1,000 Times Too Many Humans?

Bad news that we can't use. We are outside the "statistical confidence limits" for sustainability: 1,000 Times Too Many Humans? (from the Discovery Channel.)

"Nov. 25, 2003 — A study that compared humans with other species concluded there are 1,000 times too many humans to be sustainable.
The study, published in the current Proceedings B (Biological Sciences) by the Royal Society, used a statistical device known as 'confidence limits' to measure what the sustainable norm should be for species populations. Other factors, such as carbon dioxide production, energy use, biomass consumption, and geographical range were taken into consideration.
'Our study found that when we compare ourselves to otherwise similar species, usually other mammals of our same body size, for example, we are abnormal and the situation is unsustainable,' said Charles Fowler, co-author of the paper and a lead researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "

OK, so this means 99.9% of us need to die off so we can be "sustainable?"

A different view is provided by William Rees, professor of community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia:

Unlike other species, humans can eat almost anything, adapt to any environment and develop technologies based on knowledge shared through written and spoken language.

Rees, however, said that we may be "fatally successful." He agrees that industrial society as presently configured is unsustainable.

"In the past 25 years we have adopted a near-universal myth of 'sustainable development' based on continuous economic growth through globalization and freer trade," Rees wrote in a recent Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society (no abstracts at this link) paper. "Because the assumptions hidden in the globalization myth are incompatible with biophysical reality the myth reinforces humanity's already dysfunctional ecological behavior."

Both sides in this debate doubt that humans will make the changes needed for us to avoid a future of mass starvation, disease, and extinction.

Here is the abstract of the Proceedings B study, found at the Royal Society's Publications Proceedings B webside:

Abstract: The principles and tenets of management require action to avoid sustained abnormal/pathological conditions. For the sustainability of interactive systems, each system should fall within its normal range of natural variation. This applies to individuals (as for fevers and hypertension, in medicine), populations (e.g. outbreaks of crop pests in agriculture), species (e.g. the rarity of endangerment in conservation) and ecosystems (e.g. abnormally low productivity or diversity in 'ecosystem-based management'). In this paper, we report tests of the hypothesis that the human species is ecologically normal. We reject the hypothesis for almost all of the cases we tested. Our species rarely falls within statistical confidence limits that envelop the central tendencies in variation among other species. For example, our population size, CO2 production, energy use, biomass consumption and geographical range size differ from those of other species by orders of magnitude. We argue that other measures should be tested in a similar fashion to assess the prevalence of such differences and their practical implications.

Here's a "Sustainability Poster" co-authored by Charles Fowler and Shannon McCluskey.

See the Royal Society's website for students: Sc1.

A capsule definition of "Ecological Footprint Analysis" by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees.

Here's an abstract of William Rees paper "An Ecological Economics Perspective on Sustainability and Prospects for Ending Poverty" found at Ingenta. (I did not find a more recent article in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society mentioned above.)

Despite our pretensions to science, modern industrial society is as myth-bound and mystical as any that has preceded it. Our prevailing cultural myth includes a dangerous vision of global sustainability and poverty reduction centered on unlimited economic expansion, “free” trade and technological fixes. This paper dissects the modern myth, exposing its conceptual flaws and practical failings. It then proposes an alternative conceptual framework for development derived from ecological economics and ecological footprint analysis. The new framework recognizes that the human enterprise is a subsystem of the ecosphere whose growth is constrained by biophysical limits. If humanity is to seize control of its destiny it must arise above wishful thinking and tribal instinct. Global society needs a new cultural myth rooted in humanity's unique claim to intelligence and self-awareness in the face of danger. Human security depends on equitable development—not growth—within the means of nature. Sustainability with social justice can be achieved only through an unprecedented level of international cooperation rooted in a sense of compassion for both other peoples and other species.