing, with climate breakdown being the main one grabbing our attention. The other impacts have similar nasty consequences but often aren’t so visible and measureable, so don’t attract headlines.
We have multiplied, consumed and destroyed the natural world.
We have increased our numbers to billions beyond the capacity of our planet.
We have turbo-charged our rate of destruction with industrialisation, decimating the world at a faster rate than ever.
We are changing the climate of the planet on which we rely for our existence.
We are overfishing and wiping out sea life, polluting and acidifying the oceans.
We are adding billions of pieces of plastic to the oceans.
We are destroying ancient coral through bleaching.
We are cutting down and burning ancient, irreplaceable forests.
We are wiping out species, destroying the habitats of most living things.
We have critically endangered many of our closest, most beautiful, relatives.
We value the capitalist market and profit above the environment.
We have brainwashed the public into a life of consumerism above all else.
We have overdosed on our addiction to oil.
We are warming the planet through burning fossil fuels, which is melting the ice caps and raising sea levels.
We have documented our own destruction with detailed scientific studies showing what is happening.
We have made international agreements on climate change that won’t help in time.
We have well-funded organisations that deny this is happening.
We are destroying the future for our descendants.
We have done most of this in one human lifetime.
We are reaching a tipping point and accelerating towards the brick wall.
We are fully aware of what we are doing, yet we carry on.
Overcrowding
‘Loss of freedom is an inevitable consequence of unlimited population growth in a limited space’
Garrett Hardin
People have always moved and migrated – it is natural to look for the best place to live, somewhere near water, with good soil and natural resources. If there is war or famine, we take the logical step to escape and move to a place with better prospects. As a species, we have colonised every habitable corner of the planet, from the Arctic to the deserts of Arabia. Our flexibility and ingenuity allows us to survive, and even thrive, in the most inhospitable places.
As populations rise in unspoilt places, they soon lose the appeal of the tranquil, peaceful places they once were. Across the world, paradises lose their charm as more people discover the secret, from the islands of Thailand to the Canary Islands, as tourists flock in their millions to once-idyllic retreats. Pictures show how destinations change over the decades, with buildings and high-rises gradually taking over the landscape. This has played out across the globe, creating a landscape unrecognisable to older people when they visit a place in later life that they knew as a child. As every new paradise is discovered, developed and populated, the millions of years of evolution and nature are eroded forever.
Countries with high immigration or population growth always mean new buildings, roads, offices and shopping centres, which inevitably results in fewer habitats for wildlife. Nature takes second place to humans, with barely a second thought given to the impacts on the environment. The American Dream was built on the joy of discovering new places, building a home with lots of land and free, wild open spaces. Look at the US now and you see cities with mile after mile of urban sprawl followed by fields of monoculture. The US is a huge country with good weather and natural resources ready for easy human exploitation, and the country has been steadily developed over the last 250 years. But even in this vast land, space is becoming a battleground between developers and environmentalists as the value of the remaining wilderness is finally being recognised. As that space is filled up, the freedoms that once came with it are lost. As we move in, nature moves out.
Housing and Cities
Overcrowded and polluted cities are often the only places left for families to find work and food, and for many people moving away is not an option. As global population rises and density increases, the number of places to move to reduces and competition for the space increases. All housing problems are by-products of overpopulation: housing costs inevitably rise as population rises. More people are crammed in to smaller and smaller spaces.
Every ten years, an area the size of Britain disappears under concrete (BBC, Planet Earth II, 2016). There is pressure to build more houses where builders profit from rising property and land costs and governments come under pressure to provide housing. This is countered by arguments from environmentalists trying to prevent building on unspoilt land. Politicians and planners are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They argue over where to build, always blindly accepting that the pressure to build is only there because of a growing population, and never looking to stem the population growth that is the root cause of the pressure. Meanwhile, people struggle with crippling mortgages or rents for most of their working lives.
City dwellers live exciting lives full of lights and entertainment, mingling cultures and food, but they also miss out on the real world. Nature vanishes and many will only ever see it on their screens. The sights and smells of wildlife are unknown, with dogs, cats, rats and foxes the only animals seen. Natural light, sound and smell are absent from the urban landscape, with starlight obscured by streetlights, birdsong replaced by traffic noise and flower scents replaced by fumes.
The more complex cities become, the more impact there is when something goes wrong. Everything relies on everything else. Cities require 24-hour management of transport, food and fuel supplies, IT and communications, electrical power, sewerage and water supplies. Every resident depends on services that are taken for granted and appear magically from a pipe or a wire. All of this is precariously balanced. Should any of these fail, disaster affecting millions would happen very fast and take everyone by surprise.
What are the contingency plans? In an uncertain world, with more and more dangers appearing on the horizon, are megacities a good idea? If disasters happen, the reality is that the people suffer massively, as emergency services are swamped by the scale of the disaster. There have been a few scenarios where this has been tested in recent history, such as Fukushima (2011) and New Orleans (2005). Predicting these events is almost impossible. Even if they are seen in advance, little can be done. As cities increase in size, while nuclear power stations continue to exist, and the global climate breaks down, the likelihood of more mega-disasters happening increases too.
Climate Breakdown
The climate isn’t just changing - it is breaking down. The world was last as warm as it is now about 115,000 years ago. The planet has not experienced such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 800,000 years. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017)
The greatest threat we face today is climate breakdown and its consequences – rising temperatures and sea levels, to name only two. Climate breakdown is caused by greenhouse gases emitted through human activities. The current imbalance is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. As we increase our prosperity we continue to increase our emissions.
The main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is produced through burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is also emitted through deforestation, land clearing for agriculture and degradation of soils. (Land can also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through reforestation, soil improvement and other activities.) Other greenhouse gases are methane, which is emitted through agriculture, biomass burning and waste management, while nitrous oxide is emitted mainly through agriculture via fertiliser use.
The trouble with saying we are ‘reducing emissions’ is that we are not actually reducing emissions, we are reducing the rate of at which emissions are released. The emissions already produced are still there, so new emissions are adding to the overall problem – we are still increasing emissions. Parts per million of carbon dioxide will continue to increase for decades to come, so record temperatures we see almost every year will continue too.
The effects of climate breakdown are reported more and more frequently, and its effects are becoming more apparent every day. As the cumulative effects of climate breakdown become more apparent, the events are becoming more regular, with a gradual increase in their number and intensity.
As climate breakdown is a more tangible, visible and measurable subject, it is regularly reported on. Its effects are newsworthy and dramatic. The battles against it are also tangible. They include electric cars and renewable energy, which fit in with the market economy and government, so there are real results in the forms of company profit and praise for governments. By contrast, there are no such dramatic and visible effects or solutions with a rising population or any of the other impacts. There are no profits to be made from saving the rhinos.
Ice, Water and Fire
Ocean acidification, the evil twin of climate change, is caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, half of which is absorbed by the oceans. Since the Industrial Revolution, acidity has increased by 26 per cent. It is set to increase still further, creating levels not seen for the last 25 million years. The CO2 dissolves in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This is bad news for the ocean’s crabs, lobsters, snails and clams, which need calcium carbonate for their shells. Coral reefs are some of the most beautiful habitats on Earth and home to a third of all fish species. Many reefs are set to disappear within the next few decades, threatened by rising sea temperatures, increased storms, invasive species, ocean acidification, sewage and damage caused by overfishing.
Huge areas of oceans are being suffocated, creating dead zones such as the 8,500 square miles swath in the Gulf of Mexico. They are a side effect of the global meat industry where millions of gallons of run-off from manure and fertiliser pour into the oceans; this stimulates algal growth, causing huge algal blooms. The blooms deprive water of oxygen, killing off fish and other marine life. Fish catches fall to zero and beaches are abandoned by sunbathers wanting to avoid the foul-smelling slime.
The Arctic ice cap is experiencing record lows in the ice extent almost every year, and declines are continuing by 13 per cent per decade. These record annual lows create a negative feedback effect: the reduced size of the bright white Arctic surface reflects less solar energy, which is instead absorbed by the dark ocean, adding to the increase of energy absorbed by the Earth and speeding up the collapse of the climate.
Peter Wadhams, Emeritus Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University and author of A Farewell to Ice points out, news stories about ice loss only tell us of the area of ice loss, not the volume, so the reports are actually out by a whole factor of multiplication. The Antarctic, which was not thought to be experiencing the same extent of ice loss as the Arctic, is melting due to warm ocean currents – from beneath. This has been hidden from satellite images that show only the area, not the volume. 2018 research from IMIE (ESA–NASA Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise, 2018) has shown Antarctic ice has been melting much faster over recent years. As ice sheets and glaciers melt, sea levels rise. As temperatures rise, the oceans expand. Sea levels are rising at 3.4 millimetres per year, where each millimetre of sea level rise equals 360 billion tons of ice.
As the climate breaks down, fires are steadily increasing across the globe with devastating impacts. As we warm the planet, rainfall patterns change and winds blow more strongly, increasing the risk of wildfires. Wildfires devastate millions of acres of forest per year, and add to the amount of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere, furthering the feedback mechanism and accelerating climate breakdown.
Pollution and Toxification
Over eight million tonnes of plastic is thrown away each year and washed out to sea. We are putting so much plastic pollution in the sea that within a few years there will be a greater weight of plastic in the oceans than fish. As this plastic slowly degrades the micro-particles of plastic are eaten by fish. Then we eat the fish.
Famine, War and Migration
‘The world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since the United Nations was founded in 1945.’
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien, 2017
The links between population growth, famine, war and migration may not be immediately obvious, but they are there. Large families are a source of happiness and are a natural human inclination, but taking a step back and looking from a demographic perspective with limited resources, the opposite picture emerges.
As populations and consumption increase, space and resources decrease. As climate breakdown impacts more on communities, space and resources decrease further. As resources decrease, the resulting poverty and famine puts pressure on communities, which struggle, fragment and become increasingly violent. The likelihood of regional and national conflict increases, which can result in breakdown and war.
