Shouting in the headline can be imagined like “Tiger” Thorn wailing from the stretcher.
The film Soylent Green and the loosely connected preceding novel, Make Room! Make Room! both explore themes of environmental degradation and resource depletion, mostly from overpopulation, with unequal consumption playing a minor part.
Writers and creators are not always correct. Here, we will explore two themes present in the above pieces that are not uncommon in literature, film and society. One is misunderstanding our places in our communities. Another is largely disregarding unequal responsibility for resource degradation in considerations of population impacts.
Where are we?
Community is often overlooked in fictional works, not just those above. Fitness is reduced to individual abilities and circumstances. Doing so can make situations seem more survivable than they actually are. Fictional pieces seeking to mirror reality cannot have such large populations of humans in such degraded conditions. Our populations would decline considerably if our ecosystems cannot maintain diverse communities, in the opinion of this biologist who doesn’t want a global test.
Visionaries of space colonization make similar mistakes, but that is another story.
We are more passengers and products of our systems and communities than we are masters of energy and production for all that we need to consume in order to survive. We have gotten away with misconceptions of exceptionalism through exploration, expansion and exploitation. There is nowhere else to go now. Will we find a steady state way for humanity to thrive and evolve further?
On Earth in reality, researchers are publishing quantitative estimates of how far along we are in facing limits presciently fantasized by science fiction writers of decades past. The Stockholm Resilience Centre, for one, reports that we have crossed into unsustainable impacts on our land, water, climate, biosphere and geochemical flows of vital elements.
If you look more closely at this this and similar research, you can find places to question aspects, such as which factors going into threshold estimates, or maybe a database for a category isn’t as comprehensive and up to date as critical global estimates warrant. Whatever the arguments, I have yet to hear any data backed reasons to suggest that we are currently living safely within sustainability limits.
If we don’t live within our limits, the good news is that there will not be piles of people crowded into cities resorting to cannibalism. Not saying that there will not be cannibalism, just that it won’t be industrialized for crowded cities. The reason is the bad news in that too many of us will have died off before such a scenario plays out. We are part of systems that will not tolerate such deviance. Once again, I’d rather not test that globally.
Who got us here?
It wasn’t all of us acting collectively and equally. Not all are the same and there are large differences in consumption between the richest and poorest, as well as among different economic systems.
Reducing human impacts to total population disregards these differences. Looking at energy use and GDP per capita shows significant variation among nations. Consumption of resources and climate forcing are tied to wealth and energy consumption, so there is likely as much variation in depletion of resources among nations as there is in energy use and GDP.
Last week, annieli posted insightful economic and ecosocialist context and interpretations into our situation and choices. It is still worth viewing. Included is another way to look at progress towards sustainability among nations. An added figure highlights deficits and variation among nations as reported in a update on progress needed to achieve 17 sustainability goals as adopted by United Nations member states
In short, Pooling human impacts obscures geographic variation, differences among nations, and who is primarily responsible for impacts of each of the 17 sustainability measures. Potential detrimental effects lumping humanity include collectivizing solutions that push costs and sacrifices inordinately and unfairly onto the poorest and most vulnerable, those who are least responsible for unsustainable consumption.
We are humans in unique circumstances
In this age of artificial intelligence and standardized procedures, technology and data can be extremely useful. Sustainable utility requires that we use these tools within resource limits.
Robotic healthcare and autonomous vehicles, for example, may reduce risks, but they come with costs. We have yet to find the balance for incorporating such innovations into human society without exacerbating inequities and impacts on necessary natural systems. Human healthcare professionals remain valuable, especially if we eliminate externalities of tech production. For moving about, perhaps we can focus more on transportation infrastructure than mass production of autonomously driving cars. One alternative is that communities can be planned to not require most individuals to possess a vehicle.
Back to the title before finishing, we are not machines, and cannot be treated as such in a lasting system. We are humans, evolved to live within our communities, yet each with our own circumstances. Moreover, given how we impact our environments, it might help to interact with machines and our homes with more care and respect, and less thoughtless exploitation, as well.