The Real Reason Why Human Population Must, and Will, Crash

The reason why there are thousands of times more small fish in the ocean compared to sharks is very simple: sharks eat a lot more, so they come at a very high resource cost to the ecosystem. Nature has designed sharks so that they have far fewer viable offspring than smaller fish, not only so that they don’t completely decimate the ecosystem, but so that sharks themselves can survive as a species. If they were to breed out of control, sharks would face a population bubble followed by a spectacular population crash, and most certainly sudden extinction.

This incredible wisdom in the design of species’ populations emerged over millions of years of evolution of course, which tested out various scenarios. In the course of evolution there were predators who over-multiplied and did go extinct. There were prey who under-multiplied and also, went extinct. Ecosystems ultimately achieved incredible balance, and this is how, despite how dynamic the food chain might be, today we have more than 10 million species who, under normal circumstances, face absolutely no extinction threat whatsoever. Because when an ecosystem is undisturbed, each population is given a very specific maximum and minimum quota, which is maintained by the ecosystem and patrolled by the Earthnet of Things itself: by other species, the climate, and the physical environment. If anything becomes disturbed in these parameters, all species populations also become disturbed, resulting in extinctions until a new equilibrium is reached, this time with a different set of species and a different set of population quotas.

The rise of intelligence in the Homo sapiens species was exactly this type of disturbance. Humans, like sharks, are only meant to exist in tiny numbers. For modern humans this number is even smaller, given that modern humans are extremely destructive. Reducing our population numbers dramatically is our only chance of survival, given that our wasteful, ecocidal modern lifestyle will never change – in fact this lifestyle is becoming exponentially more destructive for the planet as our per capita energy and resource needs continue to climb. Ecosystems do not like changes, let alone exponential ones. They bring total chaos.

I do believe that this planet is so incredibly forgiving that, modern humans can actually exist on it – but only if they did so in very small numbers, not more than a few hundred million at the top end, maintained at a steady state. We will always be extremely destructive to this planet, because this is what our civilisation requires to simply exist: extraction, destruction, extinction. If we make an effort to respect the population quota assigned to us by the ecosystem, there is actually a chance we may survive.

So the choices are two: reduce our population consciously, down to ecosystem-compliant levels, or watch it go extinct in its entirety. Because capitalism and growth cannot be reformed. They can only be demolished because they are self-destructive systems to begin with, and the physical parameters of the ecosystem will make sure of that, as they do with the sharks. If we continue on the current trajectory, there will be neither capitalism, nor humans. The global crash in men’s healthy sperm counts and people’s unwillingness to have children are not effects of our “culture” – they are the result of an ecosystem assuming its natural role as “population police”. Like overmultiplied sharks, we are running out of resources and this is impacting our mental and physical health, our finances and our attitudes to children, our sperm counts. The population crash is already under way, and this will accelerate with wars and other forms of mutual annihilation, which are also, effects of the ecosystem assuming its role as regulator: we often observe the overproliferation of a predator resulting in cannibalism, and this is exactly what war is. Humanity is literally eating itself as it runs out of resources to eat. This is all classic textbook biology, and the final illustrated chapter of humanity is being written as we speak.

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