ANALYSIS:

Immigration, Populations, Climate Change, and Perverse Ideologies

All of the deepest social problems of the world would be a lot easier to solve with a declining population. Better to accomplish this through enlightened policy than through plagues and war.

On top of all this is the hypocrisy of American industry, which is complaining of the lack of willing American workers, all the while exploiting a class of worker—the illegal—with low wages, scant benefits, no rights and, in some cases, no pay at all. Yes, it's true: there are not many American workers who will accept such a deal.

There's a fourth way to look at the issue, as well. I want to consider not only economic refugees, but environmental ones as well, and how these issues are all of a piece, and part of an ideological crisis that has brought civilization to the brink.

Recently, eleven retired army generals issued a report that warns of the dangers of not dealing aggressively with rapid climate change. They predicted situations of near anarchy when entire countries lose land mass and suffer droughts and floods and vectoring diseases—all of which are some of the predictable results of global warming, especially in the northern hemisphere.

Absent from just about every article I have read on global warming and climate change, however, is any discussion of what a sustainable population might be. It is as if such discussions have been suppressed since Malthusian predictions, and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb have not materialized (yet). And, even if we knew the answer to the riddle of a sustainable human population, since it would be impossible to do anything about it, why bother?

Coincidentally, NBC TV News recently showed a piece about the “One Child” policy of China, which has been in effect since 1980, but has not been uniformly enforced. Now that the Chinese are enforcing it with hefty fines, they have met with resistance in many provinces, and the reporting focused on the human interest side of it, which noted that the wealthy can have more children because they can better afford the fines. What I found curious was that there was no commentary at all from anyone, including Brian Williams, the anchor, on the implications of the piece. (Why this qualified as "news" was the operative question. My guess is that it could have been intended as a warning to America not to institute such a draconian measure. Our society would be a lot less tolerant of such “repression.”)

So, absent any measures to curtail human population growth, all that is left for us to do is record the population’s inexorable rise, much as we chronicle tornadoes and hurricanes. Also missing from published material in the mainstream which deals with the global climate crisis is any discussion of other species—perhaps 100 million distinct species—that will face extinction rates as high as 50% as global warming alters their habitat at a pace they cannot adapt to.

Environmentalists are having trouble holding onto the Endangered Species Act, now under assault by those who would not want to consider habitat preservation as part of the saving of species. The stress of climate change to non-human species may well be the coup de grace after human-caused habitat destruction and the careless introduction of invasive species, according to no less an authority than E.O. Wilson, the great biologist and author of scores of books, including The Diversity of Life.

The world now awaits a voice that speaks with authority and can interpret the disparate events that imperil earth’s systems. This person may have to be more charismatic than the typical biologist or, even, the atypical politician in the figure of “born again” environmental evangelist Al Gore. The other catalyst for change might be a catastrophe on a massive human scale that will move whole societies to accept the kind of lifestyle changes that seem to be needed to avert the worst consequences of our rapidly changing climate, and the degradation of our air, fresh water, oceans, soils, and entire functioning ecologies.

So far, the concentration is on the kinds of technological fixes that could be employed, rather than on lifestyle adjustments. And, of course, there are still a few skeptics of the entire concept of anthropomorphic-caused climate change. More dangerous, perhaps, are those who recognize human-generated pollution as a major culprit and continue to have faith that mankind is capable of finding cleaner sources of energy and inventing products that don’t pollute, and making such changes at a profit without triggering a global depression. They contend that we can maintain the growth model that is fundamental to the theory of capitalism, and that economic incentives can force sustainable behaviors on the corporate giants that rule the economic universe. It is a piecemeal approach and the timelines do not make a lot of sense if, as some prominent scientists have suggested, we have no more than about another decade to have any hope of stopping runaway climate change. Of course, the entire focus is on human survival, and, indeed, human prosperity, as presently defined in terms of the accumulation of consumer products.

Our non-human neighbors are hardly considered—are they with us or against us? Trees may be valued in some indefinable way for their ability to cleanse the air of CO2, but other contributions trees make, sometimes referred to as ecological services performed free of charge, seem to be valued only by biologists and ecologists. The mainstream continues to view them, as do the timber companies, as simply a partly renewable product. Trees were once mostly used for fuel, buildings, and ships, and many countries were essentially denuded of trees in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were viewed as an unlimited resource, but, as populations grew, trees quickly disappeared in the “old world” and soon colonization seemed necessary to maintain a source of wood.

