Further Remarks on the Human Population Epidemic

Jerry Kendall responded on my Facebook page to last week’s post Countering Human Epidemic of Unlimited Population Growth” by challenging my statement that human population growth constituted an epidemic that threatened the ecological sustainability of life on the Earth. Rather, to be revise, he asked, “Am I reading you correctly? Humans are an epidemic? If that is a major premise for a policy discussion where do we end up? Better to start with the inherent worth of people. Yes, as you say scarcity etc. is a reality, policy has to prioritize people as ends not as means and certainly not as diseases.”

I thought his comments, which suggested that what I wrote was not adequately clear, were worthy of a slightly more expansive response than I there provided, particularly because they suggested that my blog could lead to important misunderstandings. So let me briefly elaborate.

It’s not that the human being per se is a pest. Each human being ought to be treated with respect, as much as their actions permit and justify. And they ought to be provided with the objective conditions that make that respect capable of realistic realization. (The details for which are complicated, and deserve much more detailed consideration than can be addressed in this comment, but which I will address in future entries.)

But one thing should be clear and indisputable. Such enhancement of human well being cannot happen if the ecological conditions that make possible the development of life on planet Earth are destroyed. And uncontrolled population growth, linked as it is and must be, with the increased exploitation of the Earth’s resources and the increased accumulation of unrecycleable outputs of production, will inevitably destroy the earth’s capacity to decently sustain living beings. Thus, unlimited human population growth is effectively an emerging ecological catastrophe. it threatens to destroy the ecological conditions necessary for civilized human existence. And an economic order that requires unlimited population growth is one that is on a collision with disaster.

But I suspect that Jerry and I are in basic agreement effect, namely that we should address the human being as worthy of being treated with decency and respect, and that we should do all that we can to promote conditions that enhance those possibilities. And these are, of course, sentiments that I share completely. That is one of the reasons why I have long been a member of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island, one of whose operating values is that “we choose to attribute worth to every human being”. (It is important to note in passing, that the emphasis must be placed on the word “choose”, as values are not intrinsic to the natural world, but are a human contribution. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see my “Critique of Western Philosophy and Social Theory”,)

We must therefore find a way to fundamentally transform the structure of our economic system to one that is ecologically sustainable, and that can and does put an end to unlimited population growth. That was my point, and remains valid.