Many of you will stop reading this in a few moments because it is too depressing. I have been concerned about the future of the human race since I was in college. I studied population demographics and growth, climatic change, agriculture, and several similarly diverse subjects in getting my masters in geography. If this sound contemporary, you are wrong. I graduated in 1971. That was 4 years ago and ever since, I have been gathering more knowledge about the future and positing a theory. It isn’t good for humanity.
Our planet’s resources are finite. We have gone through the high quality minerals and are now using lower quality that are more expensive to mine and thus more destructive to the environment. Examples are Minnesota’s iron ore is a third of the percentage of the iron being mined in the 1940s and gold miners are happy with grams per ton instead of ounces. Petroleum reserves peaked in March 2003 because we are using it faster than technology is finding new fields or increasing recovery methods in old fields.
Other examples are seafood. I remember one text stating the sea could supply enough food for the world indefinitely. Now we are down to eating the baitfish that was used to catch higher quality fish. Commercial fishing is totally banned in some areas, and fishing for some species is limited to hours. Forests, a natural carbon sink, are being cut down for immediate profit and farming. Four acres was lost in the time you read this sentence.
Perhaps the most important loss is fresh water. Less than 3% of all water, liquid and solid, is fresh. About 3/4% is surface (rivers and lakes), about 1%, and quickly being depleted, is underground. The remaining is in rapidly melting glaciers and icebergs. Less rainwater is staying on the surface because it is coming in heavier rainfalls causing floods which run off rather than soak in. Drought, deforestation, and development cause much flooding around the world. Former potable water is again being treated as a waste dump which negates it’s usage for drinking, ecosystems, and irrigation. Water rights are being treated as long term investments.
A less immediate but terminal danger is the decreasing level of oxygen. Oxygen levels are around 24-25% when our species started and now it is about 20%. We have known for a century that our current supply is produced by the remaining trees on land and decreasing protozoa in the oceans acting as carbon sinks. We owe our existence to the microscopic organism that filled the primordial oceans, pulling the carbon out of the air (bringing oxygen levels to 30% or more), dying and falling into the bottom to make oil. We are destroying the forests and jungles and recently scientists have found those little ocean creatures are rapidly decreasing in numbers. One estimate is oxygen levels could get to the fatal levels for many people (same as at the 15,000 foot altitude) in 200 years. 25,000 feet in 300 years, and 400 years would even kill off the rest of the mammalian life that had not adapted to the lower oxygen levels.
The last and most critical is population. When I was in college the world’s population was 3 billion. Now it’s over 7 billion and somewhere around 2043 it will be 9 billion barring mass starvation, lack of drinking water or war. Nuclear or biological war would be necessary since conventional with 1-2 million deaths wouldn’t make a dent in the curve. Projections on how to feed the growing population always seems to rely on some great leap which only accelerates the population growth problem. Incidentally the United States may be over 420 million by 2043 with 82 million over 65.
These are only a few of the problems that the human race faces in its future. Steven Hawking projected we could be facing extinction in 200 years. He gives climate change (read between lines above) as the major cause of our demise. I won’t argue with the world’s greatest mind, especially if he agrees with me.
The 140 million Chinese have already started to provide for feeding their future people. They have been buying up land around the world. Here they have bought up businesses which produce food. A recent purchase was Smithfield which is a huge meat processor. They see what’s coming, we don’t!
This planet will exist until the sun goes nova and destroys it in a few billion years. We will have long passed from the scene. Frankly, I think Steve Hawking is being optimistic. I think our way of life will be greatly depreciated by 2100 and the probability of a population crash to less than a billion is highly probable.
