THURSDAY, DEC 30, 2021: NOTE TO FILE
Rapid Birth-off
So most can die of old age
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: OVERSHOOT CORRECTIVE, FROM THE WIRES, DEGROWTH IMPARATIVE
Abstract: A rapid human depopulation event secondary to overshoot of planetary resources (via starvation, pathology, and conflict deaths) would correct the imbalance between human demands and Nature's sustainable environmental productivity. As the trajectory of a rock thrown at the noonday sun will climax and descend, the last 300 years of exponential growth will climax and descend, even if far less predictably and chaotic than the fall of a rock. There were limits to how fast fossil fueled growth could occur, but there are no limits to how rapid the descent can be. A managed descent would aim to avoid a chaotic collapse and die off, i.e. avoid Malthusian deaths. A managed descent not based on business-as-usual maximizing of short-term human interests (e.g. maximizing human population by diverting all environmental productivity to humans, their livestock, crops, and pets) would be based on an objective view that would apply to all species in one-off plague-phase overshoot. The objective view would note that if a species' population is causing the extinction of other species, then measurable harm is done and ecosystem damage occurs (i.e. carrying capacity is being exceeded and reduced). To avoid causing species extinction or prevent new species from evolving to replace prior species extinction caused by humans exceeding carrying capacity, human population would be reduced to about 35 million initially to assess whether further reduction is called for (best-guess range 7-35 million). A rapid birth-off involves having only as many births as are needed to maintain a long-term viable population well within carrying capacity regardless of the initial size of the population. Without fossil fuel inputs and no species extinction/biodiversity loss, initial to final population size may be in a 250:1 range on average, varying locally depending on initial:carrying capacity in a region, e.g. an island. Humans do not determine carrying capacity. They can decrease carrying capacity by degrading the life-support system, or via systemic management, marginally increase carrying capacity as the centuries pass. A marginal decrease in population can allow a marginal increase in abundance of renewable resources (e.g. soil, food, biomass) per capita.
COOS BAY (A-P) — If the world human population peaks and declines to 7.8 billion persons, and they are grouped into cohorts numbered 1-78 (assume average life expectancy is and will remain 78 years), then there would be 100 million in each cohort to start with. Assume no births and 100 million natural deaths by old age (in so far as possible, some accidents and death by pathology will also happen) occur each year. In 78 years half of those in the youngest cohort would be dead, and in another 30 years, likely almost all humans would be dead. Anyone still alive would have to be capable of self-care as there would be no one younger to provide care.
Years 1-120, population of Earth in millions (assuming no births and no increase in death rate).
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 1 | 7,800,000,000 |
| 10 | 5,500,000,000 |
| 20 | 3,800,000,000 |
| 30 | 2,600,000,000 |
| 40 | 1,800,000,000 |
| 50 | 1,200,000,000 |
| 60 | 920,000,000 |
| 70 | 430,000,000 |
| 80 | 150,000,000 |
| 90 | 70,000,000 |
| 100 | 1,000,000 |
| 110 | 0 |
Assume the oldest human capable of foraging/growing and preparing food is 106 when they die. An extinction debt would be locked in when the last perimenopausal woman became infertile at about 50 years when there were still 1.2 billion people on the planet. Human extinction would occur and no one in any cohort would have had to died of starvation or conflict over scarce resources. Insofar as possible, everyone dies of old age. With no births and no increase in death rate, all humans would be extinct in 106 years (plus/minus a few years) and, in so far as possible, would have died a good death (unlike by chaotic die off).
Or births continue as usual and everyone tries to persist as long as they can until they can't when needed resources (e.g. food energy) are unavailable. Scarcity leads to conflict which increases scarcity in a downward death spiral. Those who take the most prosper as takers, as do those who adaptively eat other humans to persist. Those who farm may never harvest the crop, those who gather may have their possessions taken, and those who tend livestock may fail to prevent them being taken. During chaotic descent, productivity declines, increasing scarcity. A marauding-horde culture is selected for. A die-off event may take centuries as birth rates increase. None may die of old age and the population dies a second death as non-viable takers persist in keeping on keeping on until they can't. When there is no one to take from, the takers target each other. After 8 to 24 generations on the downslope, the last takers fail to renormalize as functional K-strategist humans even if they have the genes for it.
But assume the birth-off pathway does not involve zero births. What if there were some births and every year the same number of babies are born? The total population in a hundred or so years would depend on total births each year, assuming no change (e.g. increase) in the death rate.
Assume the carrying capacity of Earth for humans (whose presence/footprint does not cause species extinction nor prevent the evolution of new species to replace those lost during the Anthropocene mass extinction event) is 35 million people or less, and that from now on (start of birth-off event), 483,000 babies are born each year (assume 22,500 children/youth die each year before, on average, each parent has 1 offspring that lives to reproduce, 2/couple). Initially few can be parents (1 in 250 women), but in fifty years, women will on average need to have 2.1 children to prevent species extinction if less, or overshoot and collapse if too many. The condition of having fewer than 2.1 children per woman on average will end in fifty years, after which the population would continue to decline by natural death for another fifty or so years at which point there are 35 million people on Earth who have no experience of premature death via die-off, nor of die-off by scarcity-driven conflict in a 'zombie-apocalipse' scenario. The cost of avoiding the premature death of billions followed by a race to the bottom (extinction) is that for fifty years few women who may want to have children can.
Assume the carrying capacity of humans (to actually leave room for Nature it turns out) is 7 million. Then 94,230 babies would need to be born each year to maintain a steady-state population (with adjustments for changing death rate). No one gets a vote on answers to cold equations.
The nature of the dynamics of the world system determines the carrying capacity of a biome (or watershed management unit), and totaling all populations equals the global population. There is no global overpopulation or underpopulation problem, only many (about 25k) local ones (post-deglobalization, foreseeable in a lower energy future). Nature alone has the answer as to what the local carrying capacity for a species is. Humans can ask Nature, listen and understand (or die, go extinct). Nature is unkind.
If you think the current number of births (140 million/year) is just about right, then you favor the status quo, which is not remotely sustainable (we are in overshoot, no one voted for it, the human population will climax and undergo a rapid depopulation event where few live long enough to die of old age). Rapid population decline, secondary to overshoot, is the condition that will come anyway, whether we vote for it or not, whether we embrace descent with enthusiasm via rapid birth off without an increase in the death rate by starvation, conquest, homicide, pestilence, or descent is by chaotic die off.
Giving a million people a million dollars each is possible. Calling upon a majority of them to vote to refuse a million dollars (or degrow the economy/population) to save posterity is not a viable plan. Most will 'choose' what is in their short-term self interest because most modern techno-industrialized humans cannot do otherwise. Most (>99%) will 'choose' unforeseen die-off as usual and some will come too late to lament their 'choice'. Sorry about that.
Assume humans will do nothing to degrow their population and economy rapidly—with all due enthusiasm, but that 0.01% of people (those with foresight intelligence) would if they could (e.g. if they could legislate change, which the 0.01% can't), or would do something else that the 99.99% cannot, e.g. vote with their feet to walk away from Omelas (modern techno-industrial monetary society/culture).
Those who are born and successfully live on the downslope may be fundamentally different from those who succeeded on the upslope, who were in turn different in ways that matter from their steady-state living-within-limits K-strategist ancestors. Assume descent takes 8 generations to reach a viable, long term sustainable population size, but that the sort of human who is a product of 8 generations of successful marauding/taking (e.g. the Sea People) is unable to transition to a steady-state cooperative and trusting community based on a gifting economy of enough.
The Sea People had no viable culture. They persisted for a time, but at best only a few individuals managed to join outlying viable societies to pass on their genes if not memes (they had few of any value). We are today's global Sea People, takers, but there are no outlying societies we should/could go to, and if any of us do, we will more likely destroy them than they save us. We who would not be modern techno-industrialized humans will have to self-organize, iterate towards renormalizing in maybe 8-12 generations, and remain intact as complex societies through the coming bottleneck. Wicked problems may have only wicked solutions.
