Overpopulation Denial Syndrome*

Let’s stop with an Aesop’s fable – The Tale of the North Wind and the Sun.

[You have to read to the end to see how this relates to Overpopulation Denial Syndrome {ODS}]

The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.

“Let us agree,” said the Sun, “that he is the stronger who can strip that Traveler of his cloak.”

Very well,” growled the North Wind, and at once sent a cold, howling blast against the Traveler.

With the first gust of wind the ends of the cloak whipped about the Traveler’s body. But he immediately wrapped it closely around him, and the harder the Wind blew, the tighter he held it to him. The North Wind tore angrily at the cloak, but all his efforts were in vain. Then the Sun began to shine. At first his beams were gentle, and in the pleasant warmth after the bitter cold of the North Wind, the Traveler unfastened his cloak and let it hang loosely from his shoulders. The Sun’s rays grew warmer and warmer. The man took off his cap and mopped his brow. At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak, and, to escape the blazing sunshine, threw himself down in the welcome shade of a tree by the roadside.

A word of warning: I am going to repeat my message several times. Why? It is clear that this particular topic has many psychological walls around it that make it difficult for most people to consider, let alone discuss.

*First, here is the start of the article from which I stole my title. https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/pdfs/epub-044.pdf

“Professor Diana Coole of the University of London helpfully identifies what she calls silencing discourses – arguments used by those who wish to shut down, avoid or divert any reasoned discussion about the impacts of human population upon the environment and, indeed, upon our own wellbeing as a species. According to Coole (2013) there are six such silencing discourses: Population Scepticism, Fatalism, Decomposing, Declinism, Growth, and Shaming. As Director of Population Matters (https://populationmatters.org/) and seeking to raise the issue with colleagues in the environment movement, I’ve experienced all six silencers – sometimes as a volley! The first five of Coole’s silencing discourses can be summarized as follows.

1      Population Scepticism brushes away any concerns about population: ‘Birth rates are falling, the global population will peak at some point this (or maybe the next…) century. The problem will take care of itself’.

2         Population Fatalism goes a step further: ‘Global population is set to hit 9, maybe 10 billion by 2050, and there’s nothing we can do about it’.

3         Population Decomposing magics away the problem with technology: ‘It’s true that population growth presents some challenges – but technological fixes (like genetically modified crops, carbon capture etc.) can extend the boundaries of our planet, easily enabling it to absorb another 3, 4 billion or even more people’.

4             Population Declinism is the preference of nationalistic politicians, neoliberal economists and journalists seeking alarmist headlines: ‘A declining, ageing population means a declining, moribund, stagnant economy. Without more new workers – another cohort of consumers – who’s going to pay for our pensions?’.

[this seems to be the biggest challenge in Canada]

5          Population Growth presents the shiny face of that two-sided coin: ‘All growth is good – of people, of GDP. More people equals more productivity. Rapidly growing populations in time for developing countries a “demographic dividend” rather than a strain on infrastructure or ecosystems’.

6    Population Shaming – perhaps better termed Naming. Rational, factual responses to Population Shaming dry in the throat, as insinuation and moral condemnation are its modi operandi, attributing underlying dark motivations and associations with the worst manifestations of past population control (such as eugenics or ultranationalist movements) to anyone who raises the issue of human overpopulation.”

Next, let’s look at the summary from “Discussing why population growth is still ignored or denied”.

“The environmental crisis is rapidly accelerating, yet much of society and academia still ignores or denies that a key driver is overpopulation. Reaching any sustainable future requires that we break the denial dam and acknowledge and solve this issue. It is not “antihuman” to discuss this on the contrary it shows

the deepest concern for future generations and the life they will lead. Time is running out. Humane and noncoercive strategies exist to stabilize our population swiftly at 8 billion There are many humane and non-coercive strategies that the world can adopt to reduce the growing impact that our numbers are creating. These measures use education (especially of young women), family planning, and access to contraception, and they focus on allowing women to make their own choice about how many children they have. This is something we need to discuss and act on.” http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10042857.2016.1149296

