Eco-fascism and Overpopulation

 

A post by Jacopo Simonetta

 

"Eco-fascist" is the usual insult directed at anyone who dares to mention overpopulation. This is funny to me because, as far as I know, fascists are usually concerned with denatality, race purity and similar morbid fantasies, but not with overpopulation who is just about the number of persons and not about skin color and so on.

Here, I will not go back over the purely demographic aspects of the issue to which several posts have already been devoted (on "Effetto Cassandra" and on "Apocalottimismo", both in Italian).  Instead, I would like to talk about this singular cultural taboo, characteristic (though not exclusive) of industrial civilization.

To begin with.

To understand what we are talking about, let us consider that today there are almost 8 billion of us with a growth rate of about 80 million per year, it means 220,000 per day, over 9000 per hour, 75 per second.  This means an estimated human mass of about 400 million tons.  The world's average human population density is 55 people per square kilometer (excluding Antarctica), which means a square of not much over one hundred steps per side per head.  In Italy we are about 200 per square kilometer, which means half a hectare per person, but if we consider only the agricultural surface the square becomes only 40 steps per side (about 2000 square meters).

However, the number of people is only one of the factors involved because we use livestock, fields, industrial structures, buildings and much more to live.  All in all, the 'anthroposphere' (i.e. us with all the trappings) weighs about 40 trillion tons, which is something like 4,000 tons of concrete, metal, plastic, plants, livestock and so on for each of us. On average and very roughly.

But number is not the only element. Since 1800 the population has increased 8 times, but total consumption 140 times, and if it has started to fall in some countries, like ours, it is still growing globally.

The third determining factor, which is related to the other two, is technology, the effects of which are complex, but which, on the whole, makes the most of the remaining resources, but cannot create new ones.  Ultimately therefore, technology increases rather than to reduces both consumption and the degradation of the planet.  A fact already empirically observed by many authors (starting with Jevons as early as 1865) and scientifically demonstrated by Glansdorff and Prigogine in 1971.

The result is that the biomes, i.e. the great ecological systems into which the Biosphere was divided and which maintained climatic and environmental conditions on the planet compatible with life (including our own), no longer exist and today we speak about Anthromes.

Of the 21 anthromes identified, only 3 are considered "wildlands", i.e. deserts, tundra, and the remains of primary tropical forests, for a total of just over 20% of the earth's surface (excluding Antarctica).  

But even these territories are subject to severe and very serious degradation phenomena such as wildfires, melting permafrost, droughts and so on. 

All the rest, about 80% of the dry land, is occupied by totally artificial ecosystems, such as towns and countryside, or heavily modified ones, such as almost all the surviving forests and grasslands.   In the sea it is even worse.

This means that properly 'natural' ecosystems are practically vanished and that what scattered remains of wildlife survives in the interstices of our 'global anthill'.   In fact, it is miraculous that so much life still exists on Earth.

The 'Demographic Transition”

The father of the 'Demographic Transition' was Adolphe Landry, a French politician of the radical left, who was repeatedly member of parliament and minister.   Decidedly in favor of natalist policies and a staunch detractor of Malthus's work, Landry actually espoused his assumptions, but came to the conclusion that there was no need to reduce the birth rate because a large and dynamic population was a nation's main asset.    Instead, economic prosperity should be increased and spread so as to cause a gradual stabilization of the population, but at much higher levels than at the outset.   In other words, compared to Malthus, he reversed cause with effect.

Originating in the early 1900s and then reworked by numerous authors, in a nutshell, this theory maintains that there exists a 'traditional' condition in which misery, disease and war lead to a high mortality rate, compensated by a high birth rate, so that the population remains substantially stable.  Progress and industrialization increase prosperity and reduce mortality, so that the population increases while, at a later stage, the birth rate decreases until a substantial balance is restored, but at a much higher population levels.  Factors such as the availability of resources, the resilience of ecosystems, pollution, etc. have no substantial relevance.

On the basis of the scientific and historical knowledge available until the 1970s, the theory seemed to explain well what had happened in Europe and the USA over the last two centuries, so that it became a reference point for all demographic models.

