The 7% Solution to the Greatest Problem on Earth, or Malthus 2.0

And flowers and grass and I and all
Will in one common ruin fall …
—Andrew Marvell, “The Mower’s Song,” lines 21-22

I. Too Much!

The calamitous crises facing the denizens of our planet at present seem well-nigh
overwhelming. Wherever one looks, there’s cause for alarm. Thousands of people live
and die in war zones; millions more lack food and potable water every day. Consider also
the irritations that stem from being packed like sardines in dense megacities: long
rollercoaster train commutes in Mumbai, constant smog in Mexico City, the nonstop
assault on the senses in any cosmopolitan Asian center. Nor should we neglect the
vertiginous inequity and despair bred by irresponsible, volatile crony capitalism, nor
other deleterious consequences of all that “getting and spending.” And hardly
inconsequential is the rampant pollution resulting from the ongoing rape of Nature. Even
many so-called natural disasters (née Acts of God) have a distinct man-made component,
be they heat waves, floods, wildfires, and droughts exacerbated by man-made climate
change, or tsunamis and hurricanes hitting coastal regions where natural barriers like
wetlands have been eroded, or pandemics facilitated by globalism. Not to be ignored is
the recent appearance of earthquakes caused by “fracking” for gas underground. Today,
the overall quality of life seems to leave a lot to be desired.

This litany of catastrophes is hardly news, and nowadays vast networks of mostly
earnest, mostly ineffective relief workers, policy wonks, engineers, pundits, neoliberal
technocrats, academics, advocates, and other specialists are attempting to remedy these
problems. Some of these professionals meet with limited success, and they are to be
commended for improving things where they can. However, I would submit that all that
good effort amounts to slapping a Band-Aid on a sinking ship. What Jonathan Swift
asserted in his dark satire about the trouble of too many poor, starving Irish, A Modest
Proposal (1729), is now more valid than ever: “the question therefore [of] how this
number shall be reared and provided for, … under the present situation of affairs is
utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed.” The root cause of these issues is
runaway overpopulation, and the only viable solution is a radical reduction in the sheer
amount of humanity occupying this Earth.

II. Some Facts and Figuring

If current trends continue, humankind will become the victim of its own
remarkable recent growth spurt—sooner rather than later. It is estimated that today the
Earth is infested by about 7,000,000,000 people, all busy living, breathing, eating, toiling,
wasting, gossiping, praying, loving, sleeping, generating, laughing, crying, dying, or
checking social media on their mobile devices as their inclinations and fortunes lead
them. The one billion mark was reached around two centuries ago (when William
Wordsworth composed “The World Is Too Much”) and may have been in the quarterbillion
range two millennia ago. Besides a postulated Stone Age bottleneck, the
population had remained fairly steady with minute upticks since the beginning. Two great
migrations also led to rising numbers. First, when early Homo sapiens journeyed out of
Africa into Eurasia, the population expanded. Another increase occurred during the Ice
Age circa 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, when humans crossed Beringia (the land bridge
between Siberia and Alaska) and spread out from there throughout the Americas. Along
the way, the development of agriculture, around 10,000 BCE, followed a few thousand
years later in the Fertile Crescent by the invention and spread of writing, led to more
stratified, sedentary, complex, urban civilizations. Both of these innovations contributed
to the eventual upsurge. The spread of the bubonic plague across Europe, starting in 1348
and recurring intermittently for centuries afterwards, marked one of the few recorded
downturns in this trajectory.1 The Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, giving rise to
steam then electric power, factories, steel manufacturing, more reliable trans-oceanic
trade, and advanced medicine, led to explosive population expansion in the modern world
—from a flat or gradually linear slope to an exponential spike (see graph, figure 1).

In the recent Anthropocene era, human activities have considerably altered the
planet. Only the naïve believe that prehistoric tribes lived in perfect harmony with
Nature, let alone with each other; they probably contributed to the extinction of great
mammals like mastodons and they changed the landscape in other ways too, by setting
fires and damming rivers. When it comes to the effect on the environment, however, we
should recognize two key differences between ancient and contemporary societies. First,
the sheer astronomical quantities of people now rubbing elbows is causing much bigger
transformations than the small, widely-dispersed bands of our remote ancestors were
capable of causing. Second, sophisticated technology, starting in the Industrial Age, has
vastly increased average energy and material expenditure per capita. A complete
calculation of the net effect would have to account for not just your utility bill, but also,
inter alia, longer life expectancies and indirect costs. These include the carbon footprint
of consuming imported food, plus water and fertilizer usage at its point of origin; the
overall costs of electronic goods with all their constituent mass-produced parts shipped
from around the globe; the raw materials, including costly rare elements, extracted from
all over, plus the collateral damage to rain forests and coral reefs that result from mining
precious metals and the inevitable oil spills respectively. When everything is added up,
even operating a “green” Tesla, Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, or Honda Prius (all alternativefuel
cars) loaded with plastic, rubber, metal, fuel cells, and computer gewgaws, leaves a
trail of pollution in its wake. As formulated by environmental scientists:

I = PAT Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

As a general calculation, this equation helpfully represents what is happening: cumulative
impact is skyrocketing.

What this adds up to is fairly simple: scientific research and applied engineering
will not be able to by-pass fundamental laws of physics concerning conservation of
energy, thermodynamics, and matter. Or to put it another way: current figures and future
upsurges are unsustainable for the health of the species and the only planet it has ever
colonized. As biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich observed in 1971: “There is no
technological panacea for the complex of problems comprising the population-foodenvironment
crisis” (NM, p. 240). Certainly, efforts to feed, shelter, sustain, and school
the masses are lagging behind in many areas; many delivery systems are coming apart at
the seams. As they say, “there is no Planet B.”

My underlying premise here is thoroughly indebted to An Essay on the Principle
of Population by Malthus (first published in 1798; subsequent editions appeared
throughout his life). Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was an educated Enlightenment
gentleman-scholar; Charles Darwin explicitly credited his book as a key inspiration
for his theory of evolution. His foundational argument (in a nutshell) is that the
population of any given species is constrained from a theoretically geometrical
progression by finite available amounts of “nourishment” and “room” (NM, p. 20).
Without such limits, the world would soon enough be buried under (take your pick):
rabbits or fruit flies or plagues of locusts, like the gold coins in the fairy-tale about the
king’s savvy exchequer. For humans, an additional factor is improving technology;
however, Malthus believed that the rate of scientific advancement would fall short of the
rate needed to keep up with population growth. In revising his work, Malthus actually
incorporated informal birth control by means of delayed marriage into his reckoning.
This rather Victorian suggestion is now a significant statistical trend for many
accomplished couples in the First World, but not nearly enough to slow exponential
increases elsewhere. Consequently, as he forthrightly acknowledged, he had “a
melancholy hue,” logically predicting as he did conditions of great misery, “poverty,”
“want” (deprivation), and “wretchedness” for present and future generations.

Overpopulation and the concomitant depletion of scarce resources (including the
capacity of the environment to filter and cleanse waste by-products) is now playing out
the Tragedy of the Commons on a global scale. The Tragedy of the Commons was once a
a literal problem on public lands open to grazing, and it has since provided a useful
economic model with diverse applications. The Tragedy occurs because since it is in each
herdsman’s own best interest to increase the number of his animals on public terrain, the
limited potential of this open land to feed them all will eventually and inescapably be
surpassed, and there will be diminishing returns for all, along with damage to the
common ground. In recognition of this, commons can be regulated, such as when a trout
stream has a catch and release policy or a daily creel limit. But as ecologist Garrett
Hardin grimly noted, while Mother Earth has been a commons for humanity, it is fast
becoming “a cesspool” due to higher population density and overuse. It is ultimately a
closed system where every garbage dump is in someone’s backyard. 2 As Hardin
advocates:

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the
necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us
from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. … The only
way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing
the freedom to breed, and that very soon. (NM, p. 239)

In this Information Age of ours, it is difficult to avoid noticing the abundant evidence
piling up all around us that signals the urgent need to change things.

The ideal postdiluvian number for a sustainable future is a matter of conjecture.
The 7% solution of my title works out to 500 million people; an even more extreme 99%
shrinkage would bring the total down to 70 million, approximately where it was at the
Dawn of Civilization. Logically, of course, this hypothetical quantity depends on
measureable inputs such as carbon footprints and comparable calculations as well as
qualitative indices—questions concerning fuzzy factors like happiness or sociality. How
many cities per continent? Shouldn’t we preserve London, Paris, Jerusalem, New York,
and Beijing for cosmopolitans? Will there be vast human-free zones for endangered
wildlife and complex, delicate ecosystems? The amount of allowable impact per person
will also affect the goal. If, for instance, ultralow bare subsistence existence—little better
than scavenging for meals and salvaging used materials—be the desideratum, the number
of people would climb because they’d have a low impact. Conversely, if individual
quality of life is deemed best where folk have access to expensive space-age amenities
(entertainment systems, healthcare, transportation), then the maximum would shrink
accordingly. That is, a simple shepherd piping pastorals to his maiden on his reed flute
who eats organic, local plants disturbs the planet far less than an urbane sophisticated
consumer trendoid ensconced with high-tech gadgetry. On balance, however, our optimal
point probably lies somewhere within my suggested order of magnitude.3

III. The Additions of Subtraction: Green Worlds and Golden Worlds

This tough-love crash diet would bestow immeasurable benefits on the planet
itself and on humans not yet born. In one fell swoop, it would basically dissolve the
overarching economic problems of scarcity.4 Because humans are inherently prone to
envy, rivalry, and zero-sum status contests, all antagonisms would not be eradicated.
There would, though, be enough breathing room for folk to truly thrive. Fighting over
land would become unnecessary, for everyone could have their own laffin’ place (and
probably more than one abode if they wanted). Folk would still sometimes desire the
exact same thing; however, there would be so much land and stuff available that all could
have more than enough. On a wider scale, territorial skirmishes between neighboring
clans would be silly—even if and where national sovereignty and private property
remained—because, again, there would be plenty of prime real estate to go around.5
Larger geopolitical clashes like wars for oil would likewise lose their reason for being
because groups wouldn’t suffer unduly for lack of key resources. Fulfilling the words of
the prophet, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares: nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4, KJV).

There is even more to be gained from drastically slashing population than just a
reduction in fighting. It would also eliminate mass starvation, malnutrition, and probably
epidemics, and it would render urban squalor largely obsolete. Such large-scale
humanitarian amelioration might well be sufficient to justify this applied Malthusianism.
Yet above and beyond such utilitarian advantages, there would also be immense
subjective gains. This reboot would permit people to flourish. They would enjoy
unprecedented autonomy and significant freedom to explore their vocations.6 Looked at
another way, places and spaces would literally open up where “Ideological State
Apparatuses” did not stifle hopes and dreams.7 This flowering of the spirit would
certainly apply to oppressed souls in Communist or totalitarian regimes; to the wretched
of the earth throughout the Global South; and to the hopeless, bitterly angry masses
subjected to intolerant, tyrannical, Islamic theocracies in the Middle East. It would also
apply to citizens burdened with debt due to the egregious miscalculations or greediness of
bankers and financiers gaming global markets, or workaholic wage slaves and office
drones scurrying around their generic cubicles and basic condos like rats in a maze, or
underemployed laborers the world over struggling to stay afloat, alienated from their
efforts, flailing after the bitch-goddess Success.

In contrast, consider the idyllic portrait T.H. White presented in The Once and
Future King (1958), his classic retelling of the legend of King Arthur:

There stretched the fabled Merry England of the Middle Ages. … Lancelot and Guenever
were gazing on the Age of Individuals.
7
What an amazing time the age of chivalry was! Everybody was essentially
himself—was riotously busy fulfilling the vagaries of human nature. There was such a
gusto about the landscape which stretched before their window, such a riot of unexpected
people and things, that you hardly knew how to begin describing it. …
It was the age of fullness, the age of wading into everything up to the neck. …
In those despised Middle Ages of theirs you could become the greatest man in the world,
by simply having learning. …
At least they had some sparkling names for their fiercer cocktails: which they
called Huffe Cap, Mad Dog, Father Whoresonne, Angel’s Food, Dragon’s Milke, Go to
the Wall, Stride Wide, and Lift Leg. … The busyness that went on in the island, the beekeeping
and the rook-scaring and the ploughing with oxen: for these you must look in the
Lutterell Psalter, where they are beautifully drawn. (pages 531-35)

This Camelot obviously existed only in fiction (cf. figure 2, scene by Brueghel and figure
3, from the Lutt. MS). But my point is that such a creative work is significant because it
reveals what may be possible and worth aspiring to. The uncrowded Earth of the future
might approximate the Golden World poets have dreamt of.

Yet even these bonuses merely begin to reckon the overall benefits from such a
colossal downsizing. Essentially, we have an inverse equation now where human
population growth occurs to the detriment of our planet’s other living things. It’s
asymmetrical: human expansion results in natural loss. As Joni Mitchell sang, “they
paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Reducing the mass of teeming humanity would
be nothing short of a godsend for flora, fauna, and fish.8

Without so much intrusive people-pressure, things would be far different. Many
environmentalists have issued ardent pleas over the years for preserving green spaces and
for restoring wilderness areas. If we were to go so far as to remove dams, to minimize
fossil fuel usage, to cut down on overfishing—besides shrinking the acreage for shopping
malls, refineries, factory farms, cultivated fields, waterfront resorts and ports, encroaching
suburbs, and so forth—well, we’d be left with lands and waters positively Edenic (see
figure 4, Henri Rousseau, Tropical Forest with Monkeys).

As restorative and desirable as such changes would be, things are sliding in the
opposite direction. Several fictional and non-fictional books, extrapolating the
consequences, have prophesied incipient Doomsdays (such dystopian novels are now
known as “cli-fi”). One classic is The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (1971). This illustrated
children’s book recounts how the entrepreneurial Once-ler harvested Truffula Trees to
manufacture popular, profitable Thneeds for everyone to wear until the region had been
devastated and the forest was completely clear-cut. The Once-ler, who tells the local
children this sad tale, ultimately gives them the last Truffula seed, with this counsel:

“But now,” says the Once-ler,
“Now that you’re here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.

We will have to wait and see if such messages are heeded. We are facing exactly this test
today, and it seems we’re intent on flunking it with flying colors.

Achieving balance would help overall human health and would reestablish natural
cycles. For instance in the Pacific Northwest, anadromous salmon once swam in numbers
magnificent to behold. A proportion of the fry supplied food for other inhabitants of their
native rivers; in the ocean many became meals for bigger fish, sea lions, and killer
whales. Eventually, when they returned home to their clean, free-flowing streams to
spawn, they were consumed by bears, ospreys, bald eagles, Native Americans, and then
finally smaller organisms after they bred, died, and decayed. They thereby supplied vital
nutrients for a multitude of aquatic and evergreen forest biomes every year. The fuel they
brought to prey species, in the form of protein converted to dung, sustained the land
itself: it helped prevent soil erosion, and led thereby to the conversion of CO2 to oxygen
by trees. Salmon are just one link in the chain; similar organic cycles on every imaginable
level could be restored if human interference could be minimized. Besides the value of
biodiversity in and of itself, the sheer wonderful, elegant, determined problem-solving of
Nature here, through the blind mechanisms of selection, adaptation, and mutation, seems
worth preserving for its own sake. Going green is the ultimate quality-of-life issue.

IV. Some Philosophical Considerations

The section above has outlined some of the great advantages for future
generations of shrinking the population pronto. Perhaps, though, more justification is
demanded. This would entail, after all, extreme sacrifices with respect to creature
comforts and freedoms during the era of right-sizing. One point in favor of this plan
would be that such a diminution would be conducive to living the Good Life. I mean this
in the sense that an ancient Greek philosopher might define “the Good Life”: an ethical,
purposeful, liberated, and moderate existence. Also, more practically, the status quo
involves saddling our offspring with more pollution, more insoluble predicaments, and
reduced circumstances. Instead, I believe, it is obligatory to promote Tikkun Olam
(“healing the world” in Hebrew) by practicing morally responsible stewardship. This
means following “campground rules” everywhere: leaving a site cleaner and better off
than you found it.9

To carry on with philosophical considerations, I wish to state outright that my
proposal is neither a nouveau version of the Myth of the Noble Savage nor an updated
Utopia. The Noble Savage, implicit in Montaigne’s provocative essay “Of Cannibals”
(1580) and explicitly named by John Dryden, is the innocent Wildman unconstrained by
the corrupting influence of postlapsarian society: in touch with both himself and the
unspoiled domains he roams. I do not mean to imply that this figure be the ultimate goal
for a desired brave new world, nor even that this sort of aboriginal alternative is
preferable. In fact, many advances in technology and medicine seem readily supportable;
in a better tomorrow, nevertheless, we could be more selective and thoughtful in
incorporating such amenities into everyday life, as perceptive critics of our alwaysplugged-
in existence contend.

