How can we avoid Collapse when no other Civilization in History could not?

By David M. Delo

EVERY CIVILIZATION IN HISTORY HAS HAD A LIMITED LIFE, THEN IT COLLAPSED. OUR WORLD IS NO EXCEPTION.

What you read in this book may change how you live the rest of your life. The information comes from those who have known of our (humanity's) problem for a full half century. 1) Our planet, Earth, can sustain 4 billion human beings, indefinitely; 2) Using technology, we have stretched Earth's human carrying capacity to twice its normal number; 3) We are supported solely by the food and energy we receive from Earth; 4) Before the end of this century, Earth's replenishment capacity will stretch no further and force humanity to stop growing. 5) At that point, civilization as we know it will slowly collapse and billions of our global population will eventually die. 6) We have another (perhaps) 30 years to prevent this confrontation from occurring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kingfisher Creations
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201694746

David M. Delo

Bio of author David M. Delo I’ve never been great at anything, but I have been around and have had as many failures as I have successes. After college, I was a C.I. agent for NATO (US Army) in Europe. Back in the USA, I became an educational administrator for the American Geological Institute, in Washington, D.C.; a systems analyst and V. P. at Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco; owner of a guest ranch in Wyoming; a P. R. writer for a university library in Illinois and grants writer for a not-for-profit organization in Montana; owner of a publishing company (Kingfisher Creations) through which I authored 10 books; and a semi-professional photographer for half a century. I have also been an artist since 1993 and I have been bipolar II since the mid-1960s. I guess you could say I have had a colorful life. Since the turn of the century, I have resided within the world of creativity. My books (and paintings) are my children and my heritage. My action-mysteries are based on my years in Europe. My historical novels are all based on places to which I have ventured, and I still love my protagonists with whom I identify–a geologist, an artist, a photographer, and an intrepid explorer of the west.

Book preview

HOW CAN WE AVOID COLLAPSE WHEN  NO OTHER CIVILIZATION COULD NOT?

by David M. Delo

HOW CAN WE AVOID COLLAPSE WHEN  NO OTHER CIVILIZATION COULD NOT?

ISBN: 979-8201694746

First Edition May 1, 2022

Published by Kingfisher Creations

Written by David M. Delo

PREFACE

I wrote this book for those you who will still be alive through most of the second half of this century. By the 2070s, humanity is likely to encounter the problem I describe below:

Before the end of the century, our population of 10.6 billion will overwhelm earth’s ability to sustain us. Population growth will cease and our civilization – like every civilization in the past – will begin to crumble.

The first nine chapters include: how this problem appeared, how we have arrived at where we are today (2022), how we have reduced our planet’s capabilities in the process and my take on what our near future (2060) may look like. The remainder of the book spells out our options when we realize Earth can no longer sustain us.

Aside from my observations and conclusions, everything in the manuscript comes directly from books, articles, conferences, and a few blogs written by scientists, environmentalists, and energy gurus back to 1968.

Remain skeptical! I have. Why? Conclusions change over time due to technology, power shifts, and destiny, but this book is not a product of Tolkien, Robert Jordan, or George R.R. Martin. Nothing I have written here is fantasy even though the dates I have used for predictions of future events are ballparks. Events will occur when they occur.

I recommend you read all you can. For starters, I recommend you read the books in my bibliography.

INTRODUCTION

Fact: There are FAR too many human beings living on Earth today, and every year humanity swells by 75 M (75,000,000) people – nearly twice the number residing today in California.  

Fact: The maximum number of humans Earth can sustain forever – known as Earth’s carrying capacity – is around four (4) billion. We passed that number fifty years ago. In 2022, we will have doubled that figure.

Fact: At 8 billion, we will stretch Earth’s ecology to its limits. We won’t see millions die beyond the normal death rate because technology has enabled us to expand Earth’s carrying capacity.[1] Unfortunately, technology has also created problems which have damaged Earth’s replenishment capabilities; that is, Earth has fewer years to keep us alive than it did several decades ago.

