A reduction in human numbers is inevitable

The current array of global crises is more intractable than we realise

First, a climate crisis, then an energy crisis, now a food crisis. No wonder we’ve forgotten the poverty crisis that was declared the mother of all crises by the G8 only a year ago.

Yet, our success in tackling these predicaments doesn’t seem to match the urgency we accord them. People don’t stop travelling or even change their light-bulbs. Meanwhile, the steps we do manage to take turn out to conflict. Biofuels hijack farmland; enhancing agricultural output requires more oil; even scrapping food packaging increases waste by reducing the contents’ longevity.


Maybe the problem is that we’re looking at things in the wrong way. Perhaps these supposedly separate crises should really be considered facets of one straightforward, if intractable, phenomenon.

The populations of animal species expand with available food and habitat. When the supply of these things contracts, their populations fall. Technology has enabled humans to expand their global footprint massively, and their population has surged accordingly. However, this process couldn’t go on for ever.

The First Post