Earth Day Trivia!!!

Looking out beyond Earth Day 40, perhaps we can reflect upon words from the speech that Norman Bourlaug delivered, coincidentally in 1970, on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize.

Near the end of the very first year of Earth Day celebrations Dr. Bourlaug reported, ” Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.” Plainly, Norman Bourlaug states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}.

Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food. According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and no food, no people. Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life and we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years. Recall Dr. Bourlaug’s prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the “Green Revolution” and to the extraordinary increases in the world’s supply of food. Please consider that the seemingly miraculous increases in humanity’s food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug’s great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers. We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing, large-scale food production capabiliities (as opposed to sustainable farming practices) on the population numbers of the human species between now and 2050.

If we keep doing the business-as-usual things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world’s food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the future. It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the corporate production of food; for providing broad support of sustainable farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present superabundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for following Dr. Bourlaug’s recommendation to “reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely.”

Many thanks, Kate, for speaking out loudly and clearly to the family of humanity about what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding synergistically at a breakneck pace toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s gigantic, ever expanding global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘WALL’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.

Many scientists have remarked eloquently on the collapse of civilizations. The global challenge we appear to face today, one that singular and unimaginable, is that the collapse of human civilization in Century XXI is not simply the end of another human civilization. What is occurring now is likely not only the collapse of a human civilization but also the human-driven destruction of the natural resource base, the ecology, and biodiversity of Earth. Concern for the future of life as we know it and for the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the children leads me to point to the great value I attach to the open discussion of the global predicament looming before the human family. We simply must make good use of the best available science to adequately explain the population dynamics leading to the collapse of our civilization. Without such knowledge, I cannot see how necessary changes in the behavioral repertoire of humankind can be made. Is there doubt in the mind of anyone in this community that the future will ultimately be brighter for children everywhere if people choose now to consume and hoard less; to protect, preserve and share more; and to effectively check the unbridled increase of unsustainable large-scale production capabilities as well as to humanely regulate the propagation of the human species?

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”

Henri-Frederic Amiel