Statistical analyses show this happens, with studies indicating, for example, that the Syrian war arose because of a prolonged regional drought. (Syria) The three factors of human population increase, resource scarcity and climate breakdown together combine to increase the likelihood of war. The conditions for conflict are tipped over the edge and war breaks out. For a species that prides itself on being supremely advanced, we are taking our violent nature out on ourselves, through war and massacres. While we fight among ourselves, nature is destroyed as collateral damage.
One million asylum-seekers migrated from Syria to Europe in 2014/15, with Germany taking a high proportion. This benevolence by Angela Merkel was internationally applauded at the time, but has led to a rise in right-wing activism in Germany: the populist right AfD Party doubled its vote and number of seats in the 2017 election. The German door, and most of Europe’s, is closing. As destination countries are already densely populated, migrants increasingly have nowhere to migrate to.
More than 20 million people in Africa are at risk of starvation and famine. With its population set to increase by 1.3 billion by 2050, the prospects for Africa look ominous. If Europe struggled to take in one million migrants in 2015, what are the prospects and potential consequences for migration for hundreds of millions of people from Africa in the event of a future famine or war?
Invasive Species
Over the past few centuries, non-native animals, plants and other organisms have been translocated around the planet via humans. The delicate balance of nature has been thrown out of kilter by human activity, and the global homogenisation of flora and fauna has fundamentally changed the world’s environment.
There are good and bad examples. In Britain, the Romans introduced garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbages, peas, celery, turnips, radishes, asparagus and many types of herb. Where would Italy be without tomatoes? Tomatoes didn’t originate in Italy, they’re from the Americas. Horses are not native to the Americas, they’re Asian, and the quintessential English fruit, the apple, isn’t English, it’s Asian too.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain celebrated its intrepid plant hunters who explored the globe. They brought back thousands of exotic plant varieties, but did not know the potential damage they could cause. Many of the new species have no natural predators in their new homes, so they multiply fast and wipe out other native species, adding to the manmade Sixth Extinction.
Invasive species are causing damage across the world, wiping out native species as the natural balance is upset. They are often impossible to remove despite efforts to eradicate them. Japanese knotweed found its way to the UK and is a serious problem, its incredible force of growth invalidates home insurance policies. The Europeans reciprocated by giving the Japanese the common dandelion, which cross-pollinates with the native Japanese variety (Kandori, 2009). The US isn’t happy with brown marmorated stink bugs from China. Rats are running riot in the Galapagos. Cane toads from the US are a serious pest in Australia. The Giant African Land Snail is eating its way through the crops of India. Even the harmless looking rabbit was transported away from its origins in Southern Europe and North Africa and can now be found across the globe. The ultimate invasive species is, of course, us.
The Sixth Extinction: Part 2
You can't bargain with nature. Once a species is gone, it’s gone.
As habitats disappear, so do the species contained within them. We lose one species of animal or plant life every twenty minutes, or 27,000 species a year. This rate and scale of extinction has not occurred since the fifth major extinction event 65 million years ago. The ‘Anthropocene’ is the name for the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The sixth mass extinction is in full swing.
Current extinction rates suggest that we are approaching the point of no return. Looked at in historical perspective, species often go extinct, but, at the same time, new species are also constantly evolving through speciation, where species gradually change over time in different areas with differing conditions and eventually become genetically unique. Today, however, the rate of extinction far exceeds the rate of speciation. Studies suggest that over the last fifty years a shockingly high 40 per cent of the world’s flora and fauna have become extinct. And this extinction rate is accelerating.
Before human-caused extinctions, the rate of origin of new species per extinction of existing species was roughly one per million species per year. As a consequence of human activity, the current rate of extinction is 1,000 times higher than it was originally.
The Global Footprint Network calculates ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ each year, which marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. This deficit is maintained by using stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste – primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To determine the date of Earth Overshoot Day for each year, a calculation determines the number of days of that year that Earth’s biocapacity suffices to provide for humanity’s ecological footprint.
In 2000, that date was 1 November.
In 2008, that date was 23 September.
In 2018, that date was 1 August.
These dates show how rapidly we are still increasing our overshoot of the planet’s resources, by around four days per year.
As we condemn species to extinction and reduce the amount of wilderness remaining, we are wiping out millions of years of evolution. Wilderness is the ‘arena of evolution’; it is the home of evolution. European expansion and exploitation, starting 500 years ago and accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, put the human capacity to reproduce and wipe out species into overdrive, instigating the second part of the Sixth Extinction.
Extinctions are happening daily, with the creatures and plants gone forever. None of the animals have a voice. None can complain, none can protest, none can vote. They are just removed. There are hundreds of examples of extinctions to choose from. ‘Dead as a dodo’ is a blasé phrase about one of the first victims of the second phase of extinctions. The dodo, last seen in Mauritius in the 17th century, was wiped out after the invasive species of humans, rats, cats and pigs were introduced.
