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Paul Ehrlich: 7 Steps Toward a Sustainable Society – #1
September 25th, 2008 by Paul Ehrlich
A central problem of the human predicament discussed in The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment is that we’re small-group animals trying to live in ever more gigantic groups – and not doing very well at it. If catastrophe can be avoided, we’re stuck with gigantic groups for a century or more, and very large groups “forever.” It therefore behooves humanity to start asking itself how to maintain the small group coherence and interests that make people comfortable while greatly damping down intergroup competition and substantially enhancing the intergroup cooperation desperately needed to solve the human predicament.
Can human cultural evolution be directed away from its current trajectory toward disaster and diverted toward creating a prosperous and equitable long-term future for society? The answer is, “yes, it could” if the small-group animal “family” attitudes can be properly channeled. The basic requirements would be quite simple – a set of overlapping and intertwined ethical-environmental steps toward sustainability such as suggested below and over the next few weeks here at the “Eco-Compass” blog. Whether such steps will be taken is, of course, an entirely different question. But here’s the first of the steps we should take:
One: Put births on a par with deaths.
Human beings have always fought against early death from accident, hunger and sickness, and in the past century or so have employed improved sanitation and the use of pesticides and antibiotics to good effect in raising life-expectancy. But given the horrendous potential consequences of the explosion of human numbers following reduction of the death rate, we must pay equivalent attention to reducing the birthrate as well. As been done in many family planning programs, the happy family should be promoted as one that limits its numbers. But the change should be in the motivation. Traditionally the small family was supposed to supply a higher standard of living – including more stuff for each individual. The new approach could be to promote it as a multigenerational unit that in each generation limits its size in order to maximize the chances of each following generations retaining a happy, sustainable life style.
To move in that direction, humanity must rapidly expand programs to educate and give job opportunities to women, make effective contraception universally available, and develop public support of population policies. The goal must be to halt population increase as soon as humanely possible, and then start reducing human numbers until births and deaths balance at population size that can be maintained without irreparable damage to our life-support systems.
What do you think? Leave us a comment.
Check back next week for the second step we should take toward a sustainable society.
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Paul R. Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He is the author of hundreds of scientific papers, and numerous books including The Population Bomb and Betrayal of Science and Reason (Island Press, 1997). His latest book is The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, which he co-authored with his wife Anne.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
What about all the modernization? Before we were mostly agricultural. I am beginning to figure US is going to flop anyway on corporations, that stuff, and nothing aesthetic with business. Not any personal, human motivation for business that exists in Europe where things are more real in the economy….dunno just thinking this today.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:21 am
I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it is morally irresponsible to have large families when we have choices. The planet’s not going to grow to meet the needs of the population.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Of course you are right. But how do we negate the incentives of countries to provide their merchants with more and more consumers? There is a continual drumbeat encouraging us to acquire more stuff. This is why most post-reproductive age couples start acquiring pets – so they can continue to buy stuff without appearing self-centered. How many dogs are there? How many pounds of food do they consume? How much waste? I fear we could just wind up limiting children but replacing them with dogs!
October 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
How about Tax-credits for no children? Discounts at cultural events for people who can show (a card perhaps) that they have not exponentially added to their own carbon footprint by bringing chilren into this world? Discounts and freebies of all kinds could be offered as reward and incentive. It’s about saving our planet; it’s also about saying no to the cruelty of bringing new ones (notice how they’re always kicking and screaming?)into a world which is a living Hell for so many. Others who have had children could defer to the wisdom of people who obviously care enough about our world and the world of all creatures,people doing what they can, because they care, including being vegetarian, not driving, never turning on air-conditioners or heaters, not flying, and not having children.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
This idea was developed and extremely publicized 35 or so years ago by today ghost of intellectuals known as Club of Rome
November 11th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
[...] 11 November 2008 by Derek Paul and Anne Ehrlich, prize-winning ecologists and authors from Stanford University, recently wrote a letter to President-elect Obama on his change.gov website, which if you haven’t yet seen is definitely worth taking a gander at. The letter places a somber perspective on the world and re-hashes idea’s out of their “7 Steps Toward a Sustainable Society“. [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Specifically, to reduce population, women must have as much economic and reproductive rights as men. All the available contraceptives in the world won’t change things if most of the world’s women are under the power and control of men who deny them reproductive rights at home—and in their societies. Also most of the worlds women live under the threat of MALE violence specifically. Women exist in a global rape and battering culture. Unless ALL women are no longer threatened by MALE violence, nothing will change.
PS If the immediate response is the usual “what about female violence against men, go ahead and start a group against it. My focus is on MALE violence against women, which included mandated pregnancy.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I am not an american, I’m not sure whether I should express an opinion,but President Obama could acheive a lot by restoring the thirty four million dollars a year that Bush so cynically cut from UNFPA.Reducing the human population is an absolutely necessary part of progress to sustainability. All the contraceptive technology exists now, and population control can be humane and voluntary. It needs financing for health care personnel, and incentives for poor women. If, as an incentive, they were given sole control over a significant sum of money, so that they could improve their lives immediately, they would become empowered within their families and society overnight.They have a right to an education, certainly, but that will take a generation to reduce their fertility.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Cecily-good news President Obama just restored funging to the UNFPA organization!
May 25th, 2009 at 12:58 am
I agree totally on the tax credit thing, I am single and struggle to live in a society which only allows “couples” or people with children to survive, I have never been able to afford children anyway, and nobody asked me what the shadow price I wanted for giving up this right was