That’s the good news: gentleness is more powerful than brute force. Now for the bad news – we are so much in denial or problems that we are not even noticing that there is a sun that can shine upon us and help us “remove our coat”, which I will  choose to symbolize our reliance on exponential growth in population/consumption for our current god – the economy – to survive.  Let’s imagine we were giving an award for the worst social problem in the world today. Do you have any nominations? International conflict? Racial prejudice? Environmental destruction? Millions of homeless refugees? Exploitation of women? There’s one problem that connects all of those, but politicians are often silent about it. Overpopulation may not be the root of all evil, but it is indeed at the root of many of the world’s other miseries. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/202009/the-psychology-denying-overpopulation

Expanding population can become a threat to humanity itself, as it undermines its own resource base, ultimately leading to the reassertion of “natural” controls. A well-known anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1972) noted how when faced with challenges of altered natural conditions, we tend to focus on modifying our environment rather than ourselves. Bateson argued that these basic causes of environmental crisis lie in the combined action of

• technological advance,
• population increase, and
• conventional (but wrong) ideas about the “nature of man” and his relation to the environment. [i.e.. there is a difference/separation between the man-made & natural worlds] http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10042857.2016.1149296

Denial of this and other tough issues seems to be a common malaise these days. This emotion is quite understandable because the issues we face today are so overwhelming that most individuals do not feel that they can do anything about them. The result is that when those of who have the luxury to grapple with issues such as overpopulation feel like Cassandra, a character in Greek mythology, who is cursed for her ability to predict the future. No one listens to her. One of the consequences was the ruinous fall of Troy to the Greeks. She herself was captured, and then killed. Well, I sure feel like her. Do you? This essay is going to explore a topic which was once a normal part of the environmental conversation but is no longer: overpopulation. My question is simple: why is it that we no longer talk about it? The Google data tells it all:

climate change”	55,400,000	482
climate change” + “overpopulation”	162,000	0

Data from 2008, United Nations Overpopulation Denial Conference

https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/denial.php

Similarly, somehow we deny that the exploding human population is not directly linked to the population collapse of wild species. Somehow the obvious link of Overpopulation Denial Syndrome [ODS] and our inability to deal with challenges such as the climate catastrophe, human caused 6^th mass extinction, soil depletion, toxic/nutrient poor food, refugee migration, etc. is not even allowed to be broached in “civilized company”. Why?

 

 

 

                   

Wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report by the conservation group WWF. The report says this “catastrophic decline” shows no sign of slowing. And it warns that nature is being destroyed by humans at a rate never seen before. Wildlife is “in freefall” as we burn forests, over-fish our seas and destroy wild areas, says Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF. “We are wrecking our world – the one place we call home – risking our health, security and survival here on Earth. Now nature is sending us a desperate SOS and time is running out.” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048

Why is that? It is simply that people are living everywhere that they can. The world is full, actually more than full. People need to eat – even if they emit almost no greenhouse gases. So more people means more farmland which means less wilderness. I want you to notice on this map that the wild area that remain have virtually no soil and are either too cold or too dry to grow food on or for people to even life. There aren’t many corners of the world left untouched by humanity. Recent research has highlighted that just 23% of the planet’s land surface (excluding Antarctica) and 13% of the ocean can now be classified as wilderness, representing nearly a 10% decline over the last 20 years. And more than 70% of what wilderness remains is contained within just five/four countries. [the Amazon is being quickly destroyed] Notice that the largest wild area are in Russia and Canada. I think this is why many Canadians don’t see this as a problem – when they drive north they are instantly in wilderness, so they think: “Everything must be fine for the wild animals.”

https://theconversation.com/five-maps-that-reveal-the-worlds-remaining-wilderness-110061

What we are seeing, but denying, is that our way of life is in collapse mode. The thing about collapse is that it happens so quickly and thus surprises people. This idea was first elucidated by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: “Improvement is hard and slow, but ruin is easy and rapid”. This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call “collapse,” which is typically sudden and often unexpected, like the proverbial “house of cards.” But why are such collapses so common? I propose that a major cause of collapse is denial, and the stress underlying most of our current problems is overpopulation. Countries like India already have too many people than they know what to do with. There is a massive un/under employment problem there for the youth.

