Talking Shop: A minute before midnight

“There would be no

population explosion if

people who are trying to

keep the wolf from the door

wouldn’t let the stork fly

in through the window.”

—Evan Esar

Watch the movie Inferno, based on Dan Brown’s award-winning thriller by the same name, and the first few minutes alone will make you gasp, for the actor on the screen is stating real numbers, numbers that are shocking, scary and a shrill warning. The warning is as loud as it is numbing—and unless a near-extinction-like event happens, mankind is headed for doom. Let me share some excerpts, which should set you thinking and get this column rolling.

It took the Earth’s population 100,000 years to reach a billion people. And then just 100 more to reach two billion; and only 50 years to double yet again. By 1970, the Earth had four billion people. Today, we are over 8 billion. Given this sheer number, mankind is destroying the very means by which life is sustained. Every single global ill that plagues the Earth can be traced back to human overpopulation.

We demand inaction. We clear-cut. We dump. We consume. We destroy. Half the animal species on Earth have vanished in just the last 40 years. Yet, mankind keeps attacking the very environment that it depends on for survival. Clearly, it shall take a catastrophe for us to learn a lesson, just to get our attention. Nothing changes behaviour like pain. Maybe this same pain can save us, for if it doesn’t, there’s little else in the way of stopping man from not being. It is almost as if we need a switch which will ensure the disappearance of half the people from the planet. At the present going rate, the population will double in the next two to three decades, and that number will not be sustainable on this here Earth.

What is overpopulation?

The dictionary says overpopulation is a state where the human population rises to an extent that exceeds the carrying capacity of the ecological setting. In an overpopulated environment, the number of people is more than the available essential materials needed for survival, such as transport, water, shelter, food and social amenities. With 8 billion humans manning (and ‘womanning’) the planet, we have surpassed the number that the planet can peacefully provide for.

In fact, if we go back 30 years to 1994, when the global population was 5.5 billion, British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough was labelled ‘harsh’ by many for calling the swarming masses of humans a “plague on the Earth”. In his view, nearly every environmental problem the world was facing—from Climate Change to biodiversity loss, water stresses and conflicts over land—could be traced back to rampant reproduction over the last few centuries. In that same year, a team of researchers from Stanford University said the ideal size of our species should be between 1.5 and 2 billion people. Well, we are already over four times that number, and growing.

The saving grace is that this growth number is slowing and has almost flattened to a plateau. Take our very own India, which recently surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation. We are now seeing birth rates per woman decreasing. The United Nations (UN) has said India’s population surge is stabilising, with its total fertility rate—the average number of children born per woman—falling to 2, below the replacement level. India’s policies of widening public access to healthcare systems and family planning services are delivering, but they need to be invested in and broadened further.

What about ‘midnight’?

The reason behind using the word ‘midnight’ in the headline comes from the analogy of bacteria in a chemistry beaker, creatures that double in number every minute. By this logic, we are but a minute away from that midnight, because another doubling of the global population will prove to be the last straw and break the camel’s back.

If we talk India, we are presently sitting at around 1.5 billion people and oft-talk with pride about our ‘demographic dividend’. However, we don’t seem to have taken advantage of our young and working-age population, always a reliable indicator of any nation that makes effective use of its demographic dividend as a percentage of the working-age population in its labour force. In 2021, the figure for India was 46 per cent; the corresponding global figure was significantly higher at 59 per cent. A growing population only means that the battle for life-sustaining resources such as food, water, land and more is going to get grimmer. Already, reports suggest that over 820 million Indians are water-stressed. These numbers will rise as resources shrink in the era of the Anthropocene—a term used for periods of time during when human activities begin impacting the environment, enough to constitute geological changes.

We recently witnessed the devastation in Joshimath and other hilly regions in Northern India, where over-exploitation of resources saw hillsides crumbling and roads and houses developing fissures and cracks that led to entire towns being abandoned as people fled to save their lives. Similar reports have now come from many of India’s hilly states.

What can be done?

Well, about the only thing for the world and India to do now is educate, elaborate and sensitize the common people to the looming doom that awaits mankind if population is not controlled. That’s because the way population has been exploding over the last century or so, there will be a fight for food and other sustenance on the streets. As I wrote above, actual population numbers are numbing, scary and throw up a warning. The warning is loud and strident; that unless we rein in this runaway population horse, a near-extinction-like event will be needed to correct things on our planet, and that is not something that anyone would ever wish for.

As Nobel Laureate Henry W Kendall famously said, “If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity, and will leave (behind) a ravaged world.” The moral of the story is that it’s better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing and criticise others. Today and hereon, let’s go ahead and create, have fun; but remember to keep the deadly stork at bay.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal