Ron Patterson
I have been following the overpopulation debate now for almost forty years but have been following the fossil energy depletion debate for far less than that. Nevertheless, I see the exact same pattern emerging in both debates and both are based on the same misunderstanding of human nature.
Back in the sixties and seventies, there were published a lot of books with a theme that went something like this in the first part of the book: “Here is what is happening because of overpopulation. We are going to hell in a handbasket.” But, the last couple of chapters of the book would always read something like this: “Not to worry, here’s what we can do to fix everything.”
But of course we did absolutely nothing of the sort. The world population has almost doubled since those books first started appearing. And the population is still rising at a about 70 to 80 million people per year.
So, in the nineties and now the double 0s, we see the same kind of sentiment, “We are running out of fossil fuel and here is what we must do to fix everything.” Ladies and gentlemen, we will do nothing of the sort.
We will do nothing of the sort because it is not human nature to operate in such a mode. The world is not run by any kind of intelligence that looks ahead, sees an impending crisis, then relays that information to the world’s population and the world’s population immediately takes the appropriate action to head off the crisis. The world is run in a “reactionary response” mode.
The world has 239 countries, at last count, made up of countless different local governments. These 239 countries contain over six billion people. It is the height of presumptuousness to say that we will be able to tell them anything, must less tell them that they must drastically change their lives. No, what they will do is they will deal with each crisis as it arises and not one day before. That is, they will react to the crisis when it hits them in the face and will respond in whatever manner that their nature dictates.
One writer awhile back, I believe it was Lise, said something to the effect, “If we can understand what is going on, then everyone can.” It is also the height of presumptuousness to think that we can convince six billion people that we know more about anything than they do. We understand one thing, they understand something entirely different. They think their understanding is every bit as good as ours. They will never think anything different until something happens to force a different paradigm upon them. And I do mean forced upon them. They will react to a different environment when they find themselves in it and not one day before. They will never see that different environment coming and take any appropriate action ahead of time.
Of course some people will always be able to see the coming catastrophe and yell “The sky is falling”. Those within earshot will reply: “Yeah right, Chicken Little!” But the vast majority of humankind will not even hear the warning. It is not even in their nature to listen for any warning.
That is the nature of human nature and that is why all grandiose plans to save the world are doomed to failure.