“Studies show that unemployment is most prevalent among young and highly educated people. Urban men between the ages of 20 and 24 account for 13.5 percent of the working-age population but 60 percent of the unemployed. With competition increasing for the limited government jobs that ensure a secure future and better pay than most private jobs, each time new positions are announced, thousands of young graduates clamor to apply. For example, when the Mumbai city police posted 1,137 constable job openings—the job requires a high school diploma and pays $357 a month—more than 200,000 people applied, including candidates who had been trained as doctors, lawyers, and engineers.” https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/14/india-is-trapping-its-young-people/

The growing population in Africa is a big concern for not just African countries, but the world. Many of them are desperate to leave, as evidenced by the illegal migration to Europe. We can’t just let the population growth run wild in the hope that it’ll stop eventually. We don’t know for a fact if it will before it’s too late. Countries in Africa and Asia need dire measures to keep their population in check. We’ve destroyed the flora and fauna of this planet with the incessant use of our resources, causing the extinction of countless species. Other problems like Global Warming and depletion of resources are coming up due to overpopulation. The world is overpopulated right now. The people who believe that it’s a myth have a very shallow grasp of the problem. One reason why we cannot even talk about ODS is that the largest populations and highest birth rate countries are in the 3^rd world and thus any population control ideas are slammed as ‘racist’. However, ignoring the consequences of overpopulation is the most immoral thing we can do, whether we are good Catholics or ultra-progressive atheists, and whether we are concerned about people in the first or the third world. The world’s poor are the ones experiencing the worst consequences. It is their forests being obliterated most rapidly, their water being dried up or polluted, their children without enough food to eat, their tribes being driven from their homes by other local tribes who want the same scarcer and scarcer resources. There are other costs to overpopulation, both within and outside the boundaries of first world countries. The destruction of natural habitats to increase farmland and suburbs, combined with overfishing the oceans, has led to the extinction or near extinction of many other species, and diminished the pleasures of finding a quiet natural place to walk and listen to the birds. To the argument that it is immoral to encourage other people to reduce their family size, Cafaro counters that it is immoral to close our eyes to the environmental destruction, starvation, and future wars that follow from ignoring overpopulation.https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/202009/the-psychology-denying-overpopulation

Another dimension to the OPS  are the very real and difficult issues of Migration and Refugees. Like all things in real life migration can be good or bad, refugees can either enrich or tear apart the country they move to. Let’s now examine when Refugees led to the collapse of two societies: the Roman Empire and Lebanon.

The Battle of Adrianople (378 AD), is often considered the start of the process which led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. It was fought between an Eastern Roman army led by the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels. It ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths and the death of Emperor Valens. Now here is a key fact that relates to a delicate part of our conversation: refugees do, when a society is already weak and fractured & when the come in large numbers so that they do not integrate into the rest of society, destabilize and even lead to the collapse of that society. The Goths’ intention was not to take over the Roman Empire. What drove them to ask for permission to cross the Danube River and enter the Roman Empire was a fear of the Huns. Huns were central Asian nomads who had been moving westward for some time and had been placing a great deal of military pressure on the Goths. In response, the Goths wanted to put the Danube River between themselves and the Huns. In a sense, the Goths were refugees in 376, seeking the protection of the Roman Empire.  Clearly, over population in Africa/Middle East along with climate change leading to massive numbers of refugees trying to come to Europe [which has begun] could lead to the collapse of Europe just as it did to Rome.

 

 

 

 

Beirut 1950

Beirut Today [explosion of old munitions]

The sad demise of Lebanon from post WWII, when its capital Beirut was considered “The Paris of the Middle East”, tells a similar tale. Here is a small sample of the disastrous fall into ruin of a once rich, stable and beautiful country. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/15/lebanon-collapse-corruption-refugees-europe/

Here is yet another dimension to ODS. Think of the truckers blockade in Ottawa. Recent research demonstrates that perceived breakdown of society plays a key role in heightening perceptions of moral division that intensifies support for strong leaders. The study found that if people believed there was a breakdown in societal fabric, they were more likely to elect an authoritarian figure to restore order, such as Donald Trump. https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidence-of-a-causal-link-between-perceived-moral-division-and-support-for-authoritarian-leaders-62479

Now let’s address the view of most well-meaning, educated people from “The West” say this: “The rich westerners consume most of the world’s resources and emit most of the GHGs.” As far is this statement goes – it is true. The problem is it does not include many issues, for example:  species extinction, soil erosion, rain forest destruction, human slavery and the sex trade, tribal wars [eg. Rawanda] factories moved to poor countries from rich countries to reduce both what they pay their workers and the cost of environmental rules to reduce pollution, etc. All these problems are greatly exacerbated by high populations. Part of the problem is that our discussion are only about the quantity of life rather than the QUALITY OF LIFE. Personally, being alive is great not because I survive, but because I can experience joy and fun and good food. That means as there are more people in the 3^rd world thye want to move to Europe or North American [as our neighbours from Nigeria have] because of the quality of life. Yes, I agree with the bumper sticker below that less stuff is good, but the fact is as soon as we have a human being stuff is required.