Fact: We have treated our home, Earth, as though it had infinite resources. Stop for a moment and think! Earth has a circumference of  24,901 miles – not 250,000 nor 2,000,000. It is a closed, non-growing source of food and energy, everything humanity needs to sustain itself. So the Earth is finite which means it has limits. Therefore, to assume humanity will expand endlessly on this planet, therefore, is a fantasy.

Fact: We are fast approaching Earth’s absolute limits – a wall we will hit during the third quarter of this century. When that happens, we face one of two futures:

(1) If we make no serious effort to radically change how we treat our planet, our population numbers will overload Earth’s replenishment capabilities. Result? Population will stop growing, industrial nations of the world, including America, will most likely begin to collapse inwardly, and our population numbers will slowly decline (over a century or two) to half – or less of half – of what it is now[2]. . . back to Earth’s carrying capacity.

OR,

(2) Within the next two to three decades, a soothsayer, an international environmental group, or an enlightened leader may provide us the beginning of a rational, doable path to a sustainable way of life which may solve a portion of our problems for our remaining citizens – future generations.

Challenge this conclusion! Seek a mentor, experts, recent books, scan the Internet. Look for The carrying capacity of Earth, or The Future of Mankind, or How can we feed 10.6 billion people? You will find dozens of sites that address these problems.

Reality will differ from the outcome I sketched in this book but not by much because we have done nothing to prevent or deal with this problem since we received warnings about it 50 years ago. As of 2023, we have no more a few more decades before the process of collapse begins. Once it starts, it will be too late to stop it. We’ll be in the hands of fate.[3]

PART I: HUMANITY’S PLIGHT

Our planet’s resources have sustained the human race since we evolved as Homo sapiens, yet no one, until recently, has reflected whether Earth, our sole source of human survival,  might at some point fail to sustain our continuously growing population, the same one which has been consuming Earth’s bounty more rapidly than it’s capable of offering. Because the world is finite, we will see a deadlock between too many people and Earth’s limited capacity. That date will precede 2100 by several decades.

Social scientists say our species is not to blame, that our predicament is the natural result of how our race has grown. Others believe the deadlock is due to how thoughtlessly we have treated our planet – the only home we have.

Because our global population surpassed the natural carrying capacity of Earth in the 1970s, we now exist in an unstable (and temporary) condition called overshoot.[4] The Earth’s carrying capacity will soon, like a rubber band, require humanity shrink to a sustainable number. If not, our civilization as we know it will collapse as all civilizations before us have collapsed, and our population will dwindle to (possibly) more than half our current numbers.

Technological change may offer humanity an extra decade but if we continue to destroy what the Earth offers and our population growth continues as projected, this deadlock will occur in your lifetime. The date when this deadlock occurs depends solely on (1) the rate at which of our population continues to grow and (2) the rate we will continue to extract Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable resources. 

Has anything like this occurred in the past? YES! This type of deadlock between population growth and a finite resource took place in the 1940s. In the Bering Sea, twenty-nine reindeer were placed on an empty island which was covered by edible lichen. Thirteen years later, the deer population had risen to 350. Seven years after that, it had risen to 6,000. The following spring, after the reindeer had eaten all the lichen, 41 females and one male survived.[5]

Humanity has had enough smarts to live within the ecological boundaries of Earth. We have not done so. Therefore, even with technology, our population and the limits of Earth’s resources will deadlock like the reindeer herd with similar results.

Conclusion? The general assumption that humanity that will grow endlessly –  assuming Earth has infinite resources – has been our worst mistake in the history of our species.

There are four good reasons why our population grows. Two exist within our species’ DNA.[6]

1) We are unable to discipline our urge for self-gratification – the need to please ourselves, to rapidly satisfy our desires. The controlling agent is Dopamine, a hormone which tells us when we experience pleasure. This hormone is also key to why we need to eat, reproduce, and protect ourselves.

2) Humans have curiosity–the urge to explore, and the desire to obtain new knowledge. These urges set mankind apart from the animal kingdom.