Again, to be clear: while an uncrowded planet would be far less stressful, far
cleaner, and significantly better across the board in most ways to today’s, it would not be
a perfect Shangri-La. With millions of inhabitants, there’d certainly be all sorts of real
problems; we would witness no “end of History” (as Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama
unwisely proclaimed after the fall of Soviet-bloc Communism). Certainly many
interpersonal conflicts stem from innate differences between individuals: love triangles,
familial strife, power struggles, misunderstandings, and so forth.10 We can still anticipate
all these happening—what makes any community inherently a telenovela. Many
antagonisms, though, could be mitigated by an expansion of personal space and an
abundance of natural resources. Making these points seems worthwhile, but further
elaboration at this juncture risks going off on tangents properly treated in some other
place, so we will return to the neo-Malthusian subject of this essay proper forthwith.11

V. Contra

A pack of Pollyannas, however, still denies there’s a serious overpopulation
problem. These doubters have set forth a few claims. Least plausible are those dependent
on fundamental religious beliefs: a conviction that the world was created for human use
and hence its resources will always sustain us (in fairness, many denominations are
beginning to foster more responsible stewardship). Many others have offered various
apologies for the market-driven status quo. Put bluntly, since they’re currently enjoying
First World creature comforts, they refuse to face up to the deprivations paid for
elsewhere or in the future. Partly overlapping this group, we encounter the all-out
propaganda efforts of those profiting from the insatiable consumer demand for stuff—
from oil companies to fashionable shoes and everything in between. Rounding out this
faction would be those who contend as an element of faith that technology can find a
solution to anything. Nevertheless, all these criticisms hinge on a certain blindness to
reality, a refusal to connect the dots if not a willful burying of one’s heads in the sand.

Worth addressing, nonetheless, is the primary objection: implementing this plan
would be unfeasible, even unnatural. If it were easy, it would probably be in effect
already; I think it has been overlooked as a remedy because there would be so many
hurdles to overcome to implement it.

Left to their own devices, people will indeed strive to be fruitful and multiply,
constrained mostly by perennial limitations such as finding a mate, local socioeconomic
and cultural pressures, accidents, and the availability of reliable birth control. Thus, as
stated by Hardin above, proliferate procreation now constitutes a worldwide Tragedy of
the Commons for humans on earth. Yet barriers to unfettered reproduction have been
applied that show that the urge to merge can be overridden by interested parties with
sufficient political leverage. China’s one-child policy presents the leading current
example, while since the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church has required celibacy of its
priests and nuns.12 No doubt, figuring out how best to shrink the numbers before too
much more irrevocable damage be done is the biggest challenge (see below).

In addition, to be fair, some legitimate downside to this scheme must also be
acknowledged. Like so much else, picking alternatives involves making trade-offs. In all
likelihood we would see a sweeping reduction with the distribution of all sorts of goods,
probably with a proportionate increase in the use of fresh local foods and the re-use of
recycled materials. I envision fairly drastic changes, from having to give up the choice
between twenty-five different international blends of coffee at every café to much less
research on everything from curing cancer to, alas, cultural critiques of the Kardashians,
something our grandchildren, will, somehow, just have to soldier on without. It also
seems, should all this actually ever come to pass, that daily life will slow down—both
virtually (goodbye to ubiquitous WiFi supporting all those addictive, must-have
smartphone apps) and actually (perhaps a lot of literal horsepower supplemented by
steampunk energy).

It may also be worth pointing out as germane here that lives for the top 1% today
are materially magnificent almost beyond historical comparison (especially taking into
account across-the-board developments in First World health care and numerous
amenities pertaining to travel, communication, leisure, and assorted luxury
conveniences). The elite have never had it so good. Yet all this comes with a heavy price
tag: the labor of countless underlings and gross exploitation of non-renewable resources
for their McMansions, yachts, ski châteaux, electronic gadgetry, entertainment systems,
ad nauseam. (It’s also questionable how fulfilling such a lifestyle, based on Faustian
bargains great and small, turns out to be, a matter taken up in screeds such as Spent by
Geoffrey Miller, Consumed by Benjamin Barber, and Affluenza: The All-Consuming
Epidemic by de Graaf, Wann, and Naylor.) A reduction in hierarchy would be a likely
subsidiary benefit of an exponential decrease in population.

