Could sustainability lead to an authoritarian future?

Those who imagine humans eventually returning to agrarian societies also often imagine that such societies have the potential to be much more democratic and egalitarian than our current world. But, among those who imagine what I’ll call a sustainable industrial future, there is little discussion of future political arrangements. It is implied that we will continue with nominally liberal democratic governance in North America and Europe. (It’s hard to see, however, how that model will apply to say, the governments of central Africa.) But a sustainable industrial future, if it can be achieved, might require the regimentation of the individual beyond anything we have so far experienced.

One need look no further than the issue of population to realize that this assertion is not overblown. In any sustainable society population cannot grow indefinitely. It must be stabilized at some point. How then to stabilize it? Normally, nature manages this task by making the death rate equal to the birth rate. The question that should concern us is whether we want to allow nature to match high birth rates with high death rates or whether we’d like to keep both birth and death rates low. Presumably, one of the principal advantages of industrial society is that it is able to provide a healthy longevity to many more people. This implies that to stabilize the population we must achieve birth rates low enough to match our low death rates.


The right to bear children, however, is regarded as a fundamental human right not to be interfered with by the state. And, the choice not to bear children is also regarded as a right in many countries. But if the choice is left up to the individual, there is no guarantee of a stable population. How then should we go about matching birth and death rates? Harrison Brown, writing to us from the year 1954 in his book, “The Challenge of Man’s Future,” suggests a method that would strike us as a crass violation of the rights mentioned above:

Let us suppose that in a given year the birth rate exceeds the death rate by a certain amount, thus resulting in a population increase. During the following year the number of permitted inseminations is decreased, and the number of permitted abortions is increased, in such a way that the birth rate is lowered by the requisite amount. If the death rate exceeds the birth rate, the number of permitted inseminations would be increased while the number of abortions would be decreased. The number of abortions and artificial inseminations permitted in a given year would be determined completely by the difference between the number of deaths and the number of births in the year previous.

But that wouldn’t be all. If we are to maintain a worldwide sustainable industrial society, we will need to control population across current borders. If we don’t, many members of overpopulated societies will soon be knocking at our doors asking for assistance or even entry.

Energy Bulletin