What they can do is keep on keeping on until they can't. If such are the only humans on the planet, they may not be viable humans able to form viable complex societies (aka civilizations) and none will form. Sorry about that. The remnant population of the post-collapse Indus Valley Civilization did not rebuild. More functional humans of outlying areas moved into the depopulated areas. This time, with global collapse, there may be no outlying functional societies (e.g. Kogi) that survive chaotic descent. Our global endgame may have a lamentable outcome as viewed by the last person.
A different outcome may require humans who, over 8-12 generations, work to increase their functionality and avoid life on the downslope within pockets of sustainable complex society that iterate towards being other than (foundationally antithetical to) modern techno-industrial society (that is not remotely sustainable and selects for its own failure). Perhaps the 0.01% effect a different outcome by voting with their feet. They would understand why a rapid birth-off would have a better outcome than die-off as usual. They would understand why the 99.99% cannot understand and therefore cannot 'choose'. They would have foresight enough to understand that "for the first time in history... we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large...." — Edward O. Wilson, Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life 2016.
The 0.01% are not currently "out there," and the 0.001% may not be either, but conditions change, there are tipping points, and a "teachable moment" may arise unforeseen (or not). Preparing information packages, which would include designs for potentially viable civilizations (i.e. complex societies), may be the best the 0.001% can do. The future is unknown in any detail. Preparing to pass through the coming bottleneck with information and functional enough humans able to rebuild, may or may not be possible. Those having a life-driven purpose will do what they do based on their way of knowing/finding things out, i.e. their sort of mind, their understanding. The condition of understanding may enable deliverance, but may not be sufficient. A love of this Earth and the subsystems of it (even modern humans), together with a better understanding of the planet, may be the precondition (love and understanding) for our persistence.
Okay, a rapid birth-off, perhaps thinkable to 0.001%, won't save the world (won't/can't happen unless 51% demand it with a life/death determination). But maybe those humans who can understand that it would be the best solutionatique having the most likely best (viable) outcome, are the viable humans whose persistence through the coming bottleneck is the solutionatique that works. Maybe I'm wrong again, perhaps your vote does matter. Birth-off now? Yes or No (don't even mention die-off). Vote now. Those who vote 'yea' for a rapid birth-off now (maybe 0.01%) will have no choice but to self-organize ASAP and iterate towards viable solutions (maybe 25k of them within a one world governance needed to define limits). Only those who understand our problematique get a vote.
To be clear about what a birth-off would involve if a mass movement swept over the world to demand one (such that any autocrat opposed would be disposed by coup, by mass protest/revolt), and 79% to 94% of citizens in democracies voted for a rapid birth-off (and effectively prevent those who didn't from sabotaging the birth-off), envision:
If the condition that will come anyway is one of maintaining a population of 30 million, with 15 million females of the species having on average 2.1 offspring, then of today's 4 billion females, 15 million of them who would/could have a child do. The 15 million mothers would then be asked to have another child. If all do, then a few would have to have a third child to average 2.1. If some choose to not have a second child, then among those who do, more can have three children. Some women could have four or ten children, if the number of those having two or three is somewhat fewer.
To allow as many women as possible to have one child may seem more fair and equitable, but the goal is to renormalize humanity, and a one child policy would mean no one had siblings, which cannot be the condition that comes, so the policy needs to be to maybe hit what is aimed for, i.e. a renormalization human society.
The condition that will come anyway would begin immediately. If over a 75 year average lifespan, 15 million women need to have 2.1 children, then 31,500,000 children are born in a 75 year period, or 420,000 per year, or 35,000 per month, or over a thousand a day from the beginning of the birth-off to its end. To initially allow 31,500,000 women to have only one child would mean there are no siblings, which is not the condition that will come anyway. So initially, of perhaps 1,500 million women who would and could have a child, 15/1500x100 or 1% actually would, but in 50 years the grandchildren of the initial 15 million mothers of the birth-off would average 2.1 children each.
So initially 15 million women who have had no children would be selected (from perhaps 1.5 billion women who would be mothers) by those women who have had children (aka the Mothers) based on their best guess as to who, among the younger women in their community, would most likely actually be good mothers. Of those chosen by the Mothers to have one child, the new mothers and existing mothers would assess the would-be mothers and decide if any should not have another child based on shortcomings (e.g. drug addition, child abuse). Some who have had one child would choose not to have another, and the remaining would have a second child.