There are programs to re-vegetate in some countries, but on my recent trip to Scotland I did not see much evidence of reforestation in the highlands area, which was all forest at one time. Should the Amazon continue to be deforested, it is unlikely that it could be re-vegetated—nor would there be much other use for the open land created, since the soils are thin, and will not even support agriculture for very long. The Amazon is far more fragile than most people realize, but that is a subject for a specialized study. In America, the deforestation was never completed because by the time America’s population would have grown to be a threat to sustainable forests, coal and oil had replaced wood as a fuel.

There are only three remaining intact forests in the world. They are in Russia,Canada, and the Amazon, mostly in Brazil. Everything else is fragmentary. (I wonder what the eastern U.S. looked like when it was one continuous canopy from New England to Florida?) In addition to the stress on the Amazon, there is stress on the boreal forests of Canada, as the permafrost melts, invasive bark beetles vector northward, and the oil and gas resources of the Canadian provinces become impossible to resist as we approach $4 per gallon gasoline.

This is the argument for biodiversity—not that it is just a most picturesque and interesting world with species diversity, but that diversity is essential to life for us all. If we substantially reduce or diminish this biodiversity through human carelessness or indifference, we may begin to see consequences we won’t like. Some of these consequences are apparent already, but it is not easy to connect the dots. There is a domino effect here, and we find it when we investigate the reason for larger species' extinction and what it takes to ensure their survival through habitat protection, rather than putting them in zoos.

Global warming is the result of a type of domino effect commonly referred to as "positive feedback loops." To oversimplify somewhat, this means that things will get worse because they are getting worse. The easiest example is the melting of arctic ice packs, which causes less of the sun to be reflected away, and, hence, more absorption of the heat by the exposed darker waters. This warmer climate then melts even more ice. A similar effect can be seen in the melting of the permafrost, which releases massive CO2 and methane, which are heat-trapping gases, which causes further warmth to the permafrost areas which causes more melting.

Well, I’m sure you get the point without further belaboring. There are negative feedbacks which help offset some of the warming. A warmer Greenland, for instance, will force more snow, which will increase the thickness of the glacial areas. Warmer climates will produce more clouds which reflect away some of the sun’s intensity. Sulfur dioxide is a pollutant that has an effect that reflects away more heat than it traps. Nevertheless, the consensus of scientific opinion is that the positive feedbacks have a far greater effect than the negative ones, thus driving global warming. Our formerly self-regulating climate has been effectively challenged by anthropomorphic forcings, and since we created the cascading effect, we have to be responsible for abating the human causes.

Science and technology have enabled us to live beyond sustainable limits. The idea that there are limits to the human exploitation or use of nature strikes most of the political leadership as, well, un-American. Nationalism and exceptionalism are variants of a hubris which, I contend, comes from either ignorance or a purposeful mis-reading of our history, and a belief in a fantastic version of reality. We learn what we learn based on an institutional bias towards reductionism and rationality. We are decidedly left-brained, and we process information within a limited frame of reference. Only in the world of art do we seem to be able to appreciate the concrete and the holistic.

Within the relatively small cohort that is serious about exploring the subject at all, there is dispute about what sustainable limits are. People in the Southwest may be more familiar with the concept, because they see the strain of carving out an existence in an arid land on a daily basis. Arizona may be the first state that has to admit to an inability to grow in accordance with market forces, and the University of Arizona has inaugurated a doctoral degree in “sustainability.”

Most experts on population do not see a human population much in excess of 2 billion to be sustainable. The fact that we are already at 6.3 billion and counting may have something to do with our inability to eradicate hunger and poverty in the world. The marginalized populations of the world continue to expand every year, even as the political leaders of the world give a myriad of other reasons—globalization, colonization, exploitation, disease and a lagging will on the part of the rich nations to share their wealth in meaningful ways. However, are these conditions causes or effects of population pressures?

Some so-called experts claim that only through more growth can these conditions of inequality be eradicated. In other words, the world needs more money to pay for the fixes. Apparently, the expanding GDPs of nations will not be a useful index of when we will arrive at a condition of sufficient wealth. Certainly, GDP is a poor indicator of progress, but it is the one most coveted by leaders who profit themselves by the current system’s continuation.

