The Faber Book of Science

by John Carey

  In not too long a time, the population increase will halt; but for the worst possible reason – there will be a catastrophic rise in the death rate. The famines will come, the pestilence will strike, civil disorder will intensify, and by AD 2000 some governmental leader may well be desperate enough to push the nuclear button.

  How to prevent this, then?

  We must stop living by the code of the past. We have, over man’s history, developed a way of life that fits an empty planet and a short existence marked by high infant-mortality and brief life-expectancy. In such a world there was a virtue in having many children, in striving for growth in numbers and power, in expansion into endless space, in total commitment to that limited portion of mankind that could make up part of a viable society.

  But none of this is so any longer. At the moment, child mortality is low, life expectancy high, the earth full. There are no empty spaces of worth, and so interdependent is man that it is no longer safe to confine loyalty to only a portion of mankind.

  What was common sense in a world that once existed has become myth in the totally different world that now exists, and suicidal myth at that.

  In our overpopulated world we can no longer behave as though woman’s only function in life is to be a baby-producing machine. We can no longer believe that the greatest blessing a man can have is many children.

  Motherhood is a privilege we must literally ration, for children, if produced indiscriminately, will be the death of the human race, and any woman who deliberately has more than two children is committing a crime against humanity.

  We also have to alter our attitude toward sex. Through all the history of man it has been necessary to have as many children as possible, and sex has been made the handmaiden of that fact. Men and women have been taught that the only function of sex is to have children; that otherwise it is a bestial and wicked act. Men and women have been taught that only those forms of sex that make conception possible are tolerable, that everything else is perverse, unnatural, and criminal.

  Yet we can no longer indulge in such views. Since sex cannot be suppressed, it must be divorced from conception. Birth control must become the norm and sex must become a social and interpersonal act rather than a child-centered act.

  We also have to alter our attitude toward growth. The feeling of ‘bigger and better’ that bore up mankind through his millennia on this planet must be abandoned. We have reached the stage where bigger is no longer better. Although the notion of more people, more crops, more products, more machines, more gadgets – more, more, more – has worked, after a fashion, up to this generation, it will no longer work. If we attempt to force it to work, it will kill us rather quickly.

  In our new and finite world, where for the first time in history we have reached, or are reaching, our limit, we must accept the fact of limit. We must limit our population, limit the strain we put on the earth’s resources, limit the wastes we produce, limit the energy we use. We must preserve. We must preserve the environment, preserve the other forms of life that contribute to the fabric and viability of the biosphere, preserve beauty and comfort. And if we do limit and preserve, we will have room for deeper growth even so – growth in knowledge, in wisdom, and in love for one another.

  We also have to alter our attitude toward localism. We can no longer expect to profit by another’s misfortune. We can no longer settle quarrels by wholesale murder. The price has escalated to an unacceptable level. World War II was the last war that could be fought on this planet by major powers using maximum force. Since 1945, only limited wars have been conceivable, and even these have been monumental stupidities, as the situations in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East make clear.

  The world is too small for the kind of localism that leads to wars. We can have special pride in our country, our language, and our literature, our customs and culture and tradition, but it has to be the abstract pride we have in our baseball team or our college – a pride that cannot and must not be backed by force of arms.

  Localism doesn’t even have the virtue of being useful in times of peace. The problems of the world today are planetary in scope. No one nation, not even if it is as rich as the United States, as centralized as the Soviet Union, or as populous as China, can solve its important problems today. No matter how a nation stabilizes population within its own borders, no matter how it rationalizes the use of its own resources, no matter how it conserves its own environment, all would come to nothing if the rest of the world continued its rabbit-multiplication and its poisoning of free will.

  Even if every nation sincerely took measures, independent of each other, to correct the situation, the solutions one nation arrived at would not necessarily match those of its neighbors, and all might fall.

  To put it bluntly, planetary problems require a planetary program and a planetary solution, and that means cooperation among nations, real cooperation. To put it still more bluntly, we need a world government that can come to logical and humane decisions and can then enforce them.

  This does not mean a world government that will enforce conformity in every respect. The cultural diversity of mankind is surely a most valuable characteristic and it must be preserved – but not where it will threaten the species with suicide.

  All these requirements for change go against the grain. Who really wants to downgrade motherhood and regard babies as enemies? Who is comfortable at the thought of dissociating sex and parenthood? Who is ready to submit his national pride to a truly effective world government? Who is willing to abandon the attempt to get as much as possible out of the world and settle instead for a controlled and limited exploitation?

