This Is Our Only Home

David J. Simons

Reading from Collapse, by Jared Diamond:

While the prediction that world population will level off at less than double its present level may or may not prove true, it is at present a realistic possibility. However, we can take no comfort in this possibility for two reasons: by many criteria, even the world's present population is living at a non-sustainable level; and, [...] the larger danger that we face is not just a two-fold increase in population, but of a much larger increase in human impact if the third World's population succeeds in attaining a First World living standard.

Over the past year the magazines and journals that I regularly read have had a slew of articles related to environmental problems. The May 22 edition of the Economist featured a special report on water titled "for want of a drink", discussing among other issues the increasing scarcity of fresh water. In many corners of the world people are arguing over scarce water supplies.

The June 18 issue of Science magazine had a special section on the "changing oceans" with articles on the "Impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystem" and an article discussing "the growing human footprint on coastal and open ocean biochemistry", the February Scientific American ran an article entitled "Fixing the Global Nitrogen Problem" discussing the over use of nitrogen fertilizers and it impact on the land and ocean environments. BBC News ran a story in June about the impact of the recent recession on global nutrition as a follow up to an article they ran last year entitled "the Long era of cheap food is over." There have been many more. All of these articles emphasis that we are faced with on rushing environmental catastrophes unless we do all kinds of things to bring about major behavior modification and take steps to ameliorate the damage already done to the environment.

Another short article in Science Magazine last month emphasized the criticality of new agricultural research to increase the world food supply to meet the rising world population. Twenty years ago all of these articles would also be talking about the need to control our exploding world population as at least one part of the environmental puzzle. None of them mentioned that possibility. Population demographics has somehow become a taboo subject. In all my own ruminations about these impending catastrophes it seemed obvious to me that over population was the underlying cause. At 6.8 billion people the world is beyond its carrying capacity for humanity. Since we seem unable to control our population I got to wondering if we really could colonize the solar system and what sort of resources that might take. And of course if you can't get to Mars you can't go to the stars. I thought I might share some of my somewhat disjointed ruminations with you this morning.

On July 20, 1969 the Apollo 11 spacecraft touched down on the surface of the moon making Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first of 12 human beings who have ever been on the surface of an extra-terrestrial body. It was very heady stuff, watched on television by people all around the world. "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". That very month Grace and I had returned to the United States from our two year adventure as Peace Corps volunteers in Nigeria. It felt good to be returning home to the first world and very affirming seeing that adventure of space travel spread across all the media as I thought about continuing my education in physics. Getting a PhD in physics was a career choice that had been partly stimulated by the launch of Sputnik in 1962 and the resulting giant technological push by the United States to catch up with the Soviet Union.

When we left Nigeria in 1969, Nigeria was the most populous nation in Africa with 48 million people, 97% of whom were small farmers or herders. Electricity and telephone were available only intermittently in the largest cities, hardly anybody had indoor plumbing, and the cities were criss-crossed with open sewers, yet Nigeria was a net food exporter earning most of its foreign exchange from peanuts and essentially nobody in Nigeria was malnourished. At that time the world population was 3.63 billion people and the US population was 203 million. Here we are today in 2010 some 40 years later and things are very different. The Apollo program ended with Apollo 17 in December 1972. No human being has walked on the moon or any other extraterrestrial object since then. In fact no one has been any further into space than Low Earth Orbit, some 300 miles above the Earth's surface. Nigeria now has a population of 155 million people (3 times 1969) 60% of whom are malnourished, that is more than the total population of Nigeria in 1969, 40% of Nigerian people live in urban areas and it is a net food importer while earning all of its foreign exchange from oil. Both of these sets of facts are surprising outcomes from what I would have guessed in 1969 when we completed our Peace Corps service. I believed that humanity would be able to escape the confines of earth and move out into the solar system and from there to the stars. I would have predicted that in 2010 people would be living in human colonies on both the moon and Mars. I also believed that Nigeria would be well on its way to being a prosperous first world nation. After all that was one of the reasons I joined the Peace Corps.