One of our challenges is that most governments and economists see an ever-increasing population means an ever-increasing market for goods, and is better for “the economy.” But this is using a short-sighted definition of economic utility, which considers dollar signs in the immediate future but ignores the unequal distribution of those dollars into some people’s accounts but not others. The economic utility argument has multiple flaws if we see utility in a world in which fewer people are desperate and miserable, more people live comfortable lives, and more of us get to enjoy the best things in life (that should be free, like a nearby forest or stream). An excellent article from The Ecological Citizen examines in detail the psychology of denial. Professor Diana Coole of the University of London helpfully identifies what she calls silencing discourses – arguments used by those who wish to shut down, avoid or divert any reasoned discussion about the impacts of human population upon the environment and, indeed, upon our own well being as a species.

 

 

 

https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/pdfs/epub-044.pdf

The problem of denial is even deeper than the fact we are unable to even honestly discuss ODS. Call it global warming or climate change or the climate emergency, whatever you call it know about it and talk about it even acknowledge it:  and yet there is no real action that matters that has happened. Thus denial has a deeper socio-political-psychological dimension. A recent book explored this by examining a specific event in a rich and well educated country: Norway.

“Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? In Living in Denial, sociologist Kari Norgaard searches for answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from her study of “Bygdaby,” the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000-2001. In 2000-2001 the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible; and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on use of fossil fuels. Norgaard attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming.” Living in Denial-Climate Change&Emotions –K. Norgaard

So what can you do about this denial? First, understand it. Second, talk about. Third, in Canada at least – given that our birthrate is already low [1.5] – work to reduce/stop immigration by voting for a political party that can be honest enough to acknowledge that continued growth of “the economy” is impossible. The truth is the government’s programs don’t have immigrants/refugees to be “nice” – it is keep our economy growing, and that Ponzi scheme is finished. Fourth, support programs that educate and empower women as it is well known that this is single best way to reduce the birth rate AND simultaneously improve the quality of life. I want to leave you with an emphasis on the last point. We can improve the QUALITY of life for people [and wild plants/animals!] when there are few people. People are like any precious commodity, such as gold. Gold is only valuable because there is so little of it and it is so expensive to mine. Similarly, people have VALUE when there are fewer of them. Right now people are like the expendable crewman of Star Trek who get killed off in so many episodes – they don’t really matter. If you want people to matter, there have to be fewer of them.  This idea is very much aligned with the message of the fable about the winter wind and the sun this essay started with: Reducing population is not anti-human or anti-life it is actually about increasing the quality of life for people AND other species. However, to work, we need to talk about it in the same way the Sun was able to have the man voluntarily remove his coat – we need people to see, mostly by empowering and educating women [with good health care to most babies survive], that their lives will be BETTER when we reduce population. This action will mean they have more value. That they get more respect and less abuse.

So, given all this let’s consider the fact that this title from an article in “The Ecological Citizen” says:

This civilization is finished: Time to build an ecological civilization

As soon as we say ecological, that means the human must allow for a healthy population of other SPECIES, because if they die out it just means we, eventually, die out too. Once we count that population we, as humans, can live sustainably.  www.ecologicalcitizen.net   This biological reality was made clear to me by an article I read by a British evolutionary scientist who studies why it is that some species exist for millions of years while others only a few hundred thousand years. He said that when a species keeps its population balanced with other species within the environment it evolved for and does not over expand it exists as a species for much longer. In other words, overshoot and collapse – the way we are heading – only ensures that we, as a species, will not last as long as we could. Put another way, fewer people means humans will exist longer. If you want more, watch this video by Jack Alpert, who recently presented at CACOR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdksoUuAXDc   – it is titled “Underestimating Overpopulation”.

