With the continued buildup of greenhouse gases and the continued apathy of governments towards the lethal results of human population growth, Paul and Anne Ehrlich believe that a potential environmental storm is building up to bring down civilization. 

Today, scientists are debating about the odds of civilization avoiding collapse. We estimated about a year ago that the chances were about 10 per cent, but our colleague Jim Brown disagreed, asserting, it was more like 1 per cent. Recent events, such as the continued buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the determination of most governments and politicians to ignore the lethal growth of the human population, have led our views to align with Jim’s.

The chances of our great-grandchildren (we’ve got them) having long and happy lives shrink daily. In our view, then, a major problem with developing a large cadre of global citizens, willing to fundamentally change the course of society, to close the culture gap in what people must understand about the Earth system, and to start shrinking both global population and consumption by the rich, is the great speed with which all the necessary things must be done.

Suppose, optimistically, that the world really has 20 years to reshape human institutions and behavior. That means assaulting the short-term interests of industrialists and plutocrats, who have guided us to the edge of disintegration, with interests that are antithetical to even their own mid-term interests. What is the likelihood that frackers can be persuaded or forced to stop fracking, or purveyors of toxic chemicals and potentially dangerous nanoparticles to stop producing them? Will Apple and its ilk quickly cease luring the public to buy millions of new resource-depleting and toxic waste-generating gadgets every six months? Will it be possible to get the US and China to stop throwing away money on military expenditures, designed to support the industrial equivalents of Murder Incorporated?

That is, can they be persuaded not to keep arming to fight over fossil fuel resources humanity can’t afford to burn? Can people everywhere (especially in resource-gobbling rich countries) understand that having more than one child is highly immoral? Can the politicians and populations of the rich nations help provide those in poor nations (and many of their own citizens) access to modern contraception and backup abortion to permit them to act ethically? Can much of the world population come to understand that humanity’s current dilemmas of environmental destruction, inequities, unemployment, and declining democracy, are not largely an accidental result of cultural evolution, but are rather mostly the consequences of deliberate planning, by those in charge, to increase their own wealth and power? Can they move dramatically to close the gap between the rich and poor that is especially dramatic in developing nations, and growing in many rich ones, especially the United States?

Obviously, many individuals and organizations have the goal of pushing societies toward sustainability. Equally obviously, the results at current rates of improvement would be inadequate, even if there were 50 years to convert to an ecologically-sound energy system. In short, time is of essence. For example, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, James Hansen, said that dramatic changes would be needed by 2015, if serious trouble was to be avoided. The sense of urgency was also reflected in the 2012 World Bank Report: “The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur—the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.”

This quoted urgency applies to aspects of climate disruption, where most of the detailed attention has been paid. It doesn’t deal with loss of the biodiversity that supplies ecosystem services essential to humanity, with the growing toxification of the globe that threatens ecosystems and human health, with the rising population growth-related potential for global pandemics of emergent diseases, or with the rapid decline in the quality and accessibility of critical resources. Despite the complex interaction of climate and agriculture, the urgency of a potential food crisis is rarely emphasized, even though only a revolution, as society-pervading as the original agricultural revolution, might be required to avoid disastrous famines. And, of course, the entrenched media system, run by globalized, runaway capitalism (combined with pervasive public ignorance and taboos related to critical population and consumption issues) will not even permit a sensible discussion of overpopulation and continuing population growth, expanding consumption by the rich, and the desperate need for redistribution.

A basic question – perhaps the basic question – is what general approach should be taken to greatly accelerate the needed mass transition toward global citizenship? Perhaps the best approach would be the technique pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi (and employed by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela) that Gandhi christened ‘satyagraha’ – non-violent persistent opposition to an evil system. Since the current growth-manic, neoliberal system is heading society directly toward a dissolution that could result in the deaths of billions, it seems reasonable to consider it an evil system.

As we said, many people and organizations understand this and to one degree or another are attempting to change the course of society – Growth busters and CASSE (Center for the Advancement of a Steady-State Economy) come to mind immediately. But the problem is that the efforts of civil society are largely uncoordinated and lack attention to the central driving forces that must concern everyone: governance themes and ideologies that lead to the promotion of unsustainable growth in population and per-capita consumption. This, in turn, leads to gross economic inequity, further deterioration of governance, and the ‘perfect storm’ of environmental problems that now threaten to bring down civilization. Furthermore, the leadership of the neoliberal world and of most transnational corporations that control it, is largely ignorant of the threat or chooses to ignore it. The politicians they buy, have dismantled what government agencies there were for examining the future course of society, and have reduced educational systems largely to factories for turning out parts for the growth machine.

This is where we hope the MAHB (mahb.stanford.edu) will help provide the proper leverage to start dismantling and redirecting that machine. MAHB has established as its primary goal to put overpopulation and its impacts back into the global conversation in a constructive, scientifically accurate, and inspiring way. One dimension of this is to work with major NGOs globally to ensure that they include the role of overpopulation in their prime area of concern.

The MAHB understands that overpopulation is a key driver of the major threats to humanity, including overconsumption, environmental degradation, poor governance, inequity, war, pandemics, and so forth; too many concerned citizens and groups are either afraid of ‘touching’ the population issue (or even the word) or don’t see that the challenge facing humanity is a complex web of issues with overpopulation as a fundamental driver. One of the major mistakes they make is to assume that if only problems of equity and distribution could be solved, the size of human population would be irrelevant. But, of course, overpopulation and its inevitable depression of democracy is a major factor blocking the kind of governance that would be willing and be able to solve the equity/distribution problem.

The MAHB’s key strategy is threefold: foster collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists to better understand the issues; build understanding of what we call ‘foresight intelligence’—the ability of individuals, institutions, governments, and society to act (behave) in ‘future smart’ ways; and engage civil society (individuals and organizations), already concerned about collapse, in ways that ‘strengthen’ the political impact of their endeavors. In short, the MAHB’s main goal could be said to help generate a bottom-up program to produce large numbers of global citizens, who, in turn might be able to divert society from its suicidal course. The odds of success seem small, but what choice does any ethical person have but to try?

Prof Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and one of the leading intellectuals of our time. He authored the 1968 book, The Population Bomb and has done important research in population biology, ecology, evolution, human ecology, the mechanisms of human cultural evolution. Prof Ehrlich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the Crafoord Prize (an explicit substitute for the Nobel Prize in the field of science where the Nobel is not given), the Blue Planet Prize, and numerous other international honors.

Anne Ehrlich is Associate Director and Policy Coordinator of the Stanford University Department of Biological Sciences. She has carried out research on and co-authored many technical articles in population biology. She also has written extensively on issues of public concern such as population control, environmental protection, and the environmental consequences of nuclear war and is co-author of 10 books. She was also a consultant to the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Global 2000 Report, and joint recipient of the United Nations Environment Programme\Sasakawa Environment Prize in 1994.