  Yet the logic of events is actually forcing us in that direction, willing or not. The birth rate is dropping in those nations that have access to birth-control methods. Sexual mores are loosening everywhere. The people are growing more concerned about the environment, and the clamour for cleaner air, water, and soil is becoming louder every day.

  Most of all, and most heartening, localism is retreating. There is increasing social and economic cooperation among neighboring nations; a stronger drive in the direction of regionalism. More important still, there is a clear understanding that a major war, particularly one between the United States and the Soviet Union, is inadmissable. These two superpowers have quarrelled at levels of intensity that at any time up to the 1930s would have meant war – and now those quarrels do not even bring about a rupture in diplomatic relations. Not only must these nations not fight; they must not even snub each other.

  But this motion in the right direction does not seem to be a matter of choice. Rather, stubborn humanity is inching forward to help itself only because the pressure of circumstance has closed all other passageways.

  And this motion in the right direction is not fast enough. The population increase continues to outpace the education for birth control; the environment continues to deteriorate more rapidly than we can bring ourselves to correct matters; and, worse, nations still stubbornly quarrel, and continue to place local pride over the life and death of the species.

  We must not only reorient our thinking toward motherhood, sex, growth and localism as we are beginning to do; but we must do it more quickly. Our society cannot survive another generation of the steadily intensifying stresses placed on it. If we continue as we are and change no faster, then by 2000 the technological structure of human society will almost certainly have been destroyed. Mankind, having been reduced to barbarism, may possibly be on the way to extinction. The planet itself may find its ability to support life seriously compromised.

  The good earth is dying; so in the name of humanity let us move. Let us make our hard but necessary decisions. Let us do it quickly. Let us do it now.

  Steve Connor, reporting from San Francisco in the Independent on 22 February 1994, brings Asimov’s figures up to date.

  Over-population threatens to become a global crisis unless drastic action to dramatically cut birth rates begins now, the American Associa
tion for the Advancement of Science was told yesterday. World population is already nearly 4 billion more than the 2 billion the planet can comfortably sustain, according to an ecological study of natural resources to be published later this year. Fertile soil for growing crops, unpolluted water, fossil fuels and the flora and fauna on which humanity depends are all being depleted at a rate that will lead to catastrophic natural, social and political disasters by the end of the next century, a leading ecologist told the meeting.

  David Pimentel, Professor of Ecology at Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, released the results of a year-long study into the optimum human population – the number of people the planet can comfortably support with a reasonable standard of living for all. The study concludes the present population of 5.6 billion will have to shrink to 2 billion. However, the projected population for 2100 is expected to be between 12 and 15 billion. Professor Pimentel acknowledged that drastic adjustments to cut the population to 2 billion will cause serious difficulties. ‘But continued rapid population growth will result in even more severe social, economic and political conflicts – plus catastrophic public health and environmental problems.’

  Sources: Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind. A Panoramic View of Fringe Science, Technology, and the Society of the Future. Oxford University Press, 1987. The Independent, 22 February 1994.

  Acknowledgements

  For some years I have pestered friends and colleagues for help and suggestions. I should like to thank them all for their kindness and forbearance. I am particularly conscious of my debt to Dinah Birch, David Bodanis, David Cairns, Richard Dawkins, Michael Dunnill, Artur Ekert, Xandra Hardie, Harriett Hawkins, Kevin Jackson, Peter MacDonald, Sir John Maddox, Robert May and Claire Preston. Chris Reid and Julian Loose at Fabers have been unfailingly helpful and supportive. All the mistakes, of course, are mine.

  J.C.

  For permission to reprint copyright material the publishers gratefully acknowledge the following:

  DANNIE ABSE: to Sheil Land Associates for ‘In the Theatre’ from Collected Poems 1948–1976 (Hutchinson, 1977). NEIL ARMSTRONG et al: to Time Warner Inc for First on the Moon: a Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin, with Grace Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin (Little, Brown, 1970). ISAAC ASIMOV: to the Estate of Isaac Asimov, c/o Ralph M. Vicinanza Ltd for ‘Black Holes’ and ‘The Good Earth is Dying’, reprinted in The Roving Mind: A Panoramic View of Fringe Science, Technology, and the Mind of the Future (Prometheus Books, 1983). PETER ATKINS: to Penguin Books Ltd for Creation Revisited: The Origin of Space, Time and The Universe (Penguin Books, 1994; first published by W. H. Freeman). Copyright © Peter Atkins, 1992. W. H. AUDEN: to Faber & Faber Ltd and Random House Inc for ‘In Memory of Sigmund Freud’ from Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden. 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