Finally, let’s end with a silly anecdote to make the point. Many years ago I drove through Wyoming. EVERY single person I drove past [in a truck] waved to me! Really, everybody! Why is that? Well, there are were not many people living there so meeting a person was a big deal. Everybody mattered! Never forget the Aesop’s fable when considering the challenge of overpopulation – it is the warm sun, the focus on improving the quality of life people [and other species] that is our goal! And I agree, everybody should matter – and they will, when there are fewer of us and we are not chronically stressed and competing against each other.

Post Script

This New York Times article about a local [Merrickville] Botanist & author Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a must read if you want to both feel and understand the depth to which our human over-population’s destruction of other species only ensures our own demise.

Using Science and Celtic Wisdom to Save Trees (and Souls)

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a botanist and author, has created a forest with tree species handpicked for their ability to withstand a warming planet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/climate/celtic-wisdom-trees-climate.html

Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was orphaned at 12. Her father, an English aristocrat, died under mysterious circumstances, while her mother, who traced her lineage to ancient Irish kings, perished in a car crash. Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was taken in by a kindly if neglectful uncle in Cork, and spent her summers with Gaelic-speaking relatives in the countryside.

There, under the tutelage of a maternal grandaunt, she was taught ancient Irish ways of life known as the Brehon laws. She learned that in Druidic thinking, trees were viewed as sentient beings that connected the Earth to the heavens. She was also versed in the medicinal properties of local flora: Wildflowers that warded off nervousness and mental ailments, jelly from boiled seaweed that could treat tuberculosis, dew from shamrocks that Celtic women used for anti-aging.

As a university student a few years later, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger put those teachings to the scientific test and discovered with a start that they were true. The wildflowers were St. John’s Wort, which indeed had antidepressant capacities. The seaweed jelly had strong antibiotic properties. Shamrocks contained flavonoids that increased blood flow. This foundation of ancient Celtic teachings, classical botany and medical biochemistry set the course for Dr. Beresford-Kreoger’s life. The more she studied, the more she discovered that the symbiosis between plants and humans extended far beyond the life-giving oxygen they produced. “Every unseen or unlikely connection between the natural world and human survival has assured me that we have very little grasp of all that we depend on for our lives,” she wrote in her most recent book, “To Speak for the Trees.” “When we cut down a forest, we only understand a small portion of what we’re choosing to destroy.  ”Deforestation, she continued, was a suicidal, even homicidal, act.

In her forties, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger turned to writing, though it would take a decade to find a publisher for her first manuscript. She has since published eight books, at least a couple of them Canadian best sellers. One was about holistic gardening, another about living a pared-down life. But her main focus was the importance of trees.She wrote about the irreplaceability of the boreal forest, which principally spans eight countries, and “oxygenates the atmosphere under the toughest conditions imaginable for any plant.” She introduced her “bioplan”: If everyone on earth planted six native trees over six years, she says it could help to mitigate climate change. She wrote about how a trip to the forest can bolster immune systems, ward off viral infections and disease, even cancer, and drive down blood pressure.  There have been skeptics. One publisher admonished her for being a scientist who described landscapes as sacred, she said. The head of a foundation, while introducing her following a screening of “Call of the Forest,” a documentary about her life, let slip that he didn’t believe a word of what she said.  Bill Libby, an emeritus professor of forest genetics at the University of California, Berkeley, said he initially had reservations when Dr. Beresford-Kroeger offered a biological explanation for why he felt so good after walking through redwood groves. She attributed his sense of well-being to fine particles, or aerosols, given off by the trees.

“She said the aerosols go up my nose and that’s what makes me feel good,” Dr. Libby said. Outside research has supported some of those claims. Studies led by Dr. Qi Ling, a physician who coedited a book for which Dr. Beresford-Kroeger was a contributor, found visits to forests, or forest bathing, lessened stress and activated cancer-fighting cells. A 2021 study from Italy suggested that lower rates of Covid-19 deaths in forested areas of the country were linked in part to immunity-boosting aerosols from the region’s trees and plants.“I was laughed at until fairly recently,” Dr. Beresford-Kroeger said, her Irish accent still strong. “People all of a sudden seem to be waking up.”