ch11- The Question of Sustainable Growth- Exponential Population Growth

Ok, so it took some 10 billion years to create the planet, some 4 billion years to create life, some 300,000 years to create us. It has only been some 6000 years since the advent of civilization. It has only been some 200 years or so, since the advent of industrial revolution, that we've really mastered the planet. It has only been a number of years since the advent of the world wide web were anybody anywhere can connect up with anybody else anywhere else, thereby presenting the possibility of a global community. So any way you slice it, it has been a remarkable story of creation in a continuum. Our central existential question of the age is, are we going to blow it? Can we, as a global democratic civilization, achieve sustainable growth?

Based on historical precedent, the short answer is no? No civilization has been able to achieve sustainable growth. The civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, China, Maya, The Colonialists, etc. have all come, built and crumbled, just to rebuild back up again. While it is too late to do anything for those folks, perhaps it isn't too late to start thinking about how to save our own hides.

Thinking about the subject, my first question was: why did all of these civilizations self-destruct? There is clearly a common pattern, they all self-destructed, but was (is) there a common cause to avoid? My second question actually shed light on the first question: within all of these populations, are there any subsets that self-sustained? The answer is clearly yes, non of these populations vanished. Then it came to me, within any population there is a minimalist sect. Think of all the ascetic religious sects that pursue minimalist living: the Benedictan/Fransiscan sects of Christianity,  the Sufi sect of Islam, all of Buddhism, and the list goes on, they all have been doing just fine for maybe thousands of years. It is easy to see the common pattern between these sub-populations. They all practice minimalist living. So there is such a thing as sustainable minimalism. How does that reflect on the first question? Then the answer becomes clear, they all practiced maximalist living. You see the difference, whereas the minimalists took only what they needed and left the rest, the maximalists took all they possibly could as fast as they possibly could. That is what we remember them by. The palaces, the opulence, the huge armies, the mighty rulers. They all had that in common, short sighted, maximal demand. And that is exactly what we practice to this day. Our stock market principle of investment requires maximum return on investment. Our cultures, democratic or otherwise, covet the powerful, the opulent, the rich. In fact, if you consider all of those past civilizations as organizational pyramids with the elite on the top and most of the population at the bottom, it was the top of the pyramids that got lopped off. At the bottom, folks eked out a living off of what minimal resources they could muster out of the environment, even under the worst conditions. It was the top of the pyramids that required the riches, the opulence, the armies. And that is the pattern of unsustainable growth. All of these self-destructive societies of the past, and unfortunately our democratic civilizations, have that in common.

Knowing fully well that our minimalist populations are very small compared to the maximalists, the question becomes, is there a middle ground? Can we come up with an optimal definition of living that, while a cut above the minimalist definition that almost nobody adheres to, stops short of the maximalist pattern of self-destruction. Can we achieve optimally sustainable growth? Or better put, can we achieve a global steady state where we only take what the planet can sustainably provide?

In detail, sustainable growth is a tough subject to approach let alone nail down. Its difficult to come up with solutions when you can't define the problems. But we are in luck. The discipline of morphological flows tells us that morphologies are evolved amalgams of their subsets. So any morphology can be deconstructed, even the dynamic morphology of sustainable human growth. So lets give it a shot. Based on historic precedence, our inherent problem of sustainable growth is at least three fold: exponential growth in population, exponential growth in energy demand, and our tendency to form social rifts, thereby guaranteeing chronic conflict. Its seems to me that most if not all of the other problems, ecological devastation, global warming, habitat loss, pollution, etc. have their roots in those three issues. If  we can come up with a handle on those three problems, we just might have a shot at the rest.
These problems are outcomes of our very nature, so left unattended we will likely crumble. That is the bad news. Then again, part of our nature is to master our nature, adapt. That is the good news. There are at least theoretical solutions. They are counter intuitive, tough, and probably a fool's errand. But since this is the fundamental existential issue of the age, dealing with long term survival itself, we don't have much of a choice, do we?