Last week I heard a piece on NPR about the role science fiction had played in inspiring many of today's technology wizards in choosing careers. There was a short interview with an Indian educated engineer who was managing research at Google on search engines. He spoke of watching the Star Trek character Scotty speaking to his computer. I am certain many of you remember Scotty sitting in front of the computer. "Computer find me the specification of star drive fuel module this or that". The interviewee spoke about being inspired in his work developing speech recognition algorithms combined with on-going research on search engines. This science fiction story had influenced his career choice. I hadn't really thought about Star Trek effecting kids in India. I know that I have always been an avid science fiction, and I am certain that Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clark were very influential in my decision to study physics and in particular to choose Space Physics. With Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and dozens of space opera novels in my head I probably believed that the "final frontier" and "going where no man had gone before" would be the salvation of humanity when we had finally despoiled the Earth into inhospitable environmental degradation. In fact many science fiction novels were built around just that theme.

Isaac Asimov created world spanning civilizations with every inch of planetary surface filled with building as well as multi-tier levels of endless cityscape with billions of human beings somehow supplied with food and fiber by intergalactic transports coming from farming and forest planets spread across the Milky Way. He envisioned an interconnected galaxy mirrored on our Earth based interconnected worldwide commercial civilization. As a teenager I swallowed those predictions and I certainly had faith that we would someday send large numbers of people to the stars. Even when I finally understood enough physics to seriously question this vision, I held out hope for the miracles of technology to sweep away the seemly insurmountable problems and improbability of space travel for large numbers of people. In thinking as I often do about the current human condition which presents so many grave issues for our worldwide civilization, I wondered if science fiction, and space operas in particular, didn't serve for some part of the secular population the same function that "end of times" stories serve for the ultra orthodox Christianity. It is possible that some portion of the population thinks that we can and will escape to space as a haven from the havoc we are wrecking upon our Earth's environmental support system. After all we did indeed send people to the moon and China currently has announced a project to send people back to the moon.

For many of us exploration of the solar system seemed like a natural step for humanity and our belief in the progress of technology and science would make exploration possible. It is certainly true that national investment in reaching the frontier of space has brought about sensational technological innovation that now permeates our lives. Many credit the rapid advances in computer technology and microelectronics to NASA and military space investments. It is claimed that a nations financial success as a trading partner as well as it political position is effected by other nations' perception of technical prowess as demonstrated by space programs. I believe at this stage in its social and economic development, China, is pursuing a space program partly for reasons of cultural pride and international recognition of its place in the world as a modernizing nation.

The United States went to the moon more as a political symbol in an international competition between the Capitalist west and the Communist east. Having won that competition we ended the moon program without establishing a permanent base on the moon. Why was that? Really because it was way too expensive an undertaking and we were not technically prepared to safely maintain a presence. A permanent base served absolutely no defensible purpose given our marginal capabilities. What did that mission to the moon actually cost? You might not know or remember that the last three Apollo flights to the moon were cancelled because the program had become too expensive. The lift vehicle, called the Saturn V rocket, cost $6.5 billion all by itself. In today's dollars that is $43.6 billion or a launch cost of $2.6 billion for each of 17 Apollo flights. The entire program cost $161 billion dollars in today's dollars. At its peak it employed 400,000 people and had 20,000 subcontractors. It accounted for .5% of US GDP. It had put 12 men on the moon but had not established a permanent base. In the context of our current recession many of those 400,000 jobs were in southern California where a giant aerospace industry had grown up in support of both NASA and the DOD. Some of you remember the names of the titans of the aerospace industry such as MacDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, Rockwell, Litton, Martin-Marietta, Northrup Aviation, Sperry-Rand, Hughes, Boeing, and Grumman Aerospace. Today the remains are in Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Northrup-Grumman.

I believe that we face very great barriers to human migration into the solar system, much less extra solar system colonization of the sort envisioned in space opera science fiction as epitomized by the Star Trek, and the Star Wars movies. Truly the most insurmountable problem is the expenditure of energy required to raise a vehicle out of Earth's gravitational field through the atmosphere into low Earth orbit. This makes it very expensive to take a person from the surface of the Earth into space. The cheapest access today is provided by the Russian Soyuz rockets which will carry three people into low earth orbit for $105 million dollars utilizing 88,000 gallons of RP-1 fuel (a highly refined form of Kerosene) and an equal amount of liquid oxygen. Compared to the US it is cheap because of the wage scale of Russian workers. The Space Shuttle costs far more. Currently no one sees a credible way to get around this energy expenditure. Scotty is not going to "beam you up"! Also life has evolved at the bottom of the Earth's atmosphere surrounded by a sizable magnetic field. This combination of atmosphere and magnetic field protects us from the worst of the high energy radiation which permeates all of interplanetary space.