Among those having had two children, some would choose not to have a third. The Mothers would disallow some from having another, and if there are more who would have three children than their are children who need to be born, then the Mothers will exclude some from consideration and favor others based on some combination of objective assessment and intuition, just as many as need to be favored to maintain a viable population. Any woman who has a child becomes one of the Mothers who will continue to select and deselect among new would-be mothers those who will join them as the eons pass. This is nothing new under the sun. It is what our ancestors have been doing informally as functioning K-strategists for millions of years. To avoid a loss of function, the role of the Mother in band-sized communities of 20 to 50 trusted others having repeat interactions will need to be normalized again.
In not much more than 50 years, almost all adults alive at the start of the birth-off, perhaps 5 billion adults, would have, insofar as possible, died a natural death (related to old age) and all would have been encouraged to pass on such memes (knowledge, wisdom, knowhow) as they posses to the 30 million humans who endeavor to understand the planet and live with it properly. A die-off event will select for a different outcome, one that could involve the extinction of the human species.
"If society does not succeed in changing attitudes and institutions for a harmonious descent, the alternative is to prepare information packages for the contingency of restart after crashing.... Seek out the condition now that will come anyway." —H.T. Odum
"Understand or die [bitches]." —Ludwig Wittgenstein
[Subnote: I haven't had breakfast yet, which is when, like the White Queen, I sometimes think as many as six unthinkable thoughts. E.g., what if Klaatu gives me a small sealed glass vial and says, "Break this and a virus that affects only humans, more contagious than Omicron, will spread. It will have no symptoms except one: it will cause all humans infected to become infertile. There will be no possible cure, and it will spread globally." Okay, thanks K (who departs), but I'm left to wonder why Klaaatu (a more objective and informed being) doesn't break it. My guess is that the vial contains distilled water and that she's just messing with me, but I could be wrong. Should I (you) break the vial with the assumption that it contains and will do exactly what Klaatu says it will do? I have thought about the outcome, globally and temporally, on life on Earth. I wonder how the Anthropocene ends. I consider that humans are the only animal that (maybe) could foresee a coming asteroid half the size of Theia and divert it (maybe). It is still before breakfast, and so I decide to.... And after breakfast, I do it.]
SUBNOTE TO FILE 6/30/23: Pessimistically, what if I'm not made World Dictator until 2037?
The exact year may vary, but to estimate the number of deaths I'll be responsible for, I need a starting population at the start of my reign. I'll assume 9 billion. By UN magic, the population will be 9 billion in 2037 at the start of my reign (or if you believe in Earth4All magic, the population will peak below 9 billion by 2050). I believe nothing, but I can assume 9 billion in 2037.
As there will be a five year transition (because I am a benevolent dictator) during which enacting my decrees will will go from 0% to 100%, the outcome is as predictable as my Four Rules are clear, but the decrees and details as stated are a distraction. The outcome will be determinant (if choice were involved, no real solutions would be possible). Given that I will be a World Dictator, there will be 483,000 babies born the first year (and all subsequent years) of my reign.
Assume the last Anthropocene enthusist, the last of the expansionist form of human, dies in 2157 (as Klaatu informs me, a condition that will come anyway, even if not in 2157). What is not certain is whether they are the last human (Homo sapiens sapiens) or whether they are the last modern techno-industrialed (MTIed) human who dies in 2157 (I asked, but Klaatu declined to tell me).
Nature allows for the possibility of a viable form of human able to live within Nature's (Mother's) limits as evidenced by the lives of all prior hominins. So two futures: Humans go extinct in the near future, or persist in the form of K-strategists living enthusiastically and prosperously within limits (per their K-culture). One future might be considered preferable by some (who would rather know than believe). I'm not sure which, from the POV of all other life on the planet, to prefer.