Certainly, all of the deepest social problems of the world would be a lot easier to solve with a declining population, and better to accomplish this through enlightened policy than through plagues and war. The population has become unsustainable primarily because of agricultural technological improvements over the centuries, and most recently the “green revolution,” which greatly enhanced crop yields. However, as soon as food resources are increased, populations expand to overwhelm the increased productivity. Meanwhile, corporate farming is required, and our food security decreases as more and more farmers with knowledge of the local land are dispossessed of their land by physical force or bankruptcy. The land is now being abused, depleted of essential nutrients and bombarded with pesticides and chemical fertilizers to force yields that cannot be sustained as soils lose the nutrients and tilth accumulated over hundreds of years. The depths of fertile soils, worldwide, have been decreasing, along with the aquifers that they draw from. We have placed our faith in chemistry as we leave an agricultural society behind.

In America, we have way less than one percent of families employed in agriculture (and virtually no hunter-gatherers except for the homeless). It has been a long time since we have been able to ”keep them down on the farm,” and even the idea of farming has been mostly disparaged since about the end of WW I. I believe, however, that there may still be a “farming gene” that resides somewhere in the human genome, and we would, perhaps, do well to put 10-25% of the population to work farming organically, and repairing the damage we have done and are doing to natural ecological systems. Naturally, we would have to break up the big agra-businesses, and redistribute land. When someone like Chavez of Venezuela does this, it is denounced as socialism, but maybe there are schemes to accomplish this that involve taxes and incentives and the like, that would avoid most of the expected social turmoil of radical change. The fact is, we need healthy ecosystems in every locality. In our pursuit of “progress,’ we have zoned out agriculture from our cities and suburbs and a good part of our rural landscapes. We are fast losing the thin connection we still have to the land.

We are locked into ideologies that are not helpful towards enabling the survival of our species. We are taught that we are a greedy species, and need to channel that greed to useful ends.We are also taught that we are competitive, and must realize our true nature through competitive victories with little regard for the losers. The current immigration bill being debated in Congress is indicative of this type thinking. There will be a point system to rank those immigrants seeking asylum here. It will be a type of meritocracy. We only want your talented citizens, not your mediocre ones. At least one nationally known columnist suggests that we must put merit ahead of reuniting families in our newly designed immigration law. Beyond competition lie the vast masses who become spectators, and spend half of their lives in front of the TV set or on a cell phone, wishing to be somewhere other than where they are. The car is also a great facilitator to distance us from real contact with life, with nature.

Meanwhile, we have squandered our democracy by not tending to it. Scientists have studied animal species recently and have exploded the myth of the “alpha male” leading all herd activity. What they found is that in all species, when they act in concert, the action is arrived at democratically. When about 51% of the flock turns in one direction, the entire flock turns in concert. With birds and fish it looks like one simultaneous movement, but it is initiated by the first 51%. Scholars of chaos theory, systems and patterns may disagree, and ascribe the phenomena to more mystical forces at work, but I’ll go with the biologists for now.

We are observing a crisis of imagination at the turn of the 21st century. We have a tragedy of the commons writ large. We are carving up the golden goose for sausage and liver. We have been unable, for the most part, to work together in a way that requires shared sacrifice to the greater good of society. We don’t seem to understand the value of mutual coercion. Ironically, there are examples of mutual coercion that work, such as traffic regulations. Even without cops and fines, I think most people would observe red lights and stop signs and drive on the the right side of the road. You may get to your destination a little later than you’d like, but you will have a much better chance of getting there.

Positive change is within our power. The lobster fishermen of Maine, for example, have a better crop of healthy lobsters now than they have had for hundreds of years—as a direct result of mutual coercion. They stick to strict size limits and a defined territory. They don’t need cops to police it; they police it themselves. They do not want to lose the lobsterman’s way of life for themselves and their children. They will not steal from their neighbors and they will not steal from future generations. Unfortunately, the lobstermen are an anomaly. Our whole experience and ideology suggest that we cannot outlive our resources and, therefore, it is every man for himself. And, in any case, if resources are depleted, we are a favored people, with vast powers, and we will be the last to go.

We, the children of the modern world, have always been able to invent ourselves out of problems. We tend to see only the good side of science and the purveyors of consumer goods strive to keep it that way. We can even be persuaded to see the good in nuclear energy—and to think we can control it. Many people may believe that if we are wiped out as a species in a nuclear holocaust or environmental disaster, it will be at the will of God, and we could not have prevented it anyway. The nuclear weapons threat, however, should suggest that it will be a human touch that triggers total annihilation.

In point of fact there is a very large block of people that feels that we don’t need to worry about a breakdown in natural systems, because we will blow ourselves up long before that happens. But, what if it is the breakdown of nature itself that leads to us blowing ourselves up as we fight for the remnants of non-renewable resources? What if it turns out that we are in control, but act as if we are not, and thereby bring about our own demise?

