Tuesday, July 07, 2020

Covid-19 Should Be a Wakeup Call to Canadians



Few would dispute Justin Trudeau's statement that it will take years for Canada's economy to recover from the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. That's the harsh reality of a tightly-wound, globalist economy. It's not resilient. It doesn't bounce back the way economies did before the neoliberal era. Scars take longer to heal.

What I want you to mull over is what does this mean if we don't have years to recover? What if we're hit with another, perhaps even more severe pandemic two or three years from now while we're still getting back on our feet? What if these seismic events start arriving in multiples, two at a time?

The Earth is suffering a parasitic infestation. That would be us. There are too many of us, living on average far too long, and consuming more rapaciously with each passing decade.  We need so much of the Earth's surface and its resources that we're forcing other creatures into a rapidly shrinking wilderness that cannot support their populations. Since the 1970s their overall numbers have declined by more than half.  Meanwhile species are falling extinct at rates hundreds, some think thousands of times higher than natural baseline rates.

We are encroaching on our planet's dwindling wilderness at rates that are driving the collapse of wildlife populations and the accelerating extinction of species. Climate change is another stress multiplier for wildlife. We are choking out biodiversity oblivious to the fact that we ourselves cannot survive the loss of biodiversity.

And now nature is demonstrating, once again, that the habitat we're destroying and the pressures we're putting on other species are creating the perfect conditions to trigger and spread pandemics that will destroy our civilization and claim lives on a scale we cannot imagine.  SARS, MERS, Ebola, Covid-19 may be just a dress rehearsal for a train of pandemics many experts warn we must expect in the near future.
Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by harboring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans like Ebola, HIV and dengue. 
But a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases like COVID-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise—with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections among the well-being of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems. 
Is it possible, then, that it was human activity, such as road building, mining, hunting and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics in Mayibout 2 and elsewhere in the 1990s and that is unleashing new terrors today?
Research suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases like Ebola, SARS, bird flu and now COVID-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are now able to spread quickly to new places. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of “new or emerging” diseases that infect humans originate in nonhuman animals.
There was a time when these contagions traveled no faster than the "speed of sail." They could hit one area but die out before they became pandemic.  They were much easier to quarantine. Today they travel, often undetected, at the speed of a jetliner, taking hold globally before resources can be mobilized to deal with them.

Overpopulation is an existential threat every bit as great as the climate emergency. Every existential threat hanging over mankind today is inter-related. They all trace back to one common failure - mankind's inability or outright refusal to live within the finite limits of our ecology, our planet, Spaceship Earth.

There are simply too many of us, more than our spaceship can hold and sustain. I spoke with one scientist at the Global Footprint Network about the damage we have already inflicted on Earth's life support systems. There was a time in the 70s when the planet could sustain a maximum population of 3 to 3.5 billion. Today that number is about 2 billion. As we close in on 8 billion the magnitude of our problem becomes inescapable.

There's a process underway today called "Overshoot." It's worsening by the year. This simple graphic illustrates what this is:


The red line signifies consumption. The black dotted line is Earth's carrying capacity. When consumption (per capita consumption times population) exceeds carrying capacity it begins to degrade carrying capacity until the floor collapses out from under consumption. As population numbers collapse carrying capacity doesn't rebound. It can take centuries, even millennia to recover.

A fellow blogger posted a thoughtful item today on overpopulation and both sides of what has become a hollow debate. There are those who still argue that there is no population crisis, that technology will allow us to feed billions more.  The argument is moot given powerful factors such as soils degradation and groundwater collapse, among other ways that we're ravaging our ecosystem, that are always omitted from the debate.

I would like to conclude with an inspirational call to arms about how we must come to grips with overpopulation only I think nature will attend to it long before we can do anything meaningful. It may be better for us to think defensively, focus on how we can keep the next pandemics from our borders, how we can secure our freshwater resources, ways we can bolster our food security. We don't have to wait for chaos to overwhelm us. We need to think strategically and we don't have time to waste.

10 comments:

Toby said...

Over population is situational. The obvious example is the lifeboat which sinks when rescuing too many people. In practical terms a city in the desert consuming more water than available has a population problem as does one that cannot obtain enough food for its inhabitants. What is significant about today is that overpopulation is now a world wide problem; we can't emigrate to a new Jerusalem as it doesn't exist. For the time being, space emigration is just a dream. We simply have to address overpopulation.

The Disaffected Lib said...

Toby, how can we look at a global population that grows threefold in just one lifetime as anything other than worrisome. That's especially troubling when that same growth has caused wildlife populations to collapse by more than half and species to go extinct at hundreds of times the normal base rate.

This should be alarming. The evidence is solid. Our sole species not only shifted Earth into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, but it has irreparably damaged all other life on our planet.

How do we imagine this ends? Why would we imagine it will end any better for our species than for all the others?

Steve Cooley said...

 ... Ebola epidemics in Mayibout 2 ...

Explain this. Is it an example of autocorrect?

Toby said...

Mound, you and I can expect in just a few years to say that the world population of humans quadrupled during our lifespan!

Overpopulation is our biggest problem as it negates anything and everything we do to ameliorate other threats.

Toby said...

Steve Cooley, Mayibout 2 refers to an outbreak in Gabon. You could have found that with a quick search.

The Disaffected Lib said...

Toby, thanks for dealing with Mayibout. I meant to but simply didn't get around to it.

Quadruple? I think we've already reached a stage of inelasticity that we may be incapable of growing much beyond where we are today.

I try not to make predictions that are properly the prerogative of scientists but what I have read from several disciplines leaves me worried that we will see things before this decade is out that we can't imagine today. When I say this I don't focus only on anticipated changes in population, the climate etc., but also on an emerging understanding of resilience across the global civilization. I don't believe we are nearly as resilient as we seem to think we are. If anything, the globalized free trade/neoliberal political and economic order could prove to be our Achilles Heel. What then?

John's aghast said...

Over population IS the problem! If we cut back to 3 billion people would we need Site C, Trans Mountain Pipeline and all the fossil fuels we're consuming?
Absolutely not!
Look, I'm prepared to do my part. If I'm not outta here in 20 years, cut off my oxygen supply.
Practice recreational sex instead of procreational sex and the problem will be eradicated before my demise.






1

Anonymous said...

“the viral disease that emerged in China in December” There’s a little correction, it was known in November and that is a fact, I was in South Korea when it was announced in S. Korea that China had said they had discovered it in live animal section in Wohan. So they knew about it before that. The doctor who was working on this disease died in December. As for over population: It is necessary to include why this is so. Religion has a lot to do with huge birth rates. All while that is so, over population will remain a taboo subject. Just my opinion. Anyong

Trailblazer said...

if I'm not outta here in 20 years,

So, John, you are only about or is it aboot 70 years of age?
Almost all sex starts as recreational!

Seriously.
Population growth IS our most serious problem; less people less need for more energy.
We will however still need to fight those that promote more use of energy and those that fight to curb sustainable energy and energy efficiency.

TB

Anonymous said...

4:33 I am with you. Anyong