Low Earth Orbit, where the Space Shuttle has flown and where the International Space Station is located; is shielded by the Earth's magnetic field as well. Once a space vehicle moves above the majority of that field it is exposed to the full effect of galactic cosmic radiation as well as the radiation carried by the solar wind. That is true for the surface of the moon. The Apollo missions protected Astronauts from this radiation using the conventional shielding designed into the spacecraft hull which does allows a certain percentage of the radiation into the spacecraft. This is true for Space Station visits as well. A long duration mission to Mars requires much more shielding as well as a radiation cave for astronauts to take cover during extreme solar flares. We have also learned that very long endurance space travel with only micro gravity such as a three year one way flight to Mars results in so much bone calcium loss that a 35 year old astronaut will suffer worse osteoporosis then ninety year old women. Under the current circumstances it is unlikely that a person after a three-year journey could stand, even in the reduced gravity of Mars, without breaking bones. Living in micro-gravity not surprisingly is not good for you. NASA is still trying to figure out how we will cope with the cosmic ray radiation and the microgravity environment. There are not simple answers and both problems require adding significant additional mass and structure to any interplanetary vehicle. This adds significantly to the already huge cost of such a mission.

My point here is not that I think humanity should not undertake missions to the moon and Mars. It is just that people should not assume that in any foreseeable future that it is likely that there will be one man freighters operated by the likes of Hans Solo wondering around the solar system, much less offering interstellar travel, for anything less cost than a nation state could possibly afford. There are many thoughtful and reputable scientists who believe the cost in overcoming the problems of interplanetary travel is so great that humanity should stay with robotic probes of the planets. The main thing we will learn by sending people to the moon and Mars is if and how human beings can cope in these difficult environments. And unless we can bring the cost of space travel down by factors of 1000's it seems that there will be little or no incentive for commercialization of space beyond what remote robotic vehicle can perform and even there the cost seem prohibitive. I can't imagine that mining ore on the Moon will ever by cost competitive with recycling here on Earth. And it certainly won't be true if it cost $35 million dollars to get a miner to the mine site and that doesn't count the high cost of keeping a person alive on the moon.

My conclusion is that large number of humans are not going to migrate off of the surface of the Earth. We really have no choice but to make the Earth last as long as we can as a home for humanity. Now let me tell you why we are not going to succeed if we don't start talking about the population bomb once again. I am convinced we are doing very poorly at dealing with our gravest environmental problems and that many of our basic support systems are straining at their edges. Our current world population is at 6.8 billion people as compare to 3.8 billion forty years ago. The United Nations is predicting that the world population will increase to between 9.2 and 10.5 Billion people by 2050. We are already running out of fresh water, we have over fished our oceans to unsustainability, fertilizer is critical to providing sufficient farm raised animals and vegetables and yet fertilizer and animal waste have washed into the seas creating zone of hypoxia and eutrophication along continental margins which have been some of the best food productive places on the earth, carbon dioxide induced climate change is raising sea levels while rising atmospheric water vapor is changing weather patterns worldwide, acidification of the oceans is creating havoc with coral reefs, and we are suffering significant top soil losses from some of the most productive agricultural land in the world.

It is my contention that the world is already over populated and, for reasons beyond comprehension, people have stopped talking about it. So is there hope that if we act we can keep the Earth system from going into collapse even if we continue to ignore the population issue. One thing that should be said up front is that it is the consumption per person times the number of people that determines the overall effect on the environment, not the absolute number of people. Here are some revealing numbers. According to the most recent United Nations report on the Millennium Development Goals published this year, 1.4 billion people in the under developed world are living in extreme poverty which is defined by the World Bank to be spending less than $1.25 a day for all basic needs. In the developing world the poverty level is $2.00 a day and according to the World Bank the poverty rate from 1981 to 2005 fell from 40% to 29%. Really that is a significant gain. It is sad to report though that the total number of people living in poverty in the developing world remained constant at 1.2 billion people.