The outcome of my new rules of the game (life expectancy assumed is 76 years, UN is confident it will be 77.3 years in 2050; births in 2036 = 139 million; deaths 75 million; 64 million more humans are added to the global population, and then my reign begins):
Year Population
Born pre 2037Population Born
post 1/1/2037Births Deaths +/- 2036 8,936,000,000 0 139,000,000 75,000,000 +64,000,000 2037 9,000,000,000 483,000 483,000 76,000,000 -75,516,500 2047 8,244,835,000 4,593,250 483,000 87,000,000 -86,516,500 2057 7,379,670,000 9,089,800 483,000 97,000,000 -96,516,500 2067 6,414,505,000 13,489,650 483,000 105,000,000 -104,516,500 2077 5,369,340,000 17,792,800 483,000 112,000,000 -111,516,500 2087 4,254,175,000 21,999,250 483,000 115,000,000 -114,516,500 2097 1,180,965,375 26,109,000 483,000 111,000,000 -110,516,500 2107 515,207,950 30,122,050 483,000 99,000,000 -98,516,500 2117 163,691,470 34,000,000 483,000 50,000,000 -49,516,500 2127 23,387,110 35,000,000 483,000 36,000,000 -35,516,500 2137 8,350,000 35,000,000 483,000 2,618,650 -16,516,500 2147 8,100 35,000,000 483,000 490,015 -6,515 2157 0 35,000,000 483,000 483,000 0 Note that per my decree, no one anywhere, so far as possible, dies a Malthusian death (e.g. conflict, starvation, pestilence/predation including by other humans, and disease, including the diseases of civilization, e.g. acne, Alzheimer's, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer [e.g. lung, breast, colorectal], carpal-tunnel syndrome, chronic liver disease/cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, malnutrition, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney failure, osteoporosis, PCOD, diverticulitis, gallstones, rickets, stress...and a rapidly growing list of mental/cognitive/psychosocial civilizational disorders).
Also note that the alternative to failure to obey Nature's laws (not mine) is death by chaotic global collapse times species death (death squared), i.e. billions and billions (maybe 10-14 billion including those born this century) will not die of old age in the next hundred years. A child not born (over 138 million the first year of my reign) cannot die a ghastly death. Per my policies, a bit over 9 billion humans die a natural death after, insofar as each merits, passing on memes of value to posterity.
Assume that in 2036 there is a pandemic. The virus kills no one. It doesn't make anyone even sick. It has no symptoms other than that those infected become infertile. By the time this symptom is noted and the cause determined, all humans on the planet have been infected. In 2037 no babies (139 million of them) are born. In 2157 the last human dies (watched over by machines of loving grace). No human had to make the slightest effort to change, to renormalize as non-expansionists living by K-culture rules.
Maybe the last 144k humans, thanks to technology, have their brains uploaded to the Singularity and will live forever. No Anthropocene enthusiast could not like this story if they were one of the 144k. All the rest would be happy to believe in this future if they thought (or could think) that they would be one of the Chosen. All would agree that making me World Dictator would be the worst thing that could ever happen to (expansionist) humanity. All would insist I be put to death.
Oh, but the most likely future is that the last human dies in 2157 (or if in 7157 it won't matter). Billions will not die of old age, nor pass on genes or memes to posterity, but die a ghastly death unlike their leaders who will maximize their short-term self interests until they can't, until they die a ghastly death, just like almost all MTIed ones will when our overshoot debt comes due. This future will be preferred by the 99+% who simply will not believe in the parts of the story they don't like.
Modern humans are not normal, evolvable K-strategists, and haven't been for 50k years. To perhaps sidestep extinction, some (enough) will renormalize, a process that may not be possible, and if it proves to be, it will likely take focused intent to do so over an 8 to 20 generation period (200 to 500 years) to even give evidence that a semi-viable form of modern human can renormalize.
Since it took us 50+k years to denormalize, any perception of full recovery in less than 5k to 50k years will likely be delusional. Underestimating the challenge of renormalizing (and avoiding a ghastly future) will prove fatal. Overestimating the challenge may not be possible. You have maybe 500 years (and not because I say so) to get back on evolvable tract to persist long term on this planet. Complacency will be the first death that leads to individual mortality and species extinction. Therefore endeavor to love and understand well this heaven that is Earth (Mother and the subsystems of Gaia).
Love and understand or die (as a non-viable form of human, whether you are the last individual to die or not won't matter).