The Javan tiger went extinct in 1976. The island of Java was densely forested, with most of the island covered as recently as 1900. Today there is less than 100 square kilometres of rainforest left on an island the size of England. In 1815, the human population of Java was 4.5 million; in 2015 it was 145 million, making it the most populous island in the world.
Our closest cousins, primates, are being wiped out. About 700 mountain gorillas remain. Chimpanzees and orangutans teeter on the edge of extinction. 60 per cent of primates, including lemurs and tarsiers, drills and gibbons, bush babies and spider monkeys face the threat of extinction. Even those not in immediate danger of dying out are at risk. Three-quarters of all primate species are trending downward. (Alejandro Estrada, 2017)
As habitats disappear, populations collapse. A species may not go extinct, but the numbers drop catastrophically as humans numbers increase. This doesn’t grab the headlines in the same way as when a species is lost forever, but it is equally serious as it takes once-plentiful species from abundance to a rarity close to extinction. According to the WWF, 58 per cent of global wildlife populations were lost between 1970 and 2012. Freshwater animals have declined by 81 per cent in that same time, and wildlife populations will drop by two-thirds by 2020. Tigers have declined by 95 per cent in the last 100 years.
We are also wiping out insects through our overuse of insecticides on crops and habitat loss. The feedback through the food chain impacts on birds, reptiles and small mammals including bats, which depend on insects for their own survival. A German 2017 study said that ‘ecological Armageddon’ was taking place, with three-quarters of all flying insects vanishing in 25 years. (Hallmann, 2017)
We live on the most beautiful planet. Nature’s intricate beauty has been shaped and perfected over millions of years. We are destroying it at an incredible rate and once a species is gone, it’s gone forever. Day to day we don’t notice the changes, they seem gradual, but ask anyone of over a certain age and they will tell you how different things were in their youth.
The strains being put on the natural environment are increasing constantly. Our efforts to address them are superficial tinkering around the edges while we carry on with the main businesses of building and farming. The impacts are manifesting themselves in hundreds of ways simultaneously. They are all increasing, with climate breakdown being the main one grabbing our attention. The other impacts have similar nasty consequences but often aren’t so visible and measureable, so don’t attract headlines.
We have multiplied, consumed and destroyed the natural world.
We have increased our numbers to billions beyond the capacity of our planet.
We have turbo-charged our rate of destruction with industrialisation, decimating the world at a faster rate than ever.
We are changing the climate of the planet on which we rely for our existence.
We are overfishing and wiping out sea life, polluting and acidifying the oceans.
We are adding billions of pieces of plastic to the oceans.
We are destroying ancient coral through bleaching.
We are cutting down and burning ancient, irreplaceable forests.
We are wiping out species, destroying the habitats of most living things.
We have critically endangered many of our closest, most beautiful, relatives.
We value the capitalist market and profit above the environment.
We have brainwashed the public into a life of consumerism above all else.
We have overdosed on our addiction to oil.
We are warming the planet through burning fossil fuels, which is melting the ice caps and raising sea levels.
We have documented our own destruction with detailed scientific studies showing what is happening.
We have made international agreements on climate change that won’t help in time.
We have well-funded organisations that deny this is happening.
We are destroying the future for our descendants.
We have done most of this in one human lifetime.
We are reaching a tipping point and accelerating towards the brick wall.
We are fully aware of what we are doing, yet we carry on.
Overcrowding
‘Loss of freedom is an inevitable consequence of unlimited population growth in a limited space’
Garrett Hardin
People have always moved and migrated – it is natural to look for the best place to live, somewhere near water, with good soil and natural resources. If there is war or famine, we take the logical step to escape and move to a place with better prospects. As a species, we have colonised every habitable corner of the planet, from the Arctic to the deserts of Arabia. Our flexibility and ingenuity allows us to survive, and even thrive, in the most inhospitable places.
As populations rise in unspoilt places, they soon lose the appeal of the tranquil, peaceful places they once were. Across the world, paradises lose their charm as more people discover the secret, from the islands of Thailand to the Canary Islands, as tourists flock in their millions to once-idyllic retreats. Pictures show how destinations change over the decades, with buildings and high-rises gradually taking over the landscape. This has played out across the globe, creating a landscape unrecognisable to older people when they visit a place in later life that they knew as a child. As every new paradise is discovered, developed and populated, the millions of years of evolution and nature are eroded forever.
Countries with high immigration or population growth always mean new buildings, roads, offices and shopping centres, which inevitably results in fewer habitats for wildlife. Nature takes second place to humans, with barely a second thought given to the impacts on the environment. The American Dream was built on the joy of discovering new places, building a home with lots of land and free, wild open spaces. Look at the US now and you see cities with mile after mile of urban sprawl followed by fields of monoculture. The US is a huge country with good weather and natural resources ready for easy human exploitation, and the country has been steadily developed over the last 250 years. But even in this vast land, space is becoming a battleground between developers and environmentalists as the value of the remaining wilderness is finally being recognised. As that space is filled up, the freedoms that once came with it are lost. As we move in, nature moves out.
