The 11 Billionth Mouth

I was chowing down on a small plate of enchiladas, the kind with green and red chilies on the side and spicy rice beneath. As I stuffed my mouth and reveled in the flavors that pleased my pallet I had a thought about the 11 billionth mouth on this planet that would want to eat too. The emergence of that 11 billionth mouth is reasonably possible within my lifetime. The current population of the world increased by 2% each year would yield that mouth sometime in the year 2034. My nephews and nieces will potentially see 23 billion mouths in their lifetimes. Of course all of those projections suppose that some major catastrophe doesn't emerge and limit the population.

My mind raced ahead with thoughts about how impossible those numbers seem to be. We are already seeing the impacts of human population size on the environment with mineral extraction, waste heat and waste CO2 in the atmosphere. At the risk of being a bit too crude, the 7 billion inhabitants of the world already contribute 319 million tons of feces to the environment every year.

The oceans are already being depleted of the fish that are there to take. Arable land is already being stressed to its limits in most parts of the world. Fresh water is a commodity that will spawn armed conflicts by its scarcity. We have assumed that current production levels of food and water is sufficient to support our 7 billion person population. What if it is not?

The story, Soylent Green, with its iconic scream, "Soylent Green is people," is only one small part of the plot and the story. There is a far more frightening and sinister aspect to that story.

There is a book. It is Soylent Corporation's Oceanic Survey. It says that the oceans are dying and are mostly already dead. The bigger conspiracy is not that people are being recycled for food, but that they need to be recycled as food because there are no other sources remaining. The senior executive who is murdered just submits as the hired killer kills him. He would rather die than live with the knowledge of what the future holds for the billions of people who are in fact doomed but don't realize it.

So back to reality! Are we in a death spiral that cannot be stopped? Have we passed that point of no return on a the slippery slope?

My Related Post --

In doing research for an article I came across this webpage. While I realize the author is trying to tell the world that abortions are terrible, the most shocking counter is the one in the top right corner that showed total annual abortions. I took away a completely different POV. Without abortions, the world population today (2013) might be as high as 8.3 Billion mouths. And this doesn't include all the mouths that the non-aborted ones would also have had.

2034 and the 11 billionth mouth is not that far away. If we as a species do not act to self regulate, the environment will do it for us with a great deal of pain and suffering. Starvation and social unrest will plague us until a New Equilibrium is established. The New Equilibrium will not include all of us. The Culling of Man may not take place until there are 11, 17 or 23 billion people or more, but all nature needs to do is reduce food production by as little as 10% and we collapse as a species. Three consecutive years of reduced food production is major catastrophe. Not necessarily an extinction level event but one where billions of people suffer and die.

So what would it take for Nature to stabilize the human population? All the earthquakes, even the largest ones ever known hasn't done the job. All the volcanoes have failed that assignment too. Unless a virus becomes exceptionally potent, we cannot rely on that vector either. A meteor and asteroid might be able to accomplish the task, but we cannot reply on it happening any time soon. A geologic event is not likely to be the bearer of the New Equilibrium unless it is really a monster like never before seen.

A few conspiracy theorists have postulated that there are already plans in the works to manufacture the vectors of population control. All of these conjectures are predicated on there being an elite group who will sacrifice others to save themselves. The conjectures also presuppose that there is a need to do something before it is too late. If they would have to do anything, it is already too late.

As of now, 7 billion people seem to be in some level of equilibrium. The 11 billionth and beyond, constitute the problem that needs to be addressed. Where exactly the tipping point resides is up for debate. We are able to use our brains to change technologies to produce usable energies and fresh water in greater abundance without further polluting our sealed bell jar biosphere. Can we produce edible proteins enough for 11, 15 or 23 billion people? And where and how would we and should we stop?