We humans possess an astonishing capacity for self-delusion. We’re at the confluence of several emerging crises like peaking oil production, diminishing fresh water supplies, topsoil depletion, fishery collapse, and increasing demand by developing countries for non-renewable resources. What's fascinating to me is that most of us can’t even contemplate that we are creating these shortages by our very existence. 

The number of humans wanting a slice of the resource pie has skyrocketed from 2.6 billion when I was born in 1950 to 6.6 billion today. Credible scientific estimates indicate that that's 4 billion more than this planet is capable of permanently sustaining even with projected advanced technology. 

The Green Revolution...or petroleum-driven agriculture born in the mid 20th Century... coupled with modern sanitation and medical developments allowed us to live longer while we simultaneously bred like lemmings. Now we’re using vanishing resources at unprecedented rates, many nations are imitating our consumption, and world population is estimated to climb to 10 billion. We’re the victims of our own success. 

Typically, overshoots like ours get “corrected” quite harshly. When a stronger enemy isn’t around to bring an over-inflated society into check…and most wars really are fought over resources, not ideology…catastrophic natural events like famine and disease do the job.  Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse," is a sobering study of several such episodes. 

The survivors often move elsewhere, and we call that immigration. My own primordial ancestors were driven from sunnier climes and even had to develop lighter skin adapted to the less intense sunlight at northern latitudes. But humans also invented technologies… starting with the basics like making clothes and catching fish…to survive in places we are not biologically suited to inhabit. We’ve become so good at technology, however, that it’s allowed us to extend ourselves well past nature’s limits. 

But acknowledgement of the impact of looming environmental calamities is far from universal. Many cling to worn out clichés like, “Be fruitful and multiply,” or “Future high-tech solutions will save us,” or “Don’t worry, the rapture is coming.” And the human tendency to shun responsibility and procrastinate until after disaster strikes further blinds us to the fact that too many people claiming too few resources is the primary issue and addressing it holds the only solution. We even get distracted and expend more effort hacking away at the symptoms…like global warming…than correcting the real root problem.

So is this little rant just an echo of that of computer-generated Agent Smith in the film, "The Matrix," who described humans as an out-of-control virus? In a way…yes. 

But can we solve the over-population dilemma without suffering the inevitable die-offs that happen whenever a species becomes so numerous its environment simply can’t sustain it?  Perhaps. The jury’s still out. However, if we don't start yesterday with corrective measures that may seem Draconian, wars or nature will prune us back.  This…reluctantly and sadly…I accept.

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