So far, nothing strange.  The point is, however, that over the last 50 years the best knowledge, especially historical and anthropological, has amply demonstrated that there has never been a something such a 'traditional' state similar to that assumed by the theory.  On the contrary, populations have adopted very different reproductive strategies in different places and at different times.  In very many cases, even in Christian Europe, more or less effective forms of demographic control were practiced, either by limiting the birth rate (with various combinations of infertile ways of having sex, condoms, prolonged breastfeeding, abstinence, abortion, infanticide and abandonment), or by increasing the mortality of the elderly (abandonment and killing).

Those who did not do so earned a place in the history books because they triggered invasions, or died out, crushed by their own numbers.   If anything, it was the very special combination of historical and environmental factors that allowed Capitalism to take hold that created the cultural, social and economic conditions that led to two centuries of unprecedented birth and population growth in Europe and the USA. 

Looking at the rest of the world, it has been amply documented that, almost always, it was European colonization that first led to a demographic decline, sometimes considerable, and then to the frenzied increase that in some cases still lasts today.

In short, the 'demographic transition' began as a political proposal, grew as a scientific hypothesis and finally became a 'pious legend' in the etymological sense of the term.

So what?

So why is this model still used today, not only in school books, but also in the work of the UN and other political bodies, till to a large part of academia?   To put it very brutally: because it suits everyone.

It suits the capitalists because it is an excellent viaticum for claiming that capitalism has done a great deal of good and that economic growth must be pushed to the maximum, "conditio sine qua non" for the definitive solution to human problems.

It suits governments because it exempts them from taking difficult and often unpopular measures.

It suits the "right wing", which is obsessed with denatality and the possible extinction of the hypothetical "white race".  But also the nationalists of every country and ethnic group, because it denies that the high birth rate they hold dear is a harbinger of disaster.

It appeals to the clergy of the dominant religions, all of them more or less misogynistic and more or less obsessed with sexuality, regarded as intrinsically sinful.  The reproductive goal is thus indicated, sometimes openly and sometimes subtly, as the justification for sexual intercourse.  The fact that the consequent burden and risk falls entirely, or almost entirely, on women does not seem to be a problem, if anything the opposite.

It appeals alzo to supporters of left-wing ideologies, such as the aforementioned Landry, because it supports the idea that progress is a natural and irreversible phenomenon, as well as exempting the proletariat from any responsibility for any mishaps.

Western racists like it because it makes them feel they are in the vanguard of progress, and other ethnic racists like it because it promises them revenge.  And it appeals  to militarist and fascists because they like large mass of “cannon fodder”, but like it also to pacifists who don’t want accept that crisis, violence and war are unavoidable parts of human behavior. 

It also appeals to the variegated environmentalist world because it allows them to overlook the most difficult and deadly of our actual predicaments, thinking that it will sort itself out while we deal with renewable energy and recycling.

The advocates of mass immigration like it because it allows them to think that there may be no limits to the number of people living on a given territory, but so do those who oppose it because it allows them to say that the cause of overpopulation is the 10% of people that are coming, rather than the 90% that are already here.

Many feminists even like it, despite the fact that it is women who bear the heavy burden that the lack of anti-natalist policies of governments places on their shoulders.  The Third-Worlders like it too, despite the fact that, among the consequences of colonization, high population growth is the one that, more than any other, has by now condemned many populations to centuries of misery, social unrest, wars, etc.
Yes, because overpopulation means environmental degradation and pollution, unemployment, misery and exploitation, competition and conflict.  It is never the only factor at play, of course, but it just so happens that it has always been one of the main drivers of the most serious crises in human history.  But it is the first time that it has appeared, albeit in different forms, all over the planet at the same time.

Then “Demographic transition theory” suits those who have power and affluence, but at the same time pleases to people sincerely involved with the poor and the weak.  And is very useful for those who want to rise to political power or, more modestly, to please their readers.   Real poor, women and weak pay for all of them, but nobody care, not even themselves because it is very difficult for facts to make people change their minds when it goes against their feelings, identity believes and personal interests.
However, overpopulation it is not an invention of some eccentric eco-fascist  or of a sect of pathological misanthropes, but an objective reality and to have ignored it is, by far, the most formidable obstacle now on the road to a hypothetical transition towards a "sustainable" society in the proper sense, and not just propaganda.