What provides some limited grounds for optimism is that humans possess a
unique mental capability to perceive the big picture and act accordingly. Other animals
have evolved all sorts of savvy skills when it come to reacting to immediate dangers or
stimuli, and in some cases they can anticipate future threats or opportunities (like
Machiavellian primates or migrating birds do), but Homo sapiens can think much more
broadly. They can imagine hypotheticals, create fictional scenarios, evaluate and balance
different options, persuade and be persuaded, and otherwise execute far-reaching
stratagems. From such daydreams, huge changes can be wrought. For example, we are
still practicing (or were until recently) the democracy whipped up by America’s
Founding Fathers. Responding to Malthus in his 1820 tract Of Population, William
Godwin noted that “Man is to a considerable degree the artificer of his own fortune. We
can apply our reflections and our ingenuity to the remedy of whatever we regret” (NM, p.
143).

Given that mental capacity, and in light of with recent New Humanist research on
the power of storytelling, I seriously considered presenting my case in a novel of ideas.
Part 1 would have centered around a Mad Scientist who recognizes that overpopulation
had created a Hell on Earth, and who has the wherewithal to devise some sort of
Bioweapon (maybe an infertility virus?) to bring the numbers way down. Part 2 would
have treated the chaotic aftermath of a world so transformed, and Part 3 would have
shown the eventual efforts to establish sustainable communities, focusing on the
struggles, challenges, and triumphs of the next generation—a renaissance redux,
potentially. 13 It turns out that Margaret Atwood beat me to the punch with her
MaddAddam trilogy: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam (2004-
13) I heartily recommend these works, both as quality fiction and as novels of ideas that
may provoke and inspire.14

VI. A Sea-Change

Unless a natural solution such as a great plague occurs, solving the crisis would
necessitate three things: 1) a mechanism for curtailing pregnancy; 2) a widespread change
in heart towards demographics; 3) a central political entity with the authority to
implement this anti-natalist mission.

The first, blocking fertility, is already here. Reliable birth control pills and shots
have already been developed, as have the means to prevent conception or pregnancy.
Male potency can also now be surgically blocked. This step, then, is feasible.

The second looks harder—it does go against the instinctive drive towards
procreation. It would be one of the biggest social engineering projects ever. However, the
point of this essay is to argue for the necessity of reducing population; the means of doing
so are to be determined. Whether a middle way, say a universal one-child-max policy, no
exceptions, would shrink the numbers fast enough is debatable. If not, if for a certain
period of time most would have to give up their own wish of having children, a
tremendous amount of work would have to be done to force everyone to go along with
this program for the greater good. That is, as we rush towards self-destruction, rescuing
the Earth will require suspending reproductive liberties, rights generally taken as
universal since the Enlightenment. A preliminary suggestion would be for more
communal, kibbutz-style childrearing (“it takes a village”), more involvement by aunts
and uncles (satisfying ingrained nepotistic tendencies) and phasing out institutions that
promote the baby industry.

As for the third, since it seems clear that a sufficient reduction could not be
accomplished voluntarily, the best-case scenario would be to crown a benevolent,
neoplatonic philosopher-king or council of the wisest. Frankly, the ruler or governing
body would have to be dictatorial—hard decisions would be demanded. (Requiring the
leaders to be childless themselves might be a good move.)

Over and beyond inherent desires to procreate and enjoy accustomed
independence, I suspect there’s another widespread elemental block in the human psyche
to my Malthusian proposition. While one can find cynics, fatalists, and pessimists
abounding, there seems to be a certain can-do spirit of optimism permeating the
collective consciousness. To illustrate, recall United States President Barack Obama’s
successful 2008 campaign slogan, “Yes we can!” Perhaps this results from the relative
victories humanity has experienced, in terms of amazing scientific discoveries and
overcoming obstacles through our native intelligence and resilience as we’ve reached the
pinnacle of success globally. Even groups and individuals unhappy with (and feeling
liberal guilt over) the way of the world today mostly support conventional, moderate
fixes, while the majority of subalterns simply wish to join the “haves” themselves during
their own brief lifespans, in a world that’s increasingly bifurcated, like medieval
feudalism redux.