Housing and Cities
Overcrowded and polluted cities are often the only places left for families to find work and food, and for many people moving away is not an option. As global population rises and density increases, the number of places to move to reduces and competition for the space increases. All housing problems are by-products of overpopulation: housing costs inevitably rise as population rises. More people are crammed in to smaller and smaller spaces.
Every ten years, an area the size of Britain disappears under concrete (BBC, Planet Earth II, 2016). There is pressure to build more houses where builders profit from rising property and land costs and governments come under pressure to provide housing. This is countered by arguments from environmentalists trying to prevent building on unspoilt land. Politicians and planners are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They argue over where to build, always blindly accepting that the pressure to build is only there because of a growing population, and never looking to stem the population growth that is the root cause of the pressure. Meanwhile, people struggle with crippling mortgages or rents for most of their working lives.
City dwellers live exciting lives full of lights and entertainment, mingling cultures and food, but they also miss out on the real world. Nature vanishes and many will only ever see it on their screens. The sights and smells of wildlife are unknown, with dogs, cats, rats and foxes the only animals seen. Natural light, sound and smell are absent from the urban landscape, with starlight obscured by streetlights, birdsong replaced by traffic noise and flower scents replaced by fumes.
The more complex cities become, the more impact there is when something goes wrong. Everything relies on everything else. Cities require 24-hour management of transport, food and fuel supplies, IT and communications, electrical power, sewerage and water supplies. Every resident depends on services that are taken for granted and appear magically from a pipe or a wire. All of this is precariously balanced. Should any of these fail, disaster affecting millions would happen very fast and take everyone by surprise.
What are the contingency plans? In an uncertain world, with more and more dangers appearing on the horizon, are megacities a good idea? If disasters happen, the reality is that the people suffer massively, as emergency services are swamped by the scale of the disaster. There have been a few scenarios where this has been tested in recent history, such as Fukushima (2011) and New Orleans (2005). Predicting these events is almost impossible. Even if they are seen in advance, little can be done. As cities increase in size, while nuclear power stations continue to exist, and the global climate breaks down, the likelihood of more mega-disasters happening increases too.
Climate Breakdown
The climate isn’t just changing - it is breaking down. The world was last as warm as it is now about 115,000 years ago. The planet has not experienced such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 800,000 years. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2017)
The greatest threat we face today is climate breakdown and its consequences – rising temperatures and sea levels, to name only two. Climate breakdown is caused by greenhouse gases emitted through human activities. The current imbalance is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. As we increase our prosperity we continue to increase our emissions.
The main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is produced through burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is also emitted through deforestation, land clearing for agriculture and degradation of soils. (Land can also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through reforestation, soil improvement and other activities.) Other greenhouse gases are methane, which is emitted through agriculture, biomass burning and waste management, while nitrous oxide is emitted mainly through agriculture via fertiliser use.
The trouble with saying we are ‘reducing emissions’ is that we are not actually reducing emissions, we are reducing the rate of at which emissions are released. The emissions already produced are still there, so new emissions are adding to the overall problem – we are still increasing emissions. Parts per million of carbon dioxide will continue to increase for decades to come, so record temperatures we see almost every year will continue too.
The effects of climate breakdown are reported more and more frequently, and its effects are becoming more apparent every day. As the cumulative effects of climate breakdown become more apparent, the events are becoming more regular, with a gradual increase in their number and intensity.
As climate breakdown is a more tangible, visible and measurable subject, it is regularly reported on. Its effects are newsworthy and dramatic. The battles against it are also tangible. They include electric cars and renewable energy, which fit in with the market economy and government, so there are real results in the forms of company profit and praise for governments. By contrast, there are no such dramatic and visible effects or solutions with a rising population or any of the other impacts. There are no profits to be made from saving the rhinos.
Ice, Water and Fire
Ocean acidification, the evil twin of climate change, is caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, half of which is absorbed by the oceans. Since the Industrial Revolution, acidity has increased by 26 per cent. It is set to increase still further, creating levels not seen for the last 25 million years. The CO2 dissolves in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This is bad news for the ocean’s crabs, lobsters, snails and clams, which need calcium carbonate for their shells. Coral reefs are some of the most beautiful habitats on Earth and home to a third of all fish species. Many reefs are set to disappear within the next few decades, threatened by rising sea temperatures, increased storms, invasive species, ocean acidification, sewage and damage caused by overfishing.
Huge areas of oceans are being suffocated, creating dead zones such as the 8,500 square miles swath in the Gulf of Mexico. They are a side effect of the global meat industry where millions of gallons of run-off from manure and fertiliser pour into the oceans; this stimulates algal growth, causing huge algal blooms. The blooms deprive water of oxygen, killing off fish and other marine life. Fish catches fall to zero and beaches are abandoned by sunbathers wanting to avoid the foul-smelling slime.
