On several occasions recently I’ve had a strong desire to write something. I can’t remember what many of those occasions were, but I know that this headline (from the front page of The Guardian today) finally spurred me into action.
I mean, have you ever heard the man come out with anything more patently absurd? No, don’t answer that. (To be clear, the quotation is not direct but rather liberally paraphrases his idiocy.) But seriously, “science will save the planet”!? That’s like Lincoln saying “No need for the 13th amendment, the Virginians will sort it all out soon.” You need only look at science’s track record to know that such a claim is farcical. Without science we wouldn’t have the internal combustion engine, plastic packaging, coal-fired power stations. We wouldn’t be in this ridiculous mess in the first place if it wasn’t for science.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m a scientist of sorts myself, so I’m not writing off science. Far from it, in fact. If someone makes cold fusion work tomorrow, I’ll be the first one to point the VCs in the right direction. Unfortunately, it really does need to be tomorrow or one of an extremely limited set of tomorrows, otherwise there’s little hope for science’s saving the planet. Even if, miraculously, 90% of our power sources were to be replaced by room temperature fusion by the end of 2007, I doubt it would make much difference to the way things are going. Tony Blair’s attitude (“I would, frankly, be reluctant to give up my holidays abroad”) is shared by too great a proportion of the world population for technology to have much of an effect. The arrogance and self-satisfaction of the Western world in particular will not be shaken until it is too late.
The fundamental problem we have is overpopulation. Earth simply cannot sustain a human population of this size. At 6.5 billion we are well into overshoot on our population curve and, projected to hit just shy of 9.5B by 2050, our species will soon be reaching levels of resource usage that couldn’t be sustained by two Earths. As it happens we only have one, with no backup copies, and we appear to be doing our utmost best to destroy it. I don’t think we’re going to keep on going up and up until 2050, but I don’t want to get into that here, I’ll merely link to an article about what’s going to happen sometime sooner than you think.
Before I stop, there is one other thing I should clarify. People often tell me that I shouldn’t take this “it’s too late” attitude: “It isn’t helpful. People will throw their hands up and continue to do nothing if you tell them that it’s too late.” I understand their concern, and I agree. In the absence of immediate personal benefit humans will take any opportunity to escape the need for action (it’s easily demonstrated by game theory) and thus we shouldn’t give them such an opportunity. However, I find it impossible to reconcile the evidence with the Monbiot-style Grand Rescue Mission. Maybe George is right. Maybe there is still time. I’m certainly trying to do everything I can to ensure he’s right. But honestly, do I really think this whole farce can be turned around? No. I really don’t.
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to think about damage control.