As a first consideration, we should note that a graph depicting our population growth over the past ten millennia clearly shows that we are skyrocketing straight upward along the y-axis of our graph in a classic display of late-phase exponential conditions (example – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pali_nalu). Our data set also shows that beginning with a world population of two billion in 1930 we will reach seven billion sometime in 2011 (FIVE additional billions in a single human lifetime), with still more billions (numbers eight and nine) on-track to arrive by mid-century. Delayed feedbacks, overshoot, and climb-and-collapse population events all constitute real-world population phenomena, and no other animals in the history of the earth have EVER: (a) supplemented their biological and metabolic wastes with a daily planet-wide avalanche of societal and industrial wastes the way that we do, and (b) used industrialized worldwide mechanisms to inflict the sheer levels of physical damage and ecosystem damage, degradation, and eradication the way that we do.

Regardless of what we believe because it is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially correct, religiously tolerated and culturally syntonic to do so, whatsoever is is, is it not? Please assist me by examining research of the population dynamics of the human species. The implications of this research appear to be potentially profound. If human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species, then the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time could be the proverbial "mother" of the human-induced global challenges looming before the family of humanity. If this global challenge continues to be ignored, the human family could end up winning some Pyrrhic victories over subordinate global challenges but losing the larger struggle for survival itself.

Please note the following perspective from Sir Fred Hoyle that dates back to 1964, a time prior to the publication of Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and the Club of Rome’s seminal work, “Limits to Growth.”

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“It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance… and one chance only.”

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It appears to me that Sir Fred Hoyle was asking people years ago, when I was still a teenager, to carefully consider and rigorously examine a superordinate situation that was too dangerous to ignore… that dwarfed other already identified global challenges. Rather than seriously scrutinize population dynamics leading to the human overpopulation of the Earth, which would require experts to rivet their attention on the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things, the topic was avoided, just as it is being ignored now. At the beginning of my lifecycle in 1945 there were about 2.8+/- billion human beings on Earth. Only 65 years later 6.8+/- billion people are members of the human community.

So much time has been wasted recently by the brighest and best of my generation. The implications of such an unfortunate failure of nerve appear to be far-reaching. We cannot address problems, the root cause of which we refuse to acknowledge.

Representative democracies led by human beings with feet of clay could readily become a force too formidable to ignore with remarkable speed, I believe, but first humankind needs to be helped to see why a force too formidable to ignore is necessary as well as to understand more adequately the nature of the primary human-induced global challenge that presents itself to the family of humanity in our time; that takes its shape in the form of a colossal looming threat to future human wellbeing, environmental health and the integrity of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
1834 North Lakeshore Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-6733
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
http://www.panearth.org/

Dear Professor John Cleland, Dr. Joel Cohen, Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professor Malcolm Potts, Professor Jules Pretty and Professor Zheng Xaioying:

Thanks for all you are doing.

For the first 50 years of my life, matters of greatest interest to you and and members of the Royal Society's Working Group of Experts were outside my awareness. I have come quite late in life to the field of action where the fully expected impacts of billions of human beings upon Earth’s finite resources and frangible ecosystem services are being acknowledged and addressed, thanks to scientists who have maintained their fidelity to science and humanity. For too many years I lived in a dream world, the profane one devised by the self-proclaimed masters of the universe among us. Until late in life I had not adequate awareness that a single generation would elect sponsors of arrogant, foolhardy, greed-mongering economic powerbrokers who would formulate policies and implement business plans that irreversibly degrade Earth's environs, recklessly dissipate its limited resources, relentlessly diminish its biodiversity, destabilize its climate and threaten the very future of children everywhere. My failures include not communicating well enough that I and my greedy generation have been ravaging the Earth and effectively behaving in a way that could lead to the destruction of our sacred home as a fit place for habitation by the children (let alone coming generations). Even though it is discomforting and difficult to responsibly perform our duties to science and humanity, at least we can speak out loudly, clearly and often about these unfortunate circumstances and in the process educate one another as best we can to the "rules of the house" in our planetary home. Unfortunately I do not have answers to forbidding questions related to the patently unsustainable 'trajectory' of human civilization in its present, colossally expansive and ultimately destructive form.

As problematic is the ruinous determination of many too many experts who collude regularly in order to consciously obstruct honest discussion of the best available scientific evidence of what could somehow be real. If what could be real about the human condition and the Earth we inhabit is not confronted with intellectual honesty, the best available science, moral courage and careful action, how is it possible for the family of humanity to respond ably to challenges before us? What mistake in human history could be greater than the ones made in our time by so-called leaders who direct the human species down the primrose path we are taking. What if this leadership causes humankind to precipitate inadvertently the demise of life as we know it in our time?

By reporting what is true to you regarding human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth, perhaps this Working Group can help the rest of us awaken collectively to the human-driven ecological challenges that appear to loom before humankind, threaten life as we know it and put at risk the future of children everywhere.

Sincerely,

Steve Salmony

Dear Esteemed Colleagues,

No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science.

The abject failure of every major legitimate scientific group to respond to the exceptionally strong evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel is simply inexcusable. All have been effectively ignoring research from outstanding scientists who have devoted their lives to actually observing data and trying to interpret it in an intellectually honest manner.

The willful avoidance of the open discussion of science, especially the scientific research of human population dynamics, is as unconscionable as it is destructive. Experts who have remained silent need to be stood up to and directed to assume their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity. Is there a reasonable justification for elective mutism in response to carefully collected and honestly analyzed data?

The tasks at hand for scientists are to freely acknowledge, critique and interpret evidence, I suppose, and to encourage that evidence to be examined from different viewpoints. It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe.

Sincerely,

Steve