The Arctic ice cap is experiencing record lows in the ice extent almost every year, and declines are continuing by 13 per cent per decade. These record annual lows create a negative feedback effect: the reduced size of the bright white Arctic surface reflects less solar energy, which is instead absorbed by the dark ocean, adding to the increase of energy absorbed by the Earth and speeding up the collapse of the climate.
Peter Wadhams, Emeritus Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University and author of A Farewell to Ice points out, news stories about ice loss only tell us of the area of ice loss, not the volume, so the reports are actually out by a whole factor of multiplication. The Antarctic, which was not thought to be experiencing the same extent of ice loss as the Arctic, is melting due to warm ocean currents – from beneath. This has been hidden from satellite images that show only the area, not the volume. 2018 research from IMIE (ESA–NASA Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise, 2018) has shown Antarctic ice has been melting much faster over recent years. As ice sheets and glaciers melt, sea levels rise. As temperatures rise, the oceans expand. Sea levels are rising at 3.4 millimetres per year, where each millimetre of sea level rise equals 360 billion tons of ice.
As the climate breaks down, fires are steadily increasing across the globe with devastating impacts. As we warm the planet, rainfall patterns change and winds blow more strongly, increasing the risk of wildfires. Wildfires devastate millions of acres of forest per year, and add to the amount of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere, furthering the feedback mechanism and accelerating climate breakdown.
Pollution and Toxification
Over eight million tonnes of plastic is thrown away each year and washed out to sea. We are putting so much plastic pollution in the sea that within a few years there will be a greater weight of plastic in the oceans than fish. As this plastic slowly degrades the micro-particles of plastic are eaten by fish. Then we eat the fish.
Famine, War and Migration
‘The world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since the United Nations was founded in 1945.’
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien, 2017
The links between population growth, famine, war and migration may not be immediately obvious, but they are there. Large families are a source of happiness and are a natural human inclination, but taking a step back and looking from a demographic perspective with limited resources, the opposite picture emerges.
As populations and consumption increase, space and resources decrease. As climate breakdown impacts more on communities, space and resources decrease further. As resources decrease, the resulting poverty and famine puts pressure on communities, which struggle, fragment and become increasingly violent. The likelihood of regional and national conflict increases, which can result in breakdown and war.
Statistical analyses show this happens, with studies indicating, for example, that the Syrian war arose because of a prolonged regional drought. (Syria) The three factors of human population increase, resource scarcity and climate breakdown together combine to increase the likelihood of war. The conditions for conflict are tipped over the edge and war breaks out. For a species that prides itself on being supremely advanced, we are taking our violent nature out on ourselves, through war and massacres. While we fight among ourselves, nature is destroyed as collateral damage.
One million asylum-seekers migrated from Syria to Europe in 2014/15, with Germany taking a high proportion. This benevolence by Angela Merkel was internationally applauded at the time, but has led to a rise in right-wing activism in Germany: the populist right AfD Party doubled its vote and number of seats in the 2017 election. The German door, and most of Europe’s, is closing. As destination countries are already densely populated, migrants increasingly have nowhere to migrate to.
More than 20 million people in Africa are at risk of starvation and famine. With its population set to increase by 1.3 billion by 2050, the prospects for Africa look ominous. If Europe struggled to take in one million migrants in 2015, what are the prospects and potential consequences for migration for hundreds of millions of people from Africa in the event of a future famine or war?
Invasive Species
Over the past few centuries, non-native animals, plants and other organisms have been translocated around the planet via humans. The delicate balance of nature has been thrown out of kilter by human activity, and the global homogenisation of flora and fauna has fundamentally changed the world’s environment.
There are good and bad examples. In Britain, the Romans introduced garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbages, peas, celery, turnips, radishes, asparagus and many types of herb. Where would Italy be without tomatoes? Tomatoes didn’t originate in Italy, they’re from the Americas. Horses are not native to the Americas, they’re Asian, and the quintessential English fruit, the apple, isn’t English, it’s Asian too.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain celebrated its intrepid plant hunters who explored the globe. They brought back thousands of exotic plant varieties, but did not know the potential damage they could cause. Many of the new species have no natural predators in their new homes, so they multiply fast and wipe out other native species, adding to the manmade Sixth Extinction.
Invasive species are causing damage across the world, wiping out native species as the natural balance is upset. They are often impossible to remove despite efforts to eradicate them. Japanese knotweed found its way to the UK and is a serious problem, its incredible force of growth invalidates home insurance policies. The Europeans reciprocated by giving the Japanese the common dandelion, which cross-pollinates with the native Japanese variety (Kandori, 2009). The US isn’t happy with brown marmorated stink bugs from China. Rats are running riot in the Galapagos. Cane toads from the US are a serious pest in Australia. The Giant African Land Snail is eating its way through the crops of India. Even the harmless looking rabbit was transported away from its origins in Southern Europe and North Africa and can now be found across the globe. The ultimate invasive species is, of course, us.
The Sixth Extinction: Part 2
You can't bargain with nature. Once a species is gone, it’s gone.
