Overpopulation

I’m 25, an age when many people have significant others and a few have had a child. So I feel like it’s pertinent for me to say something about overpopulation. This post is going to give my opinions about how people should behave. People tend to react negatively to that. However, bear in mind that we shouldn’t be slaves to rules, norms, or ways of doing things; they can help us, like servants help a master.

In sustainability theory there is the precautionary principle, which advises or justifies certain actions to manage an uncertainty. In regard to population, we live in an age where material improvement has generally outpaced improvement in how we get along with others and the planet, leading to overexploitation of and damage to resources such as fossil fuels, land, water, the air, animals; and inequalities between developing and developed countries, and the wealthy and poor (the latter of which has generally had a widening gap in inequality, not so sure about the former over different timescales since the industrial revolution and in the past, say, 50 years); war, civil unrest and wars, genocides, and other kinds of violence (notably, having a large proportion of the population as young people has a correlation to increased probability of violence, with this phenomenon generally occurring / being more probable in developing countries).

I have said many times before that we are not living sustainably with the current world population, let alone the 10 billion that it is projected to grow to under a medium growth scenario. Of course, population growth, stability or decline is subject to individuals’ decisions; while it is influenced by various factors and stakeholders such as developers, corporations, the retail sector (these three generally lobby and advocate for population growth) in order to have a large workforce (to keep wages low) and a large amount of consumers.

Let’s get into how population has an impact. Mathematically, I learnt from Dr Mark Diesendorf in a university course at UNSW called “Managing Greenhouse Gas Emissions” (plus from another course called Life Cycle Assessment by Dr Ivan Perez-Wurfl), that:

Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology

or more succinctly:

I = P * A * T (I = PAT)

With units and for environmental impact:

Population [people] * Technological Impact [widgets of technological output per widget of environmental indicator] * Affluence [ widget of resources held accountable to / owned per capita] = Environmental impact [ e.g. global warming potential, acidification potential, ozone depletion potential, etc.]

For example:

Population [people] * energy consumption per capita [e.g. kWh of electricity or kWh of embodied energy in fuel burnt per capita] * emissions intensity [kg of CO2-equivalent emissions per kWh of energy over the life of the energy chain (to account for losses), where energy is e.g. in the form of electricity or motive power in automobiles] = Greenhouse gas emissions [kg CO2-e]

Note that kg CO2-e is not strictly a metric for global warming potential, but it can be converted into one with some uncertainty or confidence interval — e.g. kWh of heat per square metre, or with even more uncertainty or a wider confidence interval due to forcings, global warming / temperature increase potential.

While global warming has received the most attention out of environmental crises, there are others, such as I touched on above, with water shortages, food shortages; land depletion (e.g. erosion of topsoil and salinization); forest destruction; species extinction, endangerment and threatening; resource depletion (such as of metals and fossil fuels); ozone depletion (this has been somewhat managed, but is still a concern). All of these crises have spillover effects, interrelations and positive feedback loops, e.g.:

• Water and food shortages increase unrest and violence.
• Forest destruction is a positive feedback loop for global warming and species extinction and vice versa with fires.
• Land depletion (e.g. salinization, erosion and land clearing, where trees are replaced by crops, which can lead to further erosion and salinization) places downward pressure on food supplies, which in turn places extra pressure on land for cultivation, leading to further erosion, forest slashing/burning to use the land for cultivation, dryland salinity due to replacing trees with crops, and so on.
• Global warming causes sea level rise due to thermal expansion and ice caps and glaciers melting, while glaciers melting causes long-term food shortages as well as floods (which cover vegetation and cause methane emissions, further contributing to warming, and species extinction)

So, now that I have touched on how human overpopulation is a problem, I will make a case for why we need to decline population. We don’t know whether we are living within the carrying capacity of the environment (i.e. whether we live sustainably), therefore due to the precautionary principle, we should decline the total world population until we know that we are living sustainably, then increase the population if we are reasonably certain that we can sustainably do so. That’s the crux of the argument.

Without feeling like I need to add more to that, I will go on to discuss how we, as individuals, can actually decline population. Since I argued that we should reduce the global human population, obviously it should be done with the least suffering as possible, which entails non-violent methods. I suggest that the most practical way that we can reduce population is by self-control, which is developed through meditation and following proscriptive and prescriptive rules such as yama and niyama. Contraception is of course a tool that can be used, but from a spiritual perspective, self-control, and abstinence or moderation in sex are better. Abortion may be “OK” if it is in the early stages, and the parents are ill-equipped or prepared to raise a child, but obviously it is better to not conceive a baby in the first place. Not bio-warfare, not warfare, not regulation. Regarding regulation, trying to force people to do something is not very effective; people will try to break the rules, or the regulation isn’t enforced well, so people go on doing it (albeit more secretly).

