The other day I had a conversation with an uncle of mine.
The conversation started with the usual mundanities, work, money, family gossip, etc. Then we moved on to the weather in our respective areas, a topic which, years ago, was considered among the most mundane and common areas of small talk.
But today, the weather, or even more importantly, the climate, is a topic that has become rather spicy, and very hot.
And whenever the topic pops up like burning bread from a toaster oven, I can’t help but express my feelings.
“We’re boiling the planet. Things are gonna get real bad in the next few years,” I said.
“Whatever. They’ve been saying that for years,” my uncle responded, bringing up the common argument that they (whoever “they” actually are) have been telling the public to prepare for doom for the last few decades, and yet we’re still doing just fine.
Sure, a lot of people have been predicting disastrous outcomes for human civilization for quite a while, many of them nothing more than religious fanatics, others a bit more calculated and intelligent with their assessments.
Basically, “they” could be a sea of highly diverse individuals with different motives and interpretations of reality.
Perhaps “they” were the Christians of 17th century Europe who believed the world would end in 1666 because the Bible calls 666 the number of Satan, or the followers of religious leader William Miller who began preaching in 1831 that the world would end in 1843 with the second coming of Christ (yeah, a lot of people believed him).
Or maybe “they” were the ones convinced the planet would be destroyed in 1910 when Halley’s comet came dangerously close to Earth or, much more recently, the purveyors of doom who predicted the collapse of civilization on December 21, 2012 because of the end of the Mayan calendar.
But “they” haven’t always been motivated by mystical or unhinged beliefs.
In 1968 Paul Ehrlich, an entomologist at Stanford University, published his controversial book The Population Bomb, which argued that “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate” because of overpopulation.
He argued that unless we humans brought down our numbers as soon as possible, our species would face “mass starvation” on “a dying planet.”
The book sold millions of copies and turned the author into a celebrity, while also fuelling “an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.
In 1968 there were approximately 3.5 billion people on the planet. As I write this article in 2023, there are just over 8 billion.
So much for a “substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Nevertheless, overpopulation was a genuine concern at the time, mainly because of the potential for food scarcity. But human ingenuity and technological developments have made food production more efficient and crops more resilient, and as of today, no, the world has not ended.
In fact, one could easily believe our species is thriving even after a global pandemic that was causing mass panic only two years ago.
But does this mean we’re destined to thrive on this Earth for eternity? I mean, if “they” have been wrong all these years, it must mean we’re indestructible, right?
Utopian predictions
The thing is, there have also been positive predictions about the future that haven’t come true either. Not long after World War II it was widely believed that the international community would unite, as was partially the case with the creation of the United Nations, and the world would become a peaceful place for eternity.
During the hippy movement of the 1960’s people thought humanity was undergoing some kind of “great awakening”, and in 1980 the book The Aquarian Conspiracy described how humans were evolving into a much more peaceful species that was in greater contact with the natural world.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was believed world peace and the prevalence of democracy across the globe was a foregone conclusion.
Reality
As of the summer of 2023, civilization has not collapsed, but our species has yet to undergo that long awaited “great awakening”, and it appears we’re quite far from it.
For one, democracy is actually on the decline, while dictatorships have been on the rise.
According to an article by DW, “for the first time since 2004, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) has recorded more autocratic than democratic states. Of the 137 developing and transition countries examined, only 67 are still considered democracies. The number of autocracies has increased to 70.”
Not only is democracy fading while autocracies gain traction across the globe, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe appears to be at its highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis, considering threats from Vladimir Putin, tensions between the US and China over Taiwan and other issues, an increasingly militant North Korea, and (update) now a genocidal Israeli leadership.
So is what “people have been saying for years” an accurate predictor of what will or will not happen in the future?
Let’s say your brother has been riding his motorcycle drunk, fast, and on the highway late at night for a number of years now. Amazingly, he’s never had an accident.
You tell him, “You need to stop that. You’re gonna get yourself killed one of these days.”
He rolls his eyes and says, “people have been saying that for years.”
Since “people’s” predictions have yet to manifest, does that guarantee they never will?
The thing is, many of the “doomers” (“they”) of the past were quacks and religious zealots whose predictions were not based on science or any form of reason but on magical thinking, not much different from those on the opposite spectrum who have been predicting a “great awakening.”
And even if some of the failed “doomers” of the past were indeed scientifically literate, the fact that their not so rosy predictions were not accurate at a given time tells us nothing of what the future may bring from this point on.
Setting aside what “they” have been saying for years, let’s consider some raw facts.
The global population recently exceeded 8 billion, and from 2020 to 2023 the number of people suffering from food insecurity has doubled, in part because of the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the increasingly powerful effects of climate change.
Considering the latter, July 2023, less than two months before I began writing this article (which has been updated since then), was confirmed to be the hottest month on Earth since records began, and the full effects of El Niño have yet to kick in.
Temperatures are rising rapidly, causing the planet’s freshwater reserves to dwindle faster than they can be replenished. The New York Times recently did an extensive report on how “America is using up its groundwater like there’s no tomorrow,” which is also drying up because of the increasing heat (and, of course, overconsumption).
Human industrial activities are altering the atmosphere faster than most of us even realize, and human ingenuity may not be able to catch up this time.
In 1972, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicted the collapse of civilization by 2040. Of course, many of us would feel tempted to roll our eyes and say, “they’ve been saying that for years.”
But the belief that a population of over 8 billion people and growing can continue to relentlessly consume the Earth’s resources while rapidly altering the very climate conditions that have made life possible, without eventually hitting a wall, is also a form of magical thinking.
As of the time I write this article, global heat records continue to get shattered while record breaking wildfires rage across parts of Canada, Europe, Siberia, and other parts of the globe, in line with the MIT researchers’ predictions for this stage of the 21st century.
We’ll find out sooner or later if this time “they” turn out to be right.