There is already a growing population of refugees, not displaced by conflict per se, but an ecological breakdown that causes aggressive behaviors. Darfur is a prime example, when, in a time of scarcity, nomadic tribes and farming interests cannot reconcile to a rapidly changing environment.

We are but a few decades from the prospect of major population centers being abandoned for a lack of potable water. It is not just Africa that is experiencing the expansion of deserts. The Asian Bank recently estimated that desertification in China threatens to cover 4,000 villages with sand and render them uninhabitable. The World Bank estimates that by 2010 the aquifer that underlies Sana, the capital of Yemen, with a population of 2 million, will be pumped dry and drilling up to a mile and a half deep has found no new source of water. They may well have to relocate the capital city. There are many other Sanas in the making. There are cities now in New Mexico and Arizona and California that would not exist without the diversion of water from other states that have an arguable surplus on an annual basis. Desalinization plants may be a partial solution for some coastal cities, but not for inland cities. Unfortunately, the water wars are going to follow close on the heels of the oil wars and some conflicts already have water as at least one underlying issue.

Presently, we bemoan the fact that the generation after the baby boomers will be the first generation since the depression, if not the industrial revolution, to be poorer in material wealth than the generation before them. This could be a good thing, disguised as a negative development. This could be a wake-up call that signals we are traveling with the wrong road map for guidance. When we can bring the world population down to about 2 billion, the earth will be able to support all humans, as well as the animal and plant kingdoms, with room to spare for the slow changes of evolution. We would be then be able to have true nature reserves all over the planet—in other words, actual places that we need not exploit. The quality of life would be raised for all.

I remember an article some years ago that talked about recent archeological findings that indicated a healthy organized civilization in the Southeastern part of America before the Spanish explorers arrived to “discover” the new land. Hundreds of archeologists were polled on whether they would have preferred living in the Southeast 500 years ago, before western civilization was imposed on a land that (they think) had a population in what is now called North America that exceeded the population of Europe. To a person, these scientists and scholars said they would have preferred to have lived then rather than in what we perceive as an advanced civilization today. This struck me as kind of sad at the time. Have we lost more than we have gained in pursuit of our ideologies?

With a stabilized population we could begin to solve the vexing problems that relentless population increases only serve to exacerbate. But how can this be done humanely? All the world must embrace a one (or no) child policy until populations come down to near the sustainable number. This would take several generations (there are tables of projections under various assumptions), but while this is happening, the pressures on natural systems will decrease. People will be able to see the benefits within a generation. Obviously, the nature of commerce will have to change radically. There will be very few giant corporations owned privately. Essential businesses that require scale will be controlled by the public in reality rather than by the fictional idea that there is any real control of corporations by the public today. Because farming will be more labor-intensive, groups of small farmers will be encouraged to combine in local cooperatives for a more consistent labor pool. This will be better than importing migrant labor. Kids could be allowed to skip school at various times to help with the harvest—this would be hands-on real-world education for them. We don’t need large families for farming, and it is hard to see how we could provide for temporary farm workers that must move from region to region following the harvesting seasons.

Returning to immigration, how does it have anything to do with population control? Well, I contend that most immigrants are environmental refugees, using those terms in the broadest sense. Food experts often say that failure to feed the hungry is not a matter of the limits of earth’s productivity, but is the result of bad politics, wars, and poverty. The idea is that there is plenty of food, but too many people cannot afford to pay for it. But, this begs the question. People don’t have money for food because they don’t have control of land. Productive resources are in the hands of a wealthy elite in most parts of the world. Even in third world countries, where a lot of people are still employed in farming, they are being undercut by the globalized agra-businesses that are able to dump cheap subsidized food in countries and price the native farmers out of business, or force them to grow crops for export only. Chavez of Venezuela and Mugabe of Zimbabwe are trying to implement radical land reforms. In Mugabe’s case, it is not going well; in Chavez’s case it is too early to tell. Both countries, and many more that have not yet attempted radical land reform, are living with the legacy of colonialism.

How far back are you allowed to go to correct an injustice? This is not an issue exclusive to the poor, undeveloped countries. America has evolved from a landed gentry, through a slave-holding aristocracy to a landscape now dominated by mega corporations with not only titles to vast plots of land, but even to patented seeds and GMO plants. If we can break up the large agri-businesses the way we broke up the trusts and cartels of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we can accomplish our own version of land reform and the other reforms, both social and environmental, that will follow along.