The elephant in the room
Ted Trainer, in his critique of the report of the Roundtable on the Human Future’s report, manages to overlook the mainspring of the human emergency: overpopulation.
Global material consumption is currently about 110 billion tonnes/year, on track to reach 170 billion tonnes by 2050. This is 5 to 10 times what the Earth can sustain, long-term, as numerous scholars have pointed out. Even if everybody on Earth could be persuaded to halve their material consumption — a doubtful contention — civilisation would still be headed for collapse. While human numbers remain impossibly high, so too will over-production, over-consumption and over-pollution. Yet the easiest answer — universal family planning — eludes Ted.
The Roundtable did not set out to solve the human crisis. Its task was to explore how much consensus exists among the world’s leading thinkers on this topic. If we can’t agree on anything, there is not much chance of solving the problem.
However, Ted’s critique does not deny that there are multiple crises engulfing the whole of humanity right now – and prompt action might at least save a few billion lives.
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