When do we call "peak civilization"?

The second notice of the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity has just been published (see: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix125/4605229#supplementary-data).

It has a good discussion of population as an underlying driver [Eileen Crist, co-author of an article in Science called "The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection" (see http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/260) is a co-author] , but health is not mentioned. It has a long wish list of actions and concludes “Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home.” 

I wonder to what extent these concerns are shared outside the affluent West? (eg Saudi Arabia? I once met a Saudi scientist who literally had not heard of “climate change”. At least that is what he said.)

With the air of cities of northern India described as “gas chambers”, with population pressure and insufficient resources driving a flight to Europe from many parts of the Sahel and with four distinct famines is it perhaps time to recognise that the retreat from peak civilisation is well underway; the question is, how steep will this retreat become?

And, where is health in this debate? Where are the universities? In Australia, I think, universities have largely failed .. yet, what else could they have done? Well, the NHMRC could have been less asleep, it would have made some difference. The Planetary Health platform at the University of Sydney may be the exception.

It may be time to call peak civilization, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are headed the way of the Mayans or the Sumerians. It could just be a gradual descent. Let us hope President Trump's advisers remain sane.

Our most fearsome predator

This is prompted by a Population-Environment Research Network Cyberseminar, called “Culture, Beliefs and the Environment” (15 - 19 May 2017) and a background paper called "Without Consumer Culture, There is No Environmental Crisis by Prof Richard Wilk at the Department of Anthropology, Indiana University.

Prof Wilk’s paper says in part:

“About 20% of the human population is using more than 80% of the available resources, while producing a similar proportion of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. No matter what this charmed one fifth does to reduce its emissions, the problem is that the other 80% of the world wants to join their ranks.”

I basically agree, but would like to add that one major reason for the higher birth rates of most of the poor is due to the selfishness of the 20%, in not supporting more global fairness (when perhaps there was a chance for it to work in time) and in also supporting (at least implicitly) denial of limits to growth. These are topics I have written about for more than 25 years eg:

Butler C.D. (1994): Overpopulation, overconsumption and economics. The Lancet 343: 582-584.

Butler C.D. (1997): The consumption bomb. Medicine, Conflict and Survival 13: 209-218.

Butler C.D. (2004): Human carrying capacity and human health. Public Library of Science Medicine 1(3) e55: 192-194.

Butler C.D: (2016) Sounding the alarm: Health in the Anthropocene. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, 665; doi: 610.3390/ijerph13070665.

We are an animal species with technology but insufficient collective wisdom for our current time; an argument I heard Paul Ehrlich make in 1989 (eg Ornstein and Ehrlich: New World New Mind). I think consumerism, waste and the pursuit of status goods is hard wired, ubiquitous if the culture and local resources permit it (but of course can be dampened by necessity, eg in the Depression).

The little bits I skimmed of the posts I looked at seem to reflect a greater concern that civilisation is getting closer to the cliff, compared to PERN posts from years ago (though a minority of contributors to these discussions have always understood this).

Unfortunately, as we get closer to that cliff, we seem less collectively capable, as a species, of self-rescue; eg as shown by the reduction in funds for scientific research to support public goods, certainly in the US and Australia.

What will happen? The best I can foresee is a deepening fortress world, with less and less freedom. This is very different to the “Health for All” rhetoric that inspired me decades ago. Perhaps, after our collapse, a re-emergent human civilisation will do a better job than we are. I think it is plausible Indigenous Australians may have learned a lesson in collective ecological self-restraint, working out how to live within limits (but also at a cost to individual freedom, including small families in harsh environments). If so, they a group we are unlikely to learn from in time to rescue ourselves from the most fearsome predator on the planet: ourselves.

Health workers and the tragedy of Syria: rejected by the Lancet

Now that I am in my 7th decade I must be older than the current power holders in the Lancet; I fear they follow fashion but lack wisdom. They rejected this letter: read it for yourself.

Health workers and the tragedy of Syria

In 1994, Lancet published my essay which included the sentence "Those in the developed world may watch with horror  ..  if followed by closure of the demographic trap through war, epidemics, famine, or all three".(1)

To lament the 6th anniversary of the catastrophe in Syria, your editorial has repeated the “h” word: “The world has stood by in horror, watching the death toll rise and the humanitarian and refugee crises spread their indelible stain on the world map and human history.”(2)

Birth rates in Syria were declining before the war started, however they were still far above replacement.(3) A combination of systemic, interacting factors, including Syrian peak oil,(4) aquifer depletion, climate change exacerbated drought,(5) and a five-fold increase in youth unemployment between 2000 and 2011 (to 48%)(6) generated a milieu in which brutal and violent conflict took root. Checkmate – entrapment. Using alternative language, Syria, like famine and conflict beleaguered South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and north east Nigeria exemplify contemporary cases of “regional overload,”(5) just as Rwanda did in 1994.

The identification of environmental factors as contributors to these health and humanitarian disasters is not “environmental determinism” as some critics have claimed. Nor does such identification in any way excuse egregious human rights abuses arising from entrapment. However, because these environmental and demographic contributors to past, current and future calamities have been warned of for decades,(7) it does demonstrate how many political and civic leaders have been ill-informed, if not negligent, in following their duty of care for the well-being of their populations.
 

But it is not just the leaders in these countries who are responsible. In most cases, such leaders have followed the majority of academic opinion, which, for decades, has sidelined, and even ridiculed anything related to limits to growth.(7) Promoters of such wishful thinking arguably, are even more responsible.

Health practitioners cannot, ourselves, do much to alter the trajectory of civilization, but it possible that a tiny nudge in the right direction could deliver a planetary rescue that currently looks improbable. Part of that nudge is to remind those who care about Syria and its people that many of the drivers of its catastrophe were predictable. This is not “I told you so” gloating, but an appeal for all with influence to look more deeply and widely at causes, in order to alleviate and prevent much future human suffering, for Syrians and many others, perhaps for us all.

1.    Butler CD. Overpopulation, overconsumption, and economics. The Lancet 1994; 343: 582-4.
2.    Editorial. Syria suffers as the world watches. The Lancet 2017.
3.    Eberstadt N, Shah A. Fertility decline in the Muslim World, c. 1975–c. 2005: a veritable sea-change, still curiously unnoticed. In: Groth H, Sousa-Poza A, eds. Population Dynamics in Muslim Countries; 2012.
4.    Ahmed N. Peak oil, climate change and pipeline geopolitics driving Syria conflict. The Guardian 2013.
5.    Butler CD. Regional overload and the consequences it has for health. BMJ blog 2017.
6.    Taleb ZB, Bahelah R, Fouad FM, Coutts A, Wilcox M, Maziak W. Syria: health in a country undergoing tragic transition. International Journal of Public Health 2015; 60(1): 63-72.
7.    Butler CD. Planetary overload, limits to growth and health. Current Environmental Health Reports 2016; 3(4): 360-9.