THE GREAT DOWNGRADE

We are in the midst of The Great Downgrade. Like The Great Depression of the 1930s, it will form the lives of the next several generations of the developed world.

The compulsive denial of the effects of human overpopulation on the planet has already yielded a tipping point in the balance of Human and Nature. Some of the most intelligent human minds balk at considering the statistical evidence on population and environment. Demographers like Hans Rosling devise rationalizations to convince themselves that the world human population will magically control itself at 11 billion. 

Rosling ends one TED Talk by reverting to religious morality to rationalize human inactivity in the area of population control. Usually scoundrels, not scientists, revert to religious moralizing in the face of oncoming disaster. I have to say, Rosling's credibility was diminished in my eyes by his use of this ploy. 

Those who run things in the developed world most often come from families that are far removed from the real-life consequences of too many people and too few resources. I am not. My maternal grandmother grew up in a one-room farmhouse in Czarist Belarus. She was one of fifteen children on her family's tiny farm. She recalled living on rationed thin soup made from dried peas and animal bones. 

My father's father came from Irish Famine immigrants to the USA. His grandfather left Ireland with his wife and infant in 1843 to avoid starvation. Simple case of too little food for too many people, regardless of the complex political issues which led to the catastrophe. 

Robotic Chinese factories may be able to flood the world with smartphones and flatscreen TV's. But neither is a nutritious substitute for food grown from increasingly rare unpolluted soil and water. China and India, the most glaring examples of human overpopulation, are not leaders in environmental conservation by any means. Brazil, another example with its overpopulated megacities, is exploiting its natural resources for short-sighted agriculture without regard for the planet's future. 

The distraction of digital technology has served to divert attention from the real issues of polluted air, polluted fresh water and polluted oceans. Getting large populations engaged in internal conflict over superficial issues is a traditional political ploy to avoid taking responsibility for the hard work of correcting environmental problems with available science and engineering. 

Mass migration is a symptom of overpopulation and environmental deterioration. It is a negative side effect of readily available I.T. in impoverished parts of the world, where there is already an expectation of the individual doing with less to accommodate increasing population and desertification. Streaming images of the personal affluence of some in the developed world has a predictable motivating effect for those with aggressive energy and need.

Who will stay in a desert with little food when there is a green oasis over the horizon? Those who have neither the strength nor intelligence to migrate. But also those who accept personal responsibility for their own environment and neighbors. And does the developed world reward them for their loyalty to "home and family"?

And what of the impact of this migration on the developed world? The effects will be gradual. However, more people in the same amount of space with somewhat fixed resources will inevitably diminish what goes around to individuals in that space. Even technologically synthesized products, food and other daily material needs, must be synthesized from something. 

Governments in the developed world have been trying to anesthetize their populations with pro-migrant propaganda. Perhaps this is a genuine attempt to avoid violent conflict. More likely it is a symptom of government inertia combined with the influence of those who exploit overpopulation for profit. Corporate capitalism, as it now operates, is based in that exploitation.

Human beings do indeed resist change without pain. The Great Downgrade worldwide may eventually provide the pain to bring down the systems which led to it. The USSR provided mankind with a clear example of the failure of oppressing individuals to accommodate perceived universal equality without scientifically and cautiously addressing the ratio of resources against population. 

China's reprieve from the disastrous effects of its ancient overpopulation problems is based on expanding its exploitation of resources worldwide with money earned from underpaid labor. It brings to mind the ancient Egyptians who exploited overpopulation of its narrow green nation in the Sahara to build monuments to its leaders. China's shining cities are monuments to the craftiness of Communists who have mastered capitalist exploitation to keep their control of an oversized population. 

The Great Downgrade may eventually be known as The Great Compression. Human masses will be squeezed together closer and closer in order to have enough arable soil and water to support them. The inevitable physical result of any compression is increased pressure within the compressed mass. In human terms, the inevitable physical release of that pressure will lead to implosion or explosion. 

With no place to escape that compression of population, the release of the pressure caused by it could take at least three familiar forms. Mass killings can be seen as a form of implosion. Anarchic revolution can be seen as explosion. Global war can be seen as a managed release of that pressure by the elite who rule.

Until that release occurs, The Great Downgrade will subtly change the quality of life in the developed world, while somewhat raising the quality of life in the underdeveloped world. Is it worth sacrificing human achievements in organic food production, culinary arts, architecture, reduced criminality and urban beautification? I happen to think not.