What if I could stay in one place and weather the seasons dependent on the rain and sunshine to keep me alive? What would it be like to be a producer of my own resources rather than a consumer of them? What if my existence were beneficial to the planet because I gave oxygen, absorbed carbon and gave food and shelter to other organisms? It’s a fantasy worthy of exploration for it would then be easy to stop using all plastic and all forms of transportation. I could stop demanding that food be grown in former prairies and shipped to me from foreign lands because I developed a love for the plants that produce chocolate and mangos.
As a green plant and producer of my own energy, I would reproduce as a sustainable mandate to cover the earth with more of me which would keep the planet at an even average temperature. My seeds, fruit or nuts would double as food for the next level of species (like squirrels) as well as a way to continue my species. My proliferation would be a benefit to the whole biosphere. My only enemies would be storms and diseases and the giant rodents who need my bark for food and my wood for their homes.
Let’s look at a simplified version of the food chain, also called the food web. Plants need to be the most numerous as they are the producers. Grasshoppers eat plants are next in line as a first level consumer and in a balanced ecosystem they should be too numerous to count. Skunks love grasshoppers like we love French fries. Skunks need to always be in lower numbers so that they can find enough food and are considered second level consumers. Owls eat skunks, among other animals, and are perched on top of the food chain and are logically and ecologically need to be the least numerous so that they can find enough food for themselves and their young. We are the owls in this scenario of the food chain but are as numerous as grasshoppers and therein is the crux of the problem.
Humans depend on plants and animals. But as our numbers have exponentially grown in a planetary second, we keep putting pressure on nature’s long tested and balanced systems. We need to grow more and more food to feed our reproductive success which only causes more population growth in a merry go-round of a terminal Catch 22 few want to confront. Like an alcoholic admitting they have a problem, we must admit where we are in nature’s schematic. At the core of this problem is acknowledging our place on the food chain. We must consume, water, food grown on viable soil, and resources for shelter. Our modern world is unimaginable without toothbrushes.
But alas I am not a producer of the food chain, I and my fellow 330,000,000 Americans as a part of the world’s nearly 8 billion, are top consumers of the food (and energy) pyramid, much of it wrapped in plastic. As a part of this century, I am an egregious consumer no matter how much I try to buy used goods and eschew pesticides. Like a river, my species will always choose the easiest way to live, flowing downstream and around the rocks in my way. Rivers do not flow uphill. I take from the earth to meet and better my needs. The proliferation of my species, even though I did not reproduce myself, just means more consumption in a world that can only take so much of me and my overly successful kind. As a taker of resources, each invention to better my world lessens the ability of the world to keep meeting my needs. All my success and that of my fellow nearly 8 billion and growing hominids take more and more resources all of which took billions of years to form and all dependent on plentiful source of climate changing energy.
Population is not declining as census figures are being manipulated to say. But even if that were true it would be something to celebrate. We are still growing by over 80 million a year (only the rate is decreasing) and any growth in an already overpopulated world has no happy ending. In my 2015 book, "Move Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation," I describe the avoidance of this issue as downstream thinking. When 6 billion people have been added in one nonagenarian's lifetime, (I had to look that up too, it means someone who is between 90-99, like my dad who is 95) lifetime, it’s time to take stock in our overall footprint. We cannot just lower our individual footprint we must count the total amount of feet.
Of course, we do not need limos, cruise ships, yachts, endless throw away toys and an appetite for new clothes because styles change, but we do need the earth for basic supplies. At nearly 8 billion and growing those basics cannot keep up on an overpopulated planet. Many, who are able to, have opted for vegetarian/vegan diets including yours truly. It eases a lot of pressure on the water and land to eat a plant-based diet, but when there are billions of us even that act is woefully inadequate. We don't want our teeth to fall out and yet we now throw out 1 billion toothbrushes every year, a small item which becomes a mountain of waste when multiplied by our hundreds of millions just trying to follow our dentist's recommendation.
Because numbers are best managed and manipulated country by country, immigration must be included in the way we look at our growth. Growth in the US, with its huge carbon contribution as a developed country, is mostly by immigration, the most easily stoppable means of growth. In very basic terms even the non-science oriented can understand; when someone comes to the US from a lower carbon footprint country, the whole globe suffers for the uptick in carbon their change of residence will mean. In their article (2008) entitled," Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions," Steven A. Camarota and Leon Kolankiewicz, assure us that immigration to the US is something which is directly attached to the overall increase in global carbon emissions. The media as well as climate change activists mostly ignore this research to the detriment of us all.
Three points stand out to me as facts we cannot continue to avoid, just because it is likely to put us into the social justice doghouse.
The estimated 637 tons of CO2 U.S. immigrants produce annually is 482 million tons more than they would have produced had they remained in their home countries.
If the 482 million ton increase in global CO2 emissions caused by immigration to the United States were a separate country, it would rank 10th in the world in emissions.
The impact of immigration to the United States on global emissions is equal to approximately 5 percent of the increase in annual world-wide CO2 emissions since 1980.
Humans have succeeded in living in all continents and exploiting mineral and plant resources to create our skyscrapers, freeways, airports, and endless and growing development.
We could hang our hat on that as progress, except for the inconvenient truth that this party cannot continue forever on a limited planet. Not only do we use up these irreplaceable resources, we keep adding waste to the waste stream and contribute the greenhouse gases which are melting icecaps and destabilizing our climate.
Our mineral resources developed in our planet over billions of years. The ability of our top-of-the-food chain selves to exploit rocks and minerals to create everything from rocket ships to surgical equipment and cell phones is astonishing. It is also destructive to the life forces and other organisms deeply connected to our survival especially with the numbers of people now alive in 2021.
The only way to do this is to do it country by country and celebrate and work towards reduced population sizes including and especially in high carbon producing countries. We must examine total fertility and immigration together if that is a part of a country's growth story.If you want to solve poverty in the developing world you work to solve overpopulation. Too many people drinking from wells, never set up to support exponential demand, is caused by overpopulation and is only exasperated by digging deeper wells. If you really care about the future of humanity in these resource scarce countries, you could do nothing better than to advocate for lower total fertility rates and controlled immigration from even poorer countries. Those countries which listen to the cautions laid out by the overpopulation issue will be the prosperous countries of the future, for they will be the ones who will not be needing to scrounge for basic resources to keep up with endless growth of a top of the food chain specie who should have known better.
Essentially, we need to form an NGO and call it the FCA which stands for Food Chain Anonymous. At the beginning of each meeting, we need to stand up and say, “I live at top of the food chain in a world that cannot meet my needs even as I try to move down to consume less than I do now.” “I pledge to become a moral activist to support less growth of my specie, realizing that it is at the heart of our current state of imbalance and will perpetuate more misery and chaos if not fully addressed.”