EARTH COULD BE 'UNRECOGNIZABLE' BY 2050 - Really?

Recently the Discovery Channel had a show and post titled EARTH COULD BE 'UNRECOGNIZABLE' BY 2050.  Some comment on it showed up in my Facebook page.  So I thought I'd take a look and see what had caused the comment, always a good idea when trying to apply common sense.  Herewith a Common Sense perspective.

First Common Sense notes that this is from the Discovery Channel a pseudo/pop science commercial endeavor. That's not to say that I don't watch it or that its content is suspect.  Rather one needs to note that it is not so much about science as about selling commercial time.  Common Sense has a considerable education in hard science and engineering and finds that while there is considerable truth and fact in the Discovery Channel presentations it is often framed to sensationalize for emphasis.

Consider first the show's title, EARTH COULD BE 'UNRECOGNIZABLE' BY 2050.  Could it be?  Common Sense says of course, how could it not be.  Humanity has seen more change in the last 200 years than in all of human history!  Will this change continue for the next 39 years?  Of course!  The title is catchy, but it doesn't argue fact.

The article goes on noting "more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources" is a root cause and poses a serious threat to human wellbeing.  But is the world actually becoming more affluent - a base assumption for the argument - in the sense that the developed economies are currently affluent?  While it depends on how one measures affluence as opposed to money the short common sense answer is debatable. Indeed it seems highly likely that what is actually happening is that worldwide expectations are growing particularly among the poor.  Expectations, desire for affluence, for the good life, is NOT the same as actual affluence.  Common Sense notes that desire for affluence in the context of enormous disparity between rich and poor may well be far more dangerous than actual affluence to humanity as a whole and certainly to the haves in a world of haves and have-nots.

The article notes that population is growing and is expected to reach some nine billion by 2050 from some seven billion today.  It notes that we'll need to product as much food in the next 40 years as in the last 8000.  But is that a problem?  Indeed Common Sense wonders if that is even a reasonable question!  Common Sense notes that the 8000 year number is just a scare number.  Don't think so, consider the facts.  In 1950, some 60 years ago, human population was about 2.5 billion.  Explosive human population growth is a very recent phenomena starting more or less coincidentally with the industrial revolution and it's enormous creation of broad based wealth and modern medicine with it's impact on fertility rates and longevity.  These latter two factors have been key drivers in both population growth in the less developed world particularly among the young.

Common Sense notes that in the last 60 years as worldwide population has almost tripled worldwide food production has more than tripled and indeed worldwide consumption of luxury foods such as meat has grown enormously!  Unfortunately, while that is true it is also true that the variability of food production has increased with increasing climate variability and that net worldwide food reserves to address regional shortages has shrunk alarmingly.  The issue here isn't so much one of actual production but of stability and reserves.  Common Sense notes that if you want to actually solve problems the first requirement is that you get the problem itself right.

If the problem is food stability and reserves then one needs to consider our food production system.  The current system is largely based on an industrial mass production model.  That this model is wasteful and subject to instability is undeniable.  Don't think so, try to buy a can of pumpkin, yes pumpkin, and do a bit of research to find out why you can't.  While the current system has served humanity generally well it can be substantially improved.  Indeed, the growth of the 'local food' phenomena speaks to that.  Unfortunately, issues of stability and reserves are most serious in those areas with the largest population pressures.  Common Sense notes that the issue is stability and reserves generally with particular emphesis on poor and emerging economies..

That said, Common Sense notes that population growth such we have seen in the last few hundred years is very likely unsustainable IF we continue to support worldwide population as we do today.  That's a very big IF.  If we continue to follow wasteful policies then things will certainly be very bad indeed.  On the other hand, if we follow even slightly more reasonable policies then the future need not be bad.  Consider that current population growth is about 1.3% per year down from a peak of around 2.1%.   If as a species we improve our resource use efficiency by only a little then population growth need not be a problem as such, at least not until humanity reaches some more fundamental limit.

Common Sense notes that this is not to say that 1.3% growth is a good idea.  It's not as evidenced by the increasing worldwide misery.  Population growth is a central issue that needs to be addressed everywhere, including the developed countries. While we may not like China's one child policy it is in fact rational in the face of unsustainable population levels.  Likewise, social justice and the disparity between the haves and have-nots.  Failing that Common Sense notes that both history and, indeed, current events shows that societies become unstable.

Common Sense believes that the world will certainly be different by 2050 but it need not be worse if humanity and societies, particularly governments, act.