In China alone the number of people living in poverty was reduced by 600 million people (that is double the population of the US). In South Asia the poverty rate was reduced from 59% to 40% while the number of people living in poverty actually increased from 548 million to 596 million (48 million more people living in poverty). If we add in the developed world, we find that currently 3 billion people are living in poverty. I suspect that is about the same number of people that were living in poverty in 1981. That is close to the population of the entire world in 1969. The difference is that in 1981 there were 4.6 billion people in the world and today there are 6.8 billion people. The green revolution that brought about massive increases in the world food supply allowed the world to meet the needs of an additional 2.2 billion people over this 24 year period from 1981 to 2005. That is an amazing accomplishment. Trouble is it is still leaving out 3 billion people (44%). And you know that every one of those 3 billion people would like to achieve the life style of first world people. As I already indicated the UN is forecasting that world population will increase to between 9 billion and 11.5 over the next 40 years. What do you think the impact of adding another 2 billion to 4.5 billion people to the world will be over the next 40 years? We know if you don't get people out of poverty and educated, they don't know enough and have no incentive to not wreak havoc on the environment and they certainly do not control there fertility.

We should be celebrating the fact that China added 600 million people to its rising middle class over the past 24 years. Like all people living in poverty around the world these people aspired to a first world standard of living and they have, along with India, come marching along in to the first world with all it characteristics. Air pollution in China is now the worst in the world and we all hear about the historic traffic jam in Beijing last week. On average people in the first world (the US, Europe, Japan and increasingly China and India) consume 32 times more resources such as fossil fuels, fresh water, wood, fertilizer etc. than people in the developing and underdeveloped world. The developed world through the world bank and the various agencies of UN have been telling the poor nations of the world that if they just run their economies the way we do they can achieve the same standard of living enjoyed in the developed world. Is that really possible? Are there actually the resources in the world to support that? Do you believe that even at a constant world population we can add an additional 3 billion people to the middle class without serious consequences to the biosphere. Our standard of living has created an environment sitting on the brink of crisis. Fresh water all over the world is in short supply. Climate change exacerbates this problem by introducing changing and as yet poorly understood rainfall patterns. In the United States 41% of fresh water is used by agriculture already, in India it is 90% and for the world as a whole it is 70%. Also in the developed world on average industry uses 60%. A fare share of American agriculture has been using water from aquifers which are simply not replenished at anywhere near the rate of withdrawal. Another problem is distribution of fresh water. India and China have over a third of the world's population and yet only 10% of the world's available fresh water.

Now for some potentially positive news. It turns out that 1.6 billion people worldwide get the majority of their protein from the oceans. Studies by Universities, NGO's and other claim that the worlds fisheries are sustainable and could continue to provide the current level of supply if we could enforce existing rules on fishing methods and extractions. That is heartening. Providing adequate nutrition for the current population of the world is a challenge and is an area of controversy. There are those economists who claim it is simply a matter of distribution meaning a combination of being in the right place and having the money to buy it. If there was more money there would be more supply. I am pessimistic about this because of the limited supply of fresh water in the places that there is unused arable land. The problem is exacerbated by what people want to eat as they get more money. Every calorie of meat requires 20 times the land and water to produce than a calorie from grain. If you are going to eat meat you will use more resources. May be we can feed our current population. We certainly are not doing today. What about energy which is central to addressing many of the other problems. If you can afford desalination you can provide a lot more fresh water. We really do not have to burn fossil fuels to get our energy. A combination of renewable energy sources including wind, solar, tidal, and the inevitable nuclear power can get us off of carbon dioxide producing fossil fuels. It will take time and we must move immediately and right now we seem incapable of giving it sufficient priority. One issue will be, if was can make the resources available, will it happen soon enough to avoid significant land loss to rising seas. The article in Scientific American discussed precision application of fertilizer and water claiming that fertilizer and water amounts could be reduced by 90% with no impact on the productivity of the land. This has been the farmer's dream. It saves money, protects the land and sea, and increases land productivity.

We will not be saved by going to the other planets or to the moon. We might be greatly helped at today's population level by adopting existing solutions that could be put in place within the next 20 years. I believe it will be impossible with an additional 2 to 4 billion people. It is problematic at even today's 6.8 billion and counting. I think we all have to become engaged once again in the issue of over population and its consequences for all of humanity. I leave you with the quandary that for every family a new child seems a miracle and a blessing, while 170 million new babies a year for humanity is a catastrophe in the making.

[Delivered August 29, 2010. David J. Simons is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland in 1974. His doctoral thesis concerned the energization mechanisms of electrons in the Aurora Borealis. He led the atmospheric sciences group at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1980's, working on a diverse set of physics and chemistry problems related to nuclear explosions, radio propagation, radiations transport, lightning physics, near earth space plasma dynamics and complex terrain atmospheric circulation. He has worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2001.]

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