Probably such boundless optimism has carried heritable adaptive advantages and
is encoded in our DNA, and that has helped us become the dominant species on six
continents and innumerable islands. (Besides which, most folk are mired in their local
circumstances and relatively unconcerned with the big picture.) Due to this mental
feature or innate bias, many readers may well disregard or illogically fault my proposal
because it demands real sacrifice and an admission that our prevailing ways of living are
fundamentally flawed. There are a few radicals out there, including Green eco-terrorist
groups like the E.L.F. and their supporters, “anarcho-primitivists,” and fringe social
critics, but mainstream views remain pretty conservative.15

I am totally convinced that decreasing the number of people by several orders of
magnitude would make things happier and better down the road, for all the reasons given
above. I have also tried, as Montaigne, the original essayist, would, to be honest in
exploring my theme. With that in mind, another germane issue is the specter of turning
this crisis into an opportunity to “improve” the race. That is, some would see the acrossthe-
board reduction I’m calling for as a chance to implement selective breeding, with the
goal in mind of eliminating much of the riffraff or other undesirables now around in such
unpleasant quantities (e.g. online marketers, university administrators, smokers, those
who text while driving, etc.). At best this would consist of raw Social Darwinism
(survival of the strongest or meanest); at worst eugenics (permitting only an avowedly
superior subset to pass on their genes). Innate cognitive inequality remains somewhat
understandably the untouchable third rail of public scientific and policy debates on
human nature.16 While perhaps racists would appropriate my humane proposal, I really
think such a turn would be unwarranted. For starters, there would be no ready agreement
concerning just which genetic traits would be preferable. Intelligence is a gimme, but
should that be defined as skill in taking standardized tests? as numeracy? as so-called
Social IQ? or as creativity? or something more like an all-around aptitude for acquiring
the varied skill set (“enactive cognition” or “affordances” and neuroscientists call them)
that primitive hunter-gatherers, cowboys and Indians, and girl scouts and boy scouts tend
to have mastered? Or to look at physical prowess: should that refer to general aerobic
fitness, such as triathletes and Navy SEALS possess? or raw strength? or endurance? or
dexterous hand-eye coordination? or uncorrected eyesight? (with apologies to all my dear
slow-paced, myopic, sedentary fellow academicians!) Obviously all of these attributes
obviously cross racial and gender lines. Even at a glance, ergo, interspecies variety seems
worthwhile and entirely reasonable, and so euthanasia or genocide are absolutely
unjustified. With that in mind, my preliminary resolution would be a random lottery for
those interested in becoming parents.

Conclusion

If the hockey stick graph maintains its current slope, the Earth will soon be home
to upwards of 8, 9, 10, or 12 billion people. Even if the curve immediately plateaus, the
ongoing effect of a mere 7 billion people, season after season, year after year, decade
after decade, will exert tremendous pernicious pressures. Every day it is becoming
probative that Malthusian disasters large and small are on the rise. More greenhouse
gases mean more global warming leading directly to more flooding, more extreme
weather, and more endangered species going extinct. There is more pollution of all sorts
on land, in the air, and in the water; more crowding and encroachment on green spaces;
more desolation for countless unfortunate souls; more tension on everyone and
everything; less tranquility and otium—all the result of too many people. Unfortunately,
though, the cries of Cassandras tend to be ignored until it’s too late.

Overpopulation is the problem right now, and if it isn’t fixed, we are digging our
own graves and taking the planet down to Hell with us.

A Note on Sources

In the preceding essay, I make little claim for originality and no attempt to
document the first printed record of various ideas. The gist of it amounts to an application
of Malthus, and the subsidiary theses synthesize or extrapolate from many other works.
Various literary texts inserted throughout are identified where directly quoted. Short
passages from the edition of Malthus with supplementary materials compiled by Philip
Appleman are cited parenthetically as “NM” (short for Norton Malthus). Besides them,
background sources include a number of writers in ecology, environmentalism, biology,
and demographics. These readings range from classics like Rachel Carlson’s Silent
Spring and Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac to academic monographs by the likes
of Paul Ehrlich and Jeff McKee, to popular social critics and radicals like John Zerzan
and Fredy Perlman. I also read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and more recently watched and
enjoyed the 2008 animated film WALL-E.

Finally, I heartily thank Jeffrey Winkelman, Alex Cherup, and Elva Baca Graham
for their helpful and perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this think-piece.