How will it end?  This is one of the few safe forecasts: we don't know how or when, but humanity will come back within the carrying capacity of the planet.  It certainly will, no questions. Just it is a pity that every day that passes, every mouth and every kWh more contribute to reducing this carrying capacity. So the longer we wait, the worse it will be because in a world where there is no space available for new colonization, migration is not either a solution because it only shifts the acme of the crisis from one place to another.

Where the birth rate and consumption do not fall fast enough, mortality will rise and that is all.

The end of the "population boom": the Seneca collapse of Ireland's population during the great famine

The story of the Great Famine in Ireland is a starkly clear example of a "Seneca Collapse", that is of a case where decline is much more rapid than growth. Is something in store for us at the global level? (Image source Rannpháirtí anaithnid (old) at English Wikipedia)

In a previous post, I argued that many current global population projections are mistakenly based on the idea that the "demographic transition" will work backward. That is, it is often assumed that impoverished people will tend to make more children and that, therefore, the world's population will keep growing even in the midst of the profound economic decline that could accompany a resource and climate crisis. (this is, for instance, the assumption of the original "The Limits to Growth study in 1972)

I proposed, instead, that the start of a major economic/climate crisis will cause an immediate reduction of the birth rates in part as the result of the declining health of fertile women and, in part, by a rational response by families who would understand that they can only care for a limited number of children in a condition of increasing poverty.

That is, there won't be a population increase in the midst of a major crisis and the decline of birth rates would immediately bring the start of a worldwide population decline that could even take the shape of a true "Seneca Collapse." To support my argument, I brought the example of the Soviet Union, whose population started declining even before the political collapse of the Union. I also mentioned several examples of other Western Countries (e.g. Italy) where birth rates have been going down in parallel with the worsening of the economic conditions, to the point that we are starting to see an overall population decline.

This interpretation was criticized in the comments by some who argued that, yes, my interpretation may be correct for relatively modern and "Westernized" countries, but not for the poorest areas such Africa or Asia. These commentators argued that people in these areas will continue to make as many children as they can, no matter what happens around them; apparently as a result of the Imams telling them to do so (or by evil dictator Erdogan, or the like).

I don't think this criticism is correct and I can counter it with an example. We all know the story of the Irish famine that took place between 1845 and 1852, and that killed a large fraction of the Irish population. We know something about the number of deaths, about how many Irish emigrated, but we know relatively little of how the famine affected birth rates. Did Irish women try to compensate for the higher mortality by having more children?

On this point, I found a comprehensive study produced by Phelim P. Boyle and Cormac O Grada on Demography, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 543-562 (here is the link). It takes some assumptions and extrapolations to determine the Irish birth rates before and after the famine. They also do not report graphs, but only tables. However, their conclusion is clear: birth rates declined with the famine in Ireland. In other words, the Irish families didn't try to compensate for the higher mortality by having more children; not at all.

This is confirmed by what we see of the Irish population in the decades after the famine. Even though food supply ceased to be a problem, still the population continued to decline or remain stable well into the 20th century. The Irish of those times didn't have good contraceptives, but they seem to have coped mainly by retarding the marriage age and by adopting a lifestyle that discouraged sexual activity among young people.

This is relevant for the case I am discussing here. In the 19th century, the Irish peasants were Catholic (or, if you prefer, "Papists"). The catholic view of marriage was supposed to be at that time (as it is still today in some circles) that a married couple should have as many children as the Lord sends them - that is as many as possible. After the famine, the Irish remained Catholic, but they totally disregarded the advice that the may perhaps have received from their priests. It was a perfectly rational choice - the Irish were not stupid.

We are clearly discussing something difficult to quantify, but I tend to think that most people on this planet are not so stupid as PR specialists seem to believe. So, from these historical examples (Russia and Ireland) I would say that a future economic/climate crisis will be immediately accompanied by a decline in birth rates and, hence, of population. If that happens, it will be a good thing as the pressure on the ecosystem will be reduced. That doesn't mean that all the problems we face will be solved, but at least we don't have to worry that people will worsen the situation by breeding like rabbits.

The "Limits to Growth" was right: Italy's population starts declining.