So lets look at these problems one at a time and see if we can find these illusive solutions.

Let's look at the world population growth from a historic perspective (right, source: www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures /pop_socio/pop_socio.html). It's a classic exponential curve and anyone looking at it can immediately tell that this can not go on for ever. At some point in time the eco-system simply wouldn't be able to provide for the increasing rise in humanity and all that it demands. History is replete with civilizations that literally ate themselves to death.

But before conjuring up dooms-day scenarios, we'll do some more morphological deconstruction. Let's look at a recent plot of world population, developed world population and underdeveloped world population (Source US Census Bureau International Database: www.census.gov )

If you notice, the developed world population is relatively stable compared to the world population growth. In fact the plot seems to suggest that the exponential rate of population growth is driven by the underdeveloped world. So what is the difference between the people of the developed and underdeveloped world when it comes to reproduction. Now there are plenty of studies that look at fertility rates, religious-social traditions etc. We can zoom in through the population morphology and look at the source of behavioral drives of individuals: the triune brain.

Think back to the triune brain model, the reptile, emotional and cerebral brain components. Sexuality and reproduction is the reptile brain's domain. When we look at population dynamics, we typically find that more resources result in bigger populations. In Africa, more rain results in more grass and more herbivores (e.g. zebras). Bigger population of herbivores results in bigger population of carnivores (e.g. lions). So it stands to reason that the more resources are available to people, our population will correspondingly increase. Add to it that fact that to some it is their religious duty to populate the earth, and to some others having large families is the expression of wealth and power, so we get the exponential growth curve that we have. That is everywhere except in the developed countries. So in the developed countries there must be a reptile brain drive that counteracts the sexual drive of the reptile brain and keeps it in check.
 
The population of developed countries, say in Europe and Japan has stabilized and has actually been decreasing. It turns out that the reptile brain also craves power, stature, wealth, assets. In the developed (knowledge) world that translates into higher education, working harder and smarter, a lot of social-infrastructure support, resulting in fewer, more empowered children. A child in the developed world may have to have a minimum of 16 years of schooling through college, perhaps some 20 years of schooling if they really want to rise to the top. On top of that both parents have to work. Subsequently it is not uncommon to find families with a single child or may be no children at all. On the other hand if we look at underdeveloped societies, children themselves are a form of wealth. They get very little schooling, go to work as soon as they are able (assuming that they can find work), mortality is high, and they get married off at the earliest possible age, and the story repeats itself.
The figure below demonstrates the effect of the change in the mind set in population growth. I picked Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. In the 1950's they were developing countries, by 2000 they were developed and thereafter they would mature as developed countries (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base, www.census.gov).

Notice that in the early years (1950's) as development was taking root, the population growth rate was steep, akin to developing world population growth rate. But as development set in (2000) then the population flattened out. In fact, as development matures, the population is actually projected to decrease and then flatten out again

So the solution to population explosion is quite counter-intuitive. To curb the population explosion we need to curb the reptile brain with the reptile brain. So should poor societies develop to the levels that we see in developed countries, the population curve will likely self-correct. The question becomes, how doable is it? I suppose the answer is in the percentages. In the US the percentage of people in poverty has hovered between 15 and 11 percent of the population, that is given all of the anti-poverty programs and entitlements that have been enacted in law for the past 40 years. History shows us that populations will keep the full spectrum of economic distribution. Again, it becomes a matter of percentages. If say, 60+ percent of population is in the economically developed status, so that the change of mindset can take root, then one can probably see the population curve flatten out.

I think the lesson here should be underscored, throwing money at poverty can actually make it worst. What works is creating opportunities for escaping from poverty, and specifically, joining the knowledge society. Once that happens, the reptile brain circuits of getting rich in the knowledge world kicks in, thereby counteracting the reptile brain circuits of having large families.

To sum up, the solution to stabilizing the population growth curve is to establish the knowledge worker economy in the underdeveloped world.