The title of this piece states there are four troubling numbers of which we need to be aware. Let me break them down for you.
The Number 8,000,000,000
I was born in 1949. A year later the world’s population topped 2.5 billion. This week the United Nations announced that humans on Earth had just surpassed the 8 billion mark. That means in my lifetime, humans have increased by 320%.
When listening to a satellite radio station yesterday, the announcer did a drum roll and celebrated the 8-billion milestone. My immediate thought was, is this a good thing, a statement about human resilience? Or is it a sign that human population growth is out of control?
In some respects, the number is a positive. It reflects the improvements humanity has made in the fields of medicine and agriculture. If this growth were evenly distributed over the Global North and South, humanity could handle it. But that is not the case.
The largest growth is happening in places least able to feed the population, where freshwater scarcity is the greatest, and where climate change and extreme weather events are unleashing an enormous toll. We are talking about Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the Global South which are relying on food imports to meet the 2,000 calorie-a-day measure that humans need to thrive.
What is the planet’s carrying capacity for our species? Some time ago I worked out the numbers and you can read what I wrote ten years ago on this subject. But here is a quick summary.
If we planted on every hectare of arable land on Earth enough food crops to produce 2,000 calories per day, the planet does have more than enough carrying capacity to handle 8 billion. In fact, the number is closer to 66 billion, give or take 10 billion. That’s well above the 8 we have today. So should we be worried when forecasters tell us we will hit 9 billion in the next 15 years, and 10 billion by mid-century?
Without climate change in the mix, we would probably be okay. But we don’t have a handle on global warming and based on what is happening at COP27, it is likely years before all the nations of the world will be sufficiently aligned to mitigate and adapt to climate change while dramatically reducing its human-produced causes.
The Number 419
What exactly have we been doing to our atmosphere? In 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels hit 310 parts per million (PPM). That was 60 PPM above the number in 1850. Today, we have surpassed 419 PPM. So in my lifetime, atmospheric CO2 has risen by 35%. And since the Industrial Revolution, CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by two-thirds.
The last time CO2 was this high was 2 to 20 million years ago before Homo sapiens had evolved from our hominid ancestors. And CO2 levels in Earth’s past history didn’t rise at the speed we are seeing today. Al Gore called it a hockey-stick curve with humans responsible for the shaft.
The Number 636
A third number to consider is the rise in representation by fossil-fuel companies at the current COP27 climate conference. At COP26, 536 fossil-fuel lobbyists showed up. This year like rising CO2, fossil fuel lobbyists have grown to 636. That’s 19% more coming to ensure that coal, oil, and natural gas continue to flow and produce greenhouse gas emissions into the foreseeable future.
These lobbyists and fossil-fuel company sponsors (18 of the 20 COP27 sponsors are associated with the energy sector) prominently on display at COP27 want the rest of us to know that the energy they produce that pollutes is necessary for the foreseeable future and part of the low-carbon energy transition process. Of course, it means they can continue to operate and profit from polluting the atmosphere and further adding to the conditions responsible for climate change. As one COP27 delegate put it, the talks in Egypt are turning into a rehabilitation exercise for fossil fuel companies.
The Number 100
This last number represents the total number of heads of state and countries in attendance at COP27. That’s a drop from the 197 who attended Glasgow’s COP26 and not a good sign. Considering that Glasgow was held when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were being enforced globally, it drew over 30,000 attendees from across the planet. And although COP27 has 14,000 more registered attendees, where have all the countries gone?
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These COP meetings are a joke. They insist that we need to clean up but then, hypocritically they push for more coal mines to open, drill more oil and gas fields, then they blow up the Nordstream pipeline releasing a huge volume of gas into the atmosphere. Shell has on many occasions just “burnt off” full industrial gas storage tanks rather than sell it at a cheaper rate to the public. They all see fast money in waste, a very bad incentive.
Remember CFC’s in the late 1980’s putting a hole in our ozone ? Their solution was to use HCFC’s instead, much worse than the original CFC ! and HCFC’s are still used to this day in refrigerator and air conditioning units etc. It is all about money and who does, or does not, get to make it. Like gangsters at the meeting table dividing the pie among themselves, to the cost of everybody else.
I remember the same nonsense regarding free plastic grocery bags at the store. They said they would now charge customers for bags to “reduce plastic waste”. What they actually did was increase the use of other plastic bags 3 fold to package food. Now we have fish sold in a plastic bag, wrapped in several plastic sheets inside that sealed bag!? It is even a cook in the toxic plastic bag that is covered with ink too..yuk! Progress?
In the 1970’s, fish was sold in a plain paper wrapper only. Milk was sold in recyclable glass bottles, also makes the milk taste better than plastic jugs. Plastic has been a known carcinogen since the mid 1950’s, now it is very hard to find plastic free packaged food. Plastic can also now be found all over the planets environment and it’s not going away. Cancer, like oil or plastics, is big money for the unethical criminals that control the world.
It is always the same, they make out they care but they only care about profit$.
Corporations don’t care about environment or people etc, nor do their corrupt politician puppet cronies unless they can fine and tax the public for it along the way.
Waterways and the water table need cleaned up (by natural methods not by more chemicals) rather than used as a trash pit. Trees need to be planted to balance the carbon sink. For too many centuries have people been deforesting the planet. Messing with the ecosystem is not a smart move yet all humans do is take and trash, take and trash. It will run out one day and then we are all joining the dinosaurs.
I agree, the world is not “overpopulated”, not even close, but it does have a fatal management crissis that wants to blame it all on the public who it brainwash into buying their corporate brand trash products in the name of selfish corporate wealth and “trendy fashion”.
They don’t even know the real population count, it is just a blind guess. Do they have everybody registered, even in the no contact tribes of the worlds deep jungles etc? In reality we will soon have a population collapse due to a generational gap. 3rd world nations need to have many children, as did recent modern industrial western nations pre 20th century, because of the mortality rate in poor conditions. When you are in that situation most of your children will not survive to adulthood.
Why is there a food shortage… Monsanto is the main reason, they want to own and control the worlds crops by copyright. Africa saw many famines because it was either bad gmo seed or, because they did not buy Monsanto chemicals to grow or protect the crops.
Another issue is corporate waste again, corporations would rather trash surplus food than to give it to the hungry. They don’t care is people suffer, it inflates their “elitist” ego’s.