As habitats disappear, so do the species contained within them. We lose one species of animal or plant life every twenty minutes, or 27,000 species a year. This rate and scale of extinction has not occurred since the fifth major extinction event 65 million years ago. The ‘Anthropocene’ is the name for the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The sixth mass extinction is in full swing.
Current extinction rates suggest that we are approaching the point of no return. Looked at in historical perspective, species often go extinct, but, at the same time, new species are also constantly evolving through speciation, where species gradually change over time in different areas with differing conditions and eventually become genetically unique. Today, however, the rate of extinction far exceeds the rate of speciation. Studies suggest that over the last fifty years a shockingly high 40 per cent of the world’s flora and fauna have become extinct. And this extinction rate is accelerating.
Before human-caused extinctions, the rate of origin of new species per extinction of existing species was roughly one per million species per year. As a consequence of human activity, the current rate of extinction is 1,000 times higher than it was originally.
The Global Footprint Network calculates ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ each year, which marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. This deficit is maintained by using stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste – primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. To determine the date of Earth Overshoot Day for each year, a calculation determines the number of days of that year that Earth’s biocapacity suffices to provide for humanity’s ecological footprint.
In 2000, that date was 1 November.
In 2008, that date was 23 September.
In 2018, that date was 1 August.
These dates show how rapidly we are still increasing our overshoot of the planet’s resources, by around four days per year.
As we condemn species to extinction and reduce the amount of wilderness remaining, we are wiping out millions of years of evolution. Wilderness is the ‘arena of evolution’; it is the home of evolution. European expansion and exploitation, starting 500 years ago and accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, put the human capacity to reproduce and wipe out species into overdrive, instigating the second part of the Sixth Extinction.
Extinctions are happening daily, with the creatures and plants gone forever. None of the animals have a voice. None can complain, none can protest, none can vote. They are just removed. There are hundreds of examples of extinctions to choose from. ‘Dead as a dodo’ is a blasé phrase about one of the first victims of the second phase of extinctions. The dodo, last seen in Mauritius in the 17th century, was wiped out after the invasive species of humans, rats, cats and pigs were introduced.
The Javan tiger went extinct in 1976. The island of Java was densely forested, with most of the island covered as recently as 1900. Today there is less than 100 square kilometres of rainforest left on an island the size of England. In 1815, the human population of Java was 4.5 million; in 2015 it was 145 million, making it the most populous island in the world.
Our closest cousins, primates, are being wiped out. About 700 mountain gorillas remain. Chimpanzees and orangutans teeter on the edge of extinction. 60 per cent of primates, including lemurs and tarsiers, drills and gibbons, bush babies and spider monkeys face the threat of extinction. Even those not in immediate danger of dying out are at risk. Three-quarters of all primate species are trending downward. (Alejandro Estrada, 2017)
As habitats disappear, populations collapse. A species may not go extinct, but the numbers drop catastrophically as humans numbers increase. This doesn’t grab the headlines in the same way as when a species is lost forever, but it is equally serious as it takes once-plentiful species from abundance to a rarity close to extinction. According to the WWF, 58 per cent of global wildlife populations were lost between 1970 and 2012. Freshwater animals have declined by 81 per cent in that same time, and wildlife populations will drop by two-thirds by 2020. Tigers have declined by 95 per cent in the last 100 years.
We are also wiping out insects through our overuse of insecticides on crops and habitat loss. The feedback through the food chain impacts on birds, reptiles and small mammals including bats, which depend on insects for their own survival. A German 2017 study said that ‘ecological Armageddon’ was taking place, with three-quarters of all flying insects vanishing in 25 years. (Hallmann, 2017)
Fig 11. Cumulative extinctions as percentage of IUCN-evaluated species. (Wilson, 2016)
Polar bears, orangutans and rhinos are three headline acts in serious danger, with thousands more species facing the same fate. We are witnessing the death of nature in our own lifetime, with the false idol of the economy taking priority above ecology, leading to ecocide. The planet will take millions of years to recover from what we’ve done in just decades.
The Unchecked Sixth Extinction – Terminal Breakdown?
Following all the above to their logical conclusion sends us into a global disaster. We are in the calm before the storm and are seeing the gradual, (but unstoppable?) increase in climate and environmental events reported year on year.
Each of the impacts above is a disaster in its own right, but when they are combined, ‘the crisis cascade’ forms the perfect storm of catastrophe as each one influences and enhances the other. As the temperatures increase, more fires burn and more ice melts. As more fires burn, more pollution is added to the atmosphere. As sea levels rise, more people migrate.
The extent and future impact of the Sixth Extinction is in our own hands. We are still giving free rein to population growth and consumption. We should be looking ahead, fixing the roof while the sun is still shining and acting in our common interest. We should be listening to the scientists who calculate and predict where we will be if we continue on the same path. If we let market forces and unrestrained capitalism determine our fate and we allow the population to decline through ‘natural’ methods, it will be the mother of all disasters. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Historically, collapses have been rapid and unforeseen. According to Pulitzer-winning author Jared Diamond in his book Collapse, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Easter Islanders, and other past societies is that a steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak in numbers, wealth and power.