Abstract

In my essay “The 7% Solution to the Greatest Problem on Earth, or Malthus 2.0” I
maintain that the major environmental catastrophes and geopolitical problems plaguing
the planet have overpopulation as their root cause, and that a prompt, radical reduction in
the number of humans on the earth, however distressing, is really the only viable solution
to averting incipient humungous disasters. In an extension of Malthus’s projections and
predictions, I plot out the catastrophes that overpopulation is causing, address counterarguments,
and argue that overall quality of life for humans, other living organisms, and
the ecosystems they inhabit could be tremendously improved if there were far fewer of us
around. A demographic “diet” from the current 7 billion to around 0.5 billion Homo
sapiens would also be far more sustainable and would allow for beneficial recycling. In
making my claims, I invoke some works of fiction, dystopian and otherwise, to illustrate
my contentions, complementing the figures and more scientific evidence, and discuss
radical mechanisms for achieving this right-sizing.

Illustrations

Population graph
A crowded urban scene
Earth from outer space
Brueghel
The Luttrell Psalter
17
El Bosco, The Triumph of Death
Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Notes

1 N.b. many historians contend that the Black Death improved lives for survivors in the generations that followed, a telling precedent for this essay’s central contention.
2 The acronym “NIMBY” (not in my backyard) speaks to the growing realization that all waste ultimately has to go somewhere.
3 To be explicit: the purpose of this article is not to establish an exact formula for calculating the ideal stable population; rather it is to present a thoughtful argument in favor of a drastic overall reduction.
4 Decreasing the overall population would also create a bountiful surplus for recycling and reuse.
5 It is worth acknowledging that men have long fought to the death for materially insubstantial honor or prestige. For example, Hamlet muses on the battle over a worthless plot of land in Act 4, scene 4 of the play bearing his name, while Amazon tribes engage in perpetual cycles of raiding their neighbors. The heavy casualties of modern warfare and of primitive low-tech skirmishes, then, are not always directly
about scarce resources (rich land or fertile women, primarily), but nevertheless reducing the overall population would reduce much of the impetus for armed conflict.
6 N.b. this liberty to travel and try different occupations is a major feature of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, though his ideal world is arguably in many ways dystopian.
7 I.S.A.’s, a term coined by the insane French Marxist and quondam World War II prisoner of war Louis Althusser, refer broadly to those institutional and social influences acting in concert to subjugate individual liberties.
8 Again, in a point of scrupulous logic, certain invasive or weed species have prospered during human colonization of the globe, and their ranks might be thinned if this plan is ever effected. It is also the case that a few ultra-endangered species now making a comeback with intense human assistance might go extinct if our helping hand were to go away. By the same token, some invaders might thrive without diligent policing, such as Asian carp threatening to reach the Great Lakes.
9 Until quite recently, Socialist critics have been generally opposed to Malthus, starting with Karl Marx’s ad hominem attacks in Capital (1867). A gradual thawing and blending of Green and Red views (would they be “purplicious”?) is now underway, however.
10 The modern understanding of “selfish genes” has enabled biologists to explicate why such conflicts are innate in an intelligent, social species such as ours. Complementing that, more is also being learned about why, on a genetic level, it also makes sense for humans to cooperate with both kin and other cohorts under different circumstances.
11 In conceiving of possible cultures for a more lightly populated world, one could do worse than to study both primitive hunter-gatherers as well as various intentional or experimental societies of more modern times.
12 Another point whose adequate coverage would necessitate a whole other essay would be the role of organized modern religion with respect to the current overpopulation crisis and its prospective remedy.
13 It should be acknowledged that a precipitate drop, like any change, would have unintended consequences good and bad. Many dystopian and fantasy works of fiction have explored these possibilities.
14 Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake (2004), The Year of the Flood (2010), and MaddAddam (2013). Other notable dystopian novels along these lines include Silverberg, The World Inside (1971); Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room! (1966); Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar; and David Brin, Earth (1991). 15 Most people are not highly radical; they expect things to stay mostly the same. As Alexander Pope wrote:
“Whatever IS, is RIGHT” (An Essay on Man, I.294).
16 The significance of the fairly obvious bell-curve genetic differences in intelligence seems, in some respects, like the last evolutionary or cognitive domino to topple. Perhaps recent developments in the life sciences will finally permit this currently controversial issue to be treated impartially, rationally, and empirically.