Too Many People

Dick’s
Toolbox cont.
..“Brilliance of the Sea” loomed down the channel
dragging a tug “The Lourdes” behind as a token optimistic handbrake.

The immensity was stunning, people like a myriad coloured dots acned the decks
, the sun was momentarily blocked out as if by a partial eclipse. Our fearful
eyes followed the boat’s path up the canal and noted two other cruise
ships moored in the distance. To get one cruise ship might be described as misfortune,
two unlucky in the extreme but three defied both the odds and the imagination.
Thousands of greying American and Japanese were trooping everywhere in organised
chaos ignoring the better cooking on the boat to eat over-priced cafeteria food
served up to them by Venetians eager to maintain at least one of the traditions
of piracy. There they were, guided and unguided masses, talking out every second
of their lives in a cheerfully banal commentary of an existence without apparent
contemplation. We were enveloped in a soundtrack on everything that they were
seeing, had seen, might have missed seeing or that any relative should see.
Why they needed this constant verbal reassurance of the obvious was baffling.”
Venice has survived on tourism for about 400 years, most of that before Hemingway.
The paintings of Canaletto and Guardi can be see as just somewhat larger and
more inconveniently sized postcards for English gentlefolk on a 18th Century
Grand Tour. When Robert Benchley visited Venice and sent back my favourite telegram
to his agent ‘Arrived Venice-streets full of water, please advise!’ tourism
had not reached a mass phase and people moved with relative gentility by train
and rail. When Henry James was in Venice there were even fewer people and I
suspect that his arrival caused more to leave rather than be bored by his latest
novel.
But in a world based on growth do we reasonably expect Venice to survive the
potential new wealthy travelling classes of India and China? Or of Africa, South
America, Russia or of South-East Asia? Extrapolate this to the world, not just
to Paris and London but to Noosa or, at a pinch, Invercargill.
So are we living in fool’s paradise of avoidable consequences? We are
told that population growth levels out when people get wealthier and when one
achieves European levels of affluence population start to decline. Do you possibly
think that this might be just a little too late ? If you visit Europe where
this aspiration has been reached you would think so. The prospect of several
billion people driving BMW 4 wheel drives or even Fiat Puntos, dining on marlin
steaks and each with a beach house might be an unsustainable fantasy but it
is one that business apparently wants to make attainable.
For some time Malthus has been in disfavour. He was the English demographer
and political economist n/ philosopher who said that as population grew geometrically
but the food supply grew mathematically it wasn’t long before mass starvation
would stalk the planet. However agriculture with the use of fertilisers, improved
crop breeding, and ever more land clearing was able to keep up with the expanding
population and, until recently, we had a world that could grow more than it
consumed. Distribution may have been poor but it seemed that we would go this
way forever. We only had to ignore the price we were paying in terms of sustainability.
But who needs Yangtze River Dolphins anyway?
Now humanity has gone this way before on a small scale; the classic examples
of ecological failure of too many people in an environment with finite resources
are Easter Island and Greenland. Some societies have learnt the lesson and found
a balance between resources, population and sustainability though usually after
a high price has been paid. Those who want to be suitably depressed should read
Jared Diamonds ‘Collapse’ where he identifies the 12 environmental
problems that are portents of no good: reduction of wild foods; loss of biodiversity;
erosion of soil; depletion of natural resources; pollution of freshwater; destruction
of natural habitats (mainly through deforestation); maximizing of natural photosynthetic
resources; introduction by humans of toxins and alien species; artificially
induced climate change; and, finally, overpopulation and its impact.
Like ‘When Harry met Sally” we all want what she’s having.
And in the best of all possible worlds everybody should be able to have fake
multiple orgasms over dessert or the lifestyle equivalent thereof. Except that
if everybody does nobody will. So the only way for people to live the life-style
to which we all want to be accustomed is for there to be far, far fewer of us.

So what’s a good arbitrary number then?
Well I’ll put a stake in the ground for the same number of people as lived
before the great sewerage works of London were completed – about 1876 by Sir
Joseph Bazalgette – as an acknowledgement that it was engineers that gave us
clean water and sewage disposal that have contributed most to the population
explosion. Not medicine or the invention of disposable nappies. So that’s
about 1.5 billion people which is still an incredible lot and in rabbit terms
would have us reaching for the Myxamatosis.
How do we get down to that number? The obvious thing is less children but this
comes up against a number of obstacles. In Australia the Right believe it is
their god-given duty to fornicate with anything on two legs (or four if necessary)
so as to populate this barren continent not withstanding the fact that it is
uninhabited because it is largely uninhabitable. legislate the appropriate amount
of children achieved by whatever means possible, up to and including turkey-basters
and not withstanding the sexual orientation of the participants. You may translate
the political or religious forces according to the geography of your choice.
This given the fact that sex is passably enjoyable unsurprising consequences
has meant that there will continue to be more Jasons, Kylies, Peters and Penelopes
that are good for us. One is apparently never enough
The alternative that we all downscale to a lifestyle where the population can
be supported by the planet is not going to sell I’m afraid. Even if it
means taking the planet with them people are not going to be separated from
their Range Cruiser Pajeros unless with a machete.
Which brings us back to Venice and the year 1348 when a boat of dead and dying
from Constantinople brought the plague into Europe. We live in hope.