The Seneca Curve theory of collapse agrees with Diamond, showing that things can come down a lot faster than they went up. Politics and economics continually push for further growth which will only make the fall, when it inevitably comes, harder and faster. Capitalism is predicated on economic growth which demands we do everything we can to keep the system going whatever it takes. It doesn’t take in to account the fact that when you exceed the carrying capacity of the system, the system will fail.
Will the world collapse? As well as human-induced global changes, there are other, hidden dangers that could destabilise the planet further. A climate feedback loop from melting permafrost releasing heat-trapping methane from layers of oil and gas that have been buried deep beneath the Arctic may accelerate climate change. The largest volcanic region on Earth, two kilometres below the surface of the ice sheet that covers west Antarctica. Melting ice could destabilise these volcanoes, causing massive eruptions, which could then create a feedback loop and melt the Antarctic ice further. Either of these scenarios, or other as yet unforeseen events, could trigger a dangerous cascade of events, tumbling the world into an abyss.
In the event of a true global breakdown where the ship of global order sank, it would be every man for himself. If and when 21st century global civilization collapses, we will see a natural and unstoppable reaction from every human ape fighting for themselves. With eight billion people all heading for the lifeboats, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.
In addition to the Sixth Extinction is the threat of nuclear war that has been hanging over us since the 1940s. Although we could simply agree among ourselves to dismantle every weapon and end the threat of nuclear annihilation, we show no sign of doing so. As the climate breaks down, as resources deplete and population increases, global infrastructure will destabilise and the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used will increase. The 20th century saw two World Wars where everything thrown at annihilating the other side. Today, with such a long period of (relative) peace, we have built up our combined military strength to an incredible level that could kill billions. If even a fraction of the nuclear and military capability available today was unleashed, World War II would be a sideshow in comparison.
Polar bears, orangutans and rhinos are three headline acts in serious danger, with thousands more species facing the same fate. We are witnessing the death of nature in our own lifetime, with the false idol of the economy taking priority above ecology, leading to ecocide. The planet will take millions of years to recover from what we’ve done in just decades.
The Unchecked Sixth Extinction – Terminal Breakdown?
Following all the above to their logical conclusion sends us into a global disaster. We are in the calm before the storm and are seeing the gradual, (but unstoppable?) increase in climate and environmental events reported year on year.
Each of the impacts above is a disaster in its own right, but when they are combined, ‘the crisis cascade’ forms the perfect storm of catastrophe as each one influences and enhances the other. As the temperatures increase, more fires burn and more ice melts. As more fires burn, more pollution is added to the atmosphere. As sea levels rise, more people migrate.
The extent and future impact of the Sixth Extinction is in our own hands. We are still giving free rein to population growth and consumption. We should be looking ahead, fixing the roof while the sun is still shining and acting in our common interest. We should be listening to the scientists who calculate and predict where we will be if we continue on the same path. If we let market forces and unrestrained capitalism determine our fate and we allow the population to decline through ‘natural’ methods, it will be the mother of all disasters. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Historically, collapses have been rapid and unforeseen. According to Pulitzer-winning author Jared Diamond in his book Collapse, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Easter Islanders, and other past societies is that a steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak in numbers, wealth and power.
The Seneca Curve theory of collapse agrees with Diamond, showing that things can come down a lot faster than they went up. Politics and economics continually push for further growth which will only make the fall, when it inevitably comes, harder and faster. Capitalism is predicated on economic growth which demands we do everything we can to keep the system going whatever it takes. It doesn’t take in to account the fact that when you exceed the carrying capacity of the system, the system will fail.
Will the world collapse? As well as human-induced global changes, there are other, hidden dangers that could destabilise the planet further. A climate feedback loop from melting permafrost releasing heat-trapping methane from layers of oil and gas that have been buried deep beneath the Arctic may accelerate climate change. The largest volcanic region on Earth, two kilometres below the surface of the ice sheet that covers west Antarctica. Melting ice could destabilise these volcanoes, causing massive eruptions, which could then create a feedback loop and melt the Antarctic ice further. Either of these scenarios, or other as yet unforeseen events, could trigger a dangerous cascade of events, tumbling the world into an abyss.
In the event of a true global breakdown where the ship of global order sank, it would be every man for himself. If and when 21st century global civilization collapses, we will see a natural and unstoppable reaction from every human ape fighting for themselves. With eight billion people all heading for the lifeboats, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.
In addition to the Sixth Extinction is the threat of nuclear war that has been hanging over us since the 1940s. Although we could simply agree among ourselves to dismantle every weapon and end the threat of nuclear annihilation, we show no sign of doing so. As the climate breaks down, as resources deplete and population increases, global infrastructure will destabilise and the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used will increase. The 20th century saw two World Wars where everything thrown at annihilating the other side. Today, with such a long period of (relative) peace, we have built up our combined military strength to an incredible level that could kill billions. If even a fraction of the nuclear and military capability available today was unleashed, World War II would be a sideshow in comparison.