"Facts are Stupid things"

—Ronald Reagan

COPULATE! DON’T POPULATE!

By the year 2050, there will be somewhere in the neighborhood of nine billion people (Homo erectus asphaltus) on our lovely blue-green (browning) planet. The vast bulk of these techno-primates will live squeezed like (soon-to-be-extinct) sardines in gigantic sprawling humongousburgs, the likes of which we primitives haven’t quite imagined yet. "We" will be wired to electronic synapses that make today’s Internet look primitive and silly. Ostensibly, the last thing on "our" minds will be the debate over "resource management" versus the rewilding of nature.

Nine billion acquisitive techo-monkeys require, and will inevitably demand, potable water, quasi-nutritious vittles, sewage disposal, garbage removal, medical treatment, reasonably affordable transportation, lots of cheap entertainment, and, at a bare minimum, 4.5 million (free!) porno websites.

These same masses will view "nature" as not only a commodity (in ever-shrinking supply), but as an ephemeral version of what they can more easily access via cyber-technology. Imagine a chimpanzee decked out in a hard-wired Prada cybersuit, complete with 3-D neural-goggles, smell-o-rama nosepiece, biofeedback sensory nodes, and a genital interface diode, and you’’re getting the picture. And that’s just the poor dudes in Bangalore! Folks in South Korea, Singapore, Eastern China, and Bombay will be so advanced that most of their citizens will have virtual access to any and every square inch of the Big Outside simply by inserting a chit card and dialing up the coordinates of their latest whim. Maui for a few rounds of sharkless surfing on 50 foot frothy blue cylinders? No problem; please insert Master Card now.

This is not a new or original concept. For a much better take on the subject, I refer you to Jack Turner’s The Abstract Wild. I hereby confess to greatly running with his idea to the point of absurdity. Although my analysis may prove somewhat prescient (in the way Blade Runner was –– see Bangkok at 3am on any Friday night for a reality check).

The buck stops with what techno-wonks euphemistically refer to as "overshoot," followed by the inevitable die-off of the species living beyond its means (us). It’s simple to the point of being stupid. We’re living on borrowed time, and attempts to work our way out of the mess by committee ends in a downward spiral of suffering. Both for ourselves and our evolutionary partners in the Wild Kingdom.

What happened? As one pundit put it: "……too much technology wielded by too many inhabitants of a planet with obdurately finite carrying capacity."1

Dave Foreman, one of America’s premiere biocentric philosophers, asks, "Where will it all end? Many demographers predict that human population will stabilize at 11-12 billion –– twice what it is today." Dave says that Homo erectus asphaltus used "about 40 percent of Earth’s net primary productivity (NPP) in 1986." According to Paul and Anne Ehrlich, NPP equates with all the "solar energy annually captured worldwide by photosynthesizers and not used by them to run their own lives."2

Do the math. Assuming we weather whatever ecological meltdowns are duly coming our way as a result of our species’ hubristic monkey business, how much of the planet’s NPP will 12 billion folks consume every year? Any way you slice it, we end up two sandwiches short of a picnic. And as we say in Alabama: "That dog won’t hunt."

Here’s the point –– regardless of what road we take, whether it be to save the bison or create wildlife corridors for America’s mega-fauna or recycle 100% of the garbage in Los Angeles, our sheer numbers, coupled with our religious propensity to consume, will inevitably result in the kind of ecological destruction we can only hope we don’t dream about on a cold rainy night. But this isn’t some new fangled behavior that Freud’s progeny can save us from. Our disconnect from reality began no later than the end of the Pleistocene, resulting in the single most destructive weapon ever used against Nature: Agriculture. For whom the bell tolls…….

The bedrock issue is one of sheer human numbers, coupled with carrying capacity logic, and the bold concept that much of the planet should simply be off-limits to everybody, regardless of our social status, political connections, or ability to shell out coins for recreation and adventure. The exception would be for those indigenous folks able to live "sustainably" within their ecosystems. (Warning: the word sustainability is one of those fuzzy terms of art that is used adaptively by various parties, usually in the abstract. Meaning, it has no meaning).

Those wanting to see wild ecosystems continue to exist into the distant future, must advocate a serious reduction in the human population, beginning Now. Our advocacy should hinge on incentives, education, birth control programs, and a no-nonsense kick in the ass to those religions still medieval enough to suggest that birth for the sake of birth is in keeping with some mysterious Divine mojo.

The real work won’t begin until the day my fellow Americans wake up and start thinking for themselves: Jettison corporate junk food, demand clean renewable fuels, abandon monolithic institutionalized religious voodoo, and elect intelligent, informed (read: wise) men and women to represent us in the halls of power. In fact, just make it women; men have had 10,000 years to prove how utterly stupid it is to think with one’s genitals.

Unfortunately, our current global paradigm is to see everything as being hitched to a price tag. Even naked ascetics on the banks of the Ganges expect a few coins in return for a blessing or two. That’s just the way the game is wired. Thus, conservationists have tended to be sucked into the debate in relation to economy versus ecology. Which is a stupid debate. How do you "value" Nature? Using what (whose) criteria? What’s a grizzly bear worth (answer: A lot; ask Doug Peacock. He knows)? How about a hickory tree or a Pink ladies slipper? Why equate wilderness communion with "recreation"? It’’s time to walk out of that trap…….

The genuine debate regards Nature for Nature’s sake –– biocentrism versus anthropocentrism. Either you get it or you don’t, and those who get it have an innate urge to fight for what can only be referred to as cosmic justice. Because, in the end, all the lip paddling in the world is much hot air. Nine billion people will impact the planet exponentially. Twelve billion is too hard to fathom. It’s condoms or curtains for what many of us consider sacred ground.

As the sage said: "Copulate, don’’t populate!" Not to give up hope. Weird things happen. But the proverbial clock is not only ticking furiously, but indicates that it’s much later than we thought, at least in terms of preserving habitat integrity, species viability, and ongoing natural wild systems. As Mr. Dylan said: "Time is a freight train." (And if he didn’’t say it, I will.)

The old models are ripe for reevaluation. That includes the way we defend the wild. If so-called environmental groups aren’t getting the job done, it’s time for a change. But not towards group-think, consensus babble, socio-politco deal-making gambits; down that road awaits defeat, one acre at a time. The population equation either becomes the axis mundi of our ecological paradigm or we’re pissing in the wind. It’s that simple. Playing the ostrich game is about as useful as sticking wings on a pig. And if we’re dodging overpopulation, we’ve got our heads in the proverbial sand.

Ultimately we can only do what we can do, which is to carry on, despite the odds. In the long run, it’s a mater of personal effort and work that determines the end of the story. Which reminds me of Gary Snyder, a man worth listening to. His is a bioregional approach, whereby we all dig in, learn the ropes (including the Way of our fellow critters, plants, bugs, rocks, in short –– our real community) and then dedicate ourselves to protecting this space. It’s a simple plan and has proven more or less successful for his Yuba River Watershed.

And you have to appreciate Snyder’s ecological realism. Having articulated that Nature is fully capable of maintaining herself without assistance from us (paraphrase), that she doesn’t need us to "save her," a member of one of his audiences asked, "Then why work to stop the destruction?" Quoting Jim Dodge, here’s Snyder’s response –– "Gary grinned hugely, leaned forward, and replied without a quiver of hesitation, ‘‘’Because it is a matter of character.’"3

Amen, brother, and nuff said.

Notes:

1. William Catton, Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, page 59. 2. Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Population Explosion, pages 36-37, as quoted in Dave Foreman’’s Rewilding North America. 3. The Gary Snyder Reader, forward by Jim Dodge, page xx.