3) Creativity has given us fire, language, and art. And, apparently, we are never content: no other creature has that peculiar characteristic.

4) Our source of food and energy has allowed us to multiply at a rapid (exponential) rate, especially our inexpensive source of energy (oil).

While population grows at one percent, we consume Earth at a higher rate.[7] For the past century, fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) have provided us extra energy for education, art, recreation. They have also enabled industrial civilization to create a lot of physical things we do not need but are promoted as desirable and necessary: Game Boys, Rollerblades, 4-wheelers, the latest version of Smart phones. The necessity and volume of these products come from the same materials from Earth as vital products, via mass production.  

Mass production began a century ago. In the late 1920s, the proliferation of products from mass production spawned the advertising industry. The combination has dominated our lives, caused us to believe we will always want and need more. Far too many of us now believe we will continue to consume more and more, forever! Our industrialized nations have become consumer societies. Their populations have been conditioned to seek more (often better) products especially when they are more efficient and less expensive. America ranks #1 as the lead consumer society of the world.  

Growth, profit, and consumerism go hand-in-hand. Look at the accelerated changes in cell phones and the number of discarded toys in your neighbor’s (and maybe your) room or yard. After four to six generations, this cause-and-effect process to purchase more has become an obsession, maybe even a religion! Politicians and economists see runaway consumption as proof that we need continued growth. Unfortunately, continued growth – which means pulling more from the Earth – quickly leads us toward our deadlock with the limits of Earth’s ecology.

The Religion of Growth[8]

Several years ago an international organization said the world is entering a new economic era in which growth is driven by [1] rapid technological innovation, [2] improvement to making our infrastructure sustainable, and [3] increased productivity. They crate a strong, sustainable, and balanced, growth. [9]

While you think about that statement, you should also remember:

[1] technology has given us greenhouse gases, toxic run-off, and continues to ruin our ability to drink from a single river or lake – a freedom taken for granted before industrial pollution denied us that privilege. 

[2]  our infrastructure (buildings, roads, and power supplies needed to operate society) is in deep need of a multi-billion dollar injection to repair our electrical grid and every physical thing government has not maintained since the 1950s.

[3]  our industries strain to find an increased volume of nonrenewable resources. The best and easiest have been consumed, so needed resources are more expensive to acquire. Our extraction, and soon depletion of critical minerals pushes us faster toward the day we no longer have them for future generations.

[4] A strong, balanced growth is also quickly leading us to the absolute limit of Earth’s replenishment system. The faster and more we produce today robs future generations of what remains of Earth’s sustainable support for the future of mankind.  

There is a tough but necessary option to continued growth which is rapidly denying future generations their share of earth’s support. It’s doubtful we may even try. If you discard the premise about a deadlock, I recommend you at least read Chapter 1: Who Says a Deadlock is Coming?

Chapter 1. Who Says a Deadlock is Coming?

The problem of overpopulation was first defined by Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) a British economist who believed the rate of population growth would surpass the growth rate of the food supply. It meant dire consequences would result unless growth was contained by famine, war, or by moral restraint.

His idea was rejected except for The Population Bomb (1968), a book written by Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife.

The authors argued our population was not being fed adequately while it grew rapidly, and it was unreasonable to expect improvements in food production. Also, population growth placed increasing strain on the productivity of the planet. Ehrlich believed we needed to reduce the growth rate to zero, even reduce our numbers.

They incorrectly predicted worldwide famine would occur in the 1970s and 1980s, but their thought was correct; they were simply a century early. (See Appendix A: How Our Population Grew.)

Two years later, sixteen professionals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) analyzed the trends in a series of global problems –population growth, food production, industrial output, pollution, and consumption of nonrenewable resources – and how they would work together in the future.

Their goal was to understand the consequences of unrestrained growth of these variables. To that end, they created twelve scenarios, changing the value of each variable based on probabilities because they were investigating the future. The 12 showed different patterns