Living in Interesting Times

"It took all of human history until 1830 for world population to reach one billion. The second billion was achieved in 100 years, the third billion in 30 years, the fourth billion in 15 years, and the fifth billion in only 12 years. In 2005, world population exceeded 6.5 billion people, growing by nearly 80 million per year with virtually all of the growth taking place in the poorest countries in the world, where population already strains economies, environments and social services."

In 1950, not so long after I was born, the world population was only about 2.5 billion. My grade school memories seem to confirm I was living in a world with 3 billion people. Not so long after that, in the early 1960's, Paul Erlich began writing about a "population bomb" and the Malthusian concept of exponential growth entered the common lexicon. Erlich warned the world population would double every 35 years or so. In the rear view mirror, his mathematics look pretty spot on.

With the exception of the United States, the developed countries, the First World, have stopped growing. Did they get Erlich's message? I don't think that was it. I don't believe, frankly, that environmental concerns ever manifest themselves from the bottom up. The declining birth rates, to levels below population replacement, in Europe, Japan and (almost) the United States reflect other pressures. The disappearance of what I call Life's Margin of Ease. As life became more difficult in the First World, as its real standard of living began to decline, the citizens of the advanced West forwent family in favor of "lifestyle" advantages, a way of saying that materialism replaced kinship as the chief measure of wealth. For concerted action to be successful, it must be part of top-down, mandated policy. China's success in controlling a once-burgeoning population explosion, while Draconian in nature, explains its success in defusing its own Bomb. The rest of Asia, much of Africa, nearly all of Latin America, meanwhile continue on their Malthusian way. Children, for the most part, are what they have. Until someone makes them stop having them, they won't.

Which takes us back to our first graphic. These days, with the success of Al Gore's PowerPoint movie, the airwaves are abuzz with initiatives to arrest global warming, to hold CO2 concentrations at present levels. All language describing these efforts is in the future conditional. "We can begin to decrease emissions when..." "The technology is available now to start a transition..." While all of this talk goes on, Massachusetts-size chunks of Antarctica are breaking off and floating north, 80% of the world's glaciers are in retreat, and Hemingway, if alive today, might write "The Green Hills of Africa," but never "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

The Keeling Curve continues to ratchet skyward, even as we talk, even as we dream of the transition. We all keep driving, keep heating and cooling our houses, keep blogging away on computers plugged into the electrical grid. No one, in America, is telling us what to do. They're busy with more important things. In Washington, they're concerned they might not get reelected, and would find themselves struggling among the hoi-polloi. No sense bumming the electorate with discussions of reality. Better to protect Americans from burning flags and marriageable gays, and above all else, to spend every dime we don't have on that stupid war in Iraq.

And high above Mauna Loa, the latest reading clicks up another notch.