The "base case" scenario described in the 2004 edition of "The Limits to Growth", an update of the original study sponsored by the Club of Rome and published in 1972. Note how the world's population is supposed to start declining some years after the peaking of the world's economy. We are not yet seeing this decline at the global level, but we may be seeing it in some specific regions of the world; in particular in Italy.

More and more data are accumulating to disprove the legend of the "mistakes" that has been accompanying the study titled "The Limits to Growth" (LTG). For instance, Graham Turner has shown how the historical data for the world's economy have been following rather closely the curves of the "base case" scenario presented in 1972. But the fact that this scenario has been working well up to the beginning of the 21st century doesn't mean it will keep working in the same way in the future. The base case scenario describes a worldwide economic collapse that should start at some moment during the first two-three decades of the century. Clearly, the world's economy has not collapsed, so far, even though it may be argued that it is giving out ominous signs that it is starting to do just that. But, we can't yet prove that the base case scenario was right.

Yet, the LTG collapse scenario is an average over the whole world and we may imagine that some sections of the world's economy should collapse earlier, and some later. And, indeed, it appears that some local economies are collapsing right now. It may be that a country like Italy is already well advanced in this process, so that we shouldn't be not just seeing the decline of its GdP, but also the start of an irreversible population decline. And some recent data indicate that this is exactly the case: the LTG base case scenario is playing out in Italy, and probably not just in Italy.

So, let's try to make a qualitative comparison of the LTG scenario and the actual data for Italy. First of all, the scenario shows how the consumption of natural resources is supposed to reach a maximum and then decline, followed by a similar trajectory for the economic output. We are already well past this point in Italy. As you can see in the figure below, from a previous post on Cassandra's legacy, Italy's consumption of hydrocarbon fuels (by far its main source of energy) peaked in 2005, followed by the peak in the GdP in 2008. Considering that the GdP is a measure of the overall economic output of a country, we can take it as proportional to the parameters that were indicated as the industrial and agricultural production in the LTG study (the data for 2015  indicate a small GdP increase for Italy, but that changes little to the overall trend).

So, we may say that the base case LTG scenario has been playing out in Italy in terms of the behavior of the economy of the country. But, if this is the case, at some point we should expect another curve of the scenario to peak and start declining: the population curve. And, indeed, we seem to be seeing exactly that. Here are the most recent data from the Italian statistical agency, ISTAT

You can see the remarkable jumping up in the mortality rate for 2015: it corresponds to 165,00 more deaths than births. Despite the influx of immigrants, Italy has lost 139,000 residents in 2015; not a large loss (0.23%) but it is significant. And it had never happened during the past few decades. Also, Italy sees for the first time in decades a reduction in the life expectancy at birth (from 80.3 years to 80.1 years for males and from 85 years to 84.7 years for females).

What have been the causes of this population decline? There are several, and the torrid summer of 2015 has surely played a role in killing more old people than usual, as you can see in the figure below (again from ISTAT)

Then, other causes have been proposed; the general aging of the population, the economic crisis, the worsening diet, pollution, the higher costs of medical care, and more. But the point, here, is not to discuss these various causes, most of which probably had a role in the decline. The model doesn't describe the details of the process, nor it is detailed to the point of considering different age cohorts. It is a quantitative description of a relatively simple phenomenon: a population under stress because of reduced resource availability and pollution will react by an increasing number of deaths in its weakest age groups: the elderly ones. And this is exactly what we are seeing in Italy: a decline in population following the decline in GdP.

Of course, we only have data for one year and we cannot say if what we are seeing is a long-term trend or just a statistical fluctuation. Yet, it is hard not to think that the degrading economic, social conditions in Italy, as well as the degradation of the ecosystem, are not taking their toll on the population. And that we are indeed seeing the LTG scenarios playing out.

The Limits to Growth Revisited: some comments

Recently, I received a set of comments on my 2011 book, "The Limits to Growth Revisited". I am publishing them here with some minimal edits; with the permission of the author. 


by Max Kummerow

Dear Dr. Bardi,

I've just finished reading limits to growth revisited, a great pleasure. The logistic function adds greatly to the original Malthus exponential population, linear food, and the predator-prey, capital-resource comparison makes sense, although the "prey" can't regenerate, so we only get one cycle with a non-renewable resource. So humans try to find a new resource.