We, as humans, have an animal, instinctive part of our nature, with the desire to reproduce, and the pleasure that we have in doing the reproductive act—sex. However, pleasure is also inseparable from pain, the two being experienced in a never-ending alternating cycle, so long as we remain in a mortal state of consciousness. For instance, if you eat candy, it tastes sweet, producing pleasure in the brain. Later, the memory of the pleasurable feeling and experience of eating candy comes back, and you long to eat another. Not having the candy, pain results. It probably isn’t physical pain (although a headache, fatigue, irritability or starvation may result if you don’t eat anything), but the longing feeling is a kind of mental pain. This is also applicable for other kinds of addiction, such as alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, inordinate craving for money, power and wealth; and lack of moderation in sex.

We also have free choice, and we have the ability to be spiritual, experiencing ever-new, ever-existing, ever-conscious bliss (known in India as Satchitananda, which is God) in the higher cerebrospinal centres, through regular, intense meditation, with pranayama (life control) methods such as Kriya Yoga, as taught by Self-Realization Fellowship; and right activity. Kriya Yoga meditation is not just a solution for self-control and population control, as Lahiri Mahasaya stated, it solves all problems. Mahavatar Babaji said ‘Repeat to each of your disciples this majestic promise from the Bhagavad Gita [2:40]: … “Even a little bit of the practice of this religion will save you from dire fears and colossal sufferings.”’ In this context Babaji was referring to Kriya Yoga. Kriya yoga also results in attuning and transmuting our limited human consciousness with and into omnipresent, cosmic consciousness, the source of abundance and everlasting sustainability, and which will guide us ever more perfectly. Paramahansa Yogananda said “one kriya (breath), practiced rightly, is equivalent to a year of natural evolution”. I don’t think anyone can deny that everyone wants ever-conscious, ever-new, ever-existing bliss. (This includes avoiding pain, and thus explains motives like committing suicide.) How effectively people are searching does vary. But we will never be satisfied until we find that everlasting bliss, or God.

I am not saying that we can’t live sustainably with a population of 8, 10 or 12 billion, just that we don’t know if we are now, and should therefore exercise caution and restraint. Personally, I don’t intend to have any kids. Partially, this is because of overpopulation and compensating for others having 2 or more children. (Even two on average per capita globally may be unsustainable until we can live sustainably with reasonable certainty at the current population level, which I don’t think we are.) More importantly, it is because I don’t want to have ties that are associated with marital and family responsibilities, so that I can focus on spiritual development and serving others in my career and service to SRF.

To express another way, there are many ways that we can live more sustainably, but we aren’t now. We can try to be more environmentally conservative, efficient, and do many more things to live more sustainably. But transitioning the entire human population to live within the carrying capacity of the environment will take time. Climate scientists almost unanimously agree that we should reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from 410.79 ppm as of the time of writing this post on August 1 2018 to 350 ppm, CO2-e. So we not only must stop emitting altogether, we actually need to take emissions out of the atmosphere, e.g. via reafforestation and algal blooms.

I should also note that there is going to be a point of no return, where natural forcings for warming caused by positive feedback loops exceed those of anthropogenic forcings. This provides extra weight to the precautionary principle. Furthermore, the sooner and more we do to end future emissions and absorb past emissions, the less adaptation and suffering we will have to bear. Additionally, from the perspective of reincarnation, if we haven’t attained God-consciousness before death, we will have to come back if we have earthly desires and karma to work out, so don’t just think that you are helping your grandchildren by acting more environmentally responsibly, you are helping yourself, which as the soul, is omnipresent (so helping others is actually helping your greater Self).

Also, overpopulation is of more concern in developing countries, particularly sub-saharan Africa. Education, contraception, family planning, abortion, etc., are more critical there. When I say education, I don’t just mean modern education as is done in developed countries, I mean an all-round education which the whole world needs, in not only physical, mental and vocational development as is done now, but also spiritual development. It will take time for that kind of spiritual education to happen on a widespread basis.

Aid from wealthier countries is very much needed. If we diverted funds from military spending to education in these countries as well as where military outposts are, I suspect that would result in more good, although we will always need international police to control troublemakers that will always exist in this world of inevitable dualities. Generosity from wealthier individuals and governments is essential. If you are one of the wealthier ones, realize through meditation that helping others is helping your Self. And if you are poor, realize through meditation that as a child of God, God’s abundance is your abundance, waiting to be inherited through Self-realization. Material prosperity is included in spiritual prosperity. As an example of that, read the chapter “Materializing a palace in the Himalayas” in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi (ebook, hardback, audio book, other languages and more).

God bless you, I’ll keep you all in my loving prayers, every day, that you may, gradually and more and more, find God!