I was an undergraduate chemistry major who ended up in the social sciences, eventually dabbling a little in econometrics. I read some philosophy of science and have a few expansions of your comments on modeling to suggest:

1. The "all models are false" quote comes, according to Peter Kennedy's "Guide to Econometrics" (fifth edition, I think) from G.P. Box, the giant of time series statistics. The full quote is: "All models are false, some are useful." The reason all models are false is that to be useful a model must be a simplification of the real system, which is infinitely complex in all real cases. So all models suffer from omitted variables bias. Useful models reproduce important behaviors and offer insights about the system.

2. Hugh Mellor, a Cambridge U. philosopher of science commented that all models fail to mention "auxiliary conditions" or "side conditions" (or omitted variables) that are assumed not to vary. We assume, for example, that the sun will rise and no nuclear war will occur. And so on. Sometimes these omitted variables do change and so they matter.

3. Nassim Taleb noted that extremely improbable events do occur and can have big impacts--the Black Swan idea. But since they are so rare, the probability of these events can't be estimated. The black swan phases come from the example of inductive logic that observing any number of white swans cannot finally prove the generalization all swans are white, but one black swan can disprove it. This led to Popper's falsification logic where we try to confront null hypotheses with data that might disprove them.

4. However, in a complex system, any counterexample that might seem to require rejecting a null hypothesis, can be rationalized as due to some confounding variable, leaving the generalization unrefuted. So falsificationism fails to be a panacea of inductive logic.

5. David Orrell, a former climate modeler, has written about complexity, arguing that there will always be inability to confirm complex models (due to limited data, measurement issues, misspecification, functional form, etc.), so that a reasonable person could choose to doubt. Especially if funded by an energy company and ideologically inclined to doubt. But, Orrell says, even though we can't specify and prove a complete model, we almost always know enough to choose better and worse policies. (Best to emit less carbon and slow population growth.) 

6. My time series teacher, Michael McAleer, formerly at the University of Western Australia, has written a book (I believe Keutzenkamp is the co-author) on simplicity in models. Their idea is that there is a kind of optimum degree of model complexity such that too much complexity makes the model less useful, in principle, because of the inability to really verify complex mathematical interrelationships. For example, adding terms leads to multiplication of interaction effects, even in linear models.

7. George Soros talks about "reflexivity" echoing his mentor Karl Popper, who pointed out "the poverty of historicism" meaning that one can't forecast the future in principle, due, in addition to complexity and chaos, to the fact that people can decide to act differently based on the forecast. So if everyone believed climate change will end civilization, we could easily solve the problem, whereas if everyone denies climate change it will surely end civilization. Inherent indeterminacy.

8. This is related to the idea of "free will" which a philosopher told me is not a good way to think about decisions. We always have some choice and some constraints--limited information and limited ability to process information. So we should be trying to improve our decision making capability to get better decisions and always realize our limits. The "ultimate resource" is also a limited resource--very important point.

9. Game theory provides formal confirmation of Hardin's tragedy of the commons--there are games where rational individual decisions lead to the emergent property of collectively irrational outcomes (prisoner's dilemma, for example). 

10. Don McCloskey (now Dierdre) classified quantitative models in economics as merely another form of rhetoric, rather than any actual proof or absolute confirmation. Econometricians with different ideologies come up with different models from the same data. McAleer has an example where two models fit the data about equally well, but lead to opposite policy conclusions. (Sherlock Holmes is in the title of that paper.)  LTG succeeded as rhetoric and so did the refutations.

Getting the philosophy of science foundations in place is a key to good models. 

Final point: I think every discussion of fixing the world should emphasize the key role of demography. Population growth and economic growth are both fundamental drivers of ecological damage. About 45% of the world has transitioned to below replacement fertility levels (so it isn't that hard to do), but the wide divergence of fertility rates (from <1 to >7 between countries) and the high fertility of religious fundamentalists (See Kaufman, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth) means fertility could rise as below replacement groups exponentially decline and high fertility groups exponentially increase. Also drives immigration, of course. The population topic was driven off the agenda along with the LTG topic. It is amazing how universal the faith in growth as a solution to scarcity is, when in fact, it is growth that creates scarcity.  

Max Kummerow