Hello, fellow lemmings!

Been wondering what all this raving and ranting has been about?

Just an aging unemployed guy's way of spending his time? Yes, indeed! But I am hoping that in the process I might tickle your mind.

The media, politicians, our political system, the environment, industrial risk. All matters of great conversation around your 5 o'clock sun downer. Maybe 4 o'clock (I’m still talking pm, so it's not too bad yet).

Anyway, surprise, surprise! There is actually a system in this raving. Not that it's going to make any difference to the way the world turns or humanity is screwing it up. But somehow, I feel everything I read or hear in conversations on and off the boat is quite off the mark, and find it very frustrating.

I want to talk about population growth.

Let's look at all the issues previously touched on (I dare not say addressed, that would be presumptuous): all of them have a common cause.

And that is population growth.

Allow me some statistics: Humanity reached it's first billion in or about 1800. It took from the beginning of times to the beginning of the 19^th century to reach 1 billion bodies (not sure about how many souls that is).

The second billion was reached around 1930, or just over 100 years later. Quite an acceleration, no? The third billion was in 1960, or so. I was part of that third billion. Darn! Vivien made up part of the 4^th billion...

At the last estimate, we are about 7.1 billions now. That's 5 billion more in about 80 years, or about 600 million every 10 years. Estimates vary about future growth, with the developed world not growing much any more (aside from migrations, but let's remember the developed world is less than 1 billion people today, depending on the definition), and the “third world” continuing on it's trajectory. Some forecasts predict about 80 million more people every year for the foreseeable future, some see it declining to 50 million per year (lots of models are out there, one can argue with them, but for me the lower forecasts are unrealistic) . Factors that impact this are:

• reduced infant mortality in most countries
• increased life expectancy in most countries
• Better health care pretty much everywhere
• reduction in birth rates in developed countries
• development rate of “second” world countries that slowly reach “developed” status

This exponential growth in population has a number of consequences. All bad.

1. Demand for food is increasing massively. Imagine the difference between feeding 10 guests, and feeding 70? Humanity had to find ways to increase food production, not by a factor of 7 in less than 200 years, but probably by a factor of 10, given improvements in quantity and quality of food between the mid 1800's and today. This means more land, more fertilizers, more pesticides, more GMO, more irrigation, more aquifer tapping... All bad.
2. Demand for energy has gone up a factor of 200 in the same time frame. We've gone from the beginning of steam engines 200 years ago to a life style that demands enormous quantities of energy, both in industry and in households (remember the manual drill anyone? How about oil lamps?). Transportation requirements have gone through the roof, both for goods and for people (hello, holiday makers! Ibiza or Thailand this year?). Goods need to be transported increasingly far to bring food and energy from the production places to the consumption places. Industry needs a lot of power to produce efficiently what we all consume. Households use power like there's no tomorrow, from electric blenders, to air conditioning, multiple TV's and computers to huge refrigerators. And I'm not mentioning cars, they didn't exist 200 years ago... Imagine every Chinese with a car?
3. Land usage has increased for all the uses this additional population has: countryside has yielded to suburbs to towns, road systems have exploded, industrial farming has expanded massively, rain forests have been cut down (and continue to be destroyed), industry has taken over former low yield farming land, coastlines have been transformed from beaches and cliffs to ports, river systems have been dammed, with entire valleys flooded. All bad.
4. Political systems have gone from a “human” dimension to a professional system where the fundamentals of the original democratic idea are long gone. How many balloons are required to become president of the USA? How much input does one really have with ONE vote amongst 30, 50, 100, 300 million? The entire institution has become a joke. Bad, wouldn't you agree?
5. Society is losing it's values. The family network (except in much of Asia, and maybe in some parts of Africa) is de-laminating. One parent families, bad education, loss of “human” values like honesty, work, charity, compassion, etc, are being diluted by materialism, short term gain and egocentricity. Not good surely.
6. The social structure is affected: media doesn't play it's role of INFORMING. It sells advertising. It does not educate, it misinforms and becomes a propaganda tool. Quality education is available only to the few, and social networks benefit largely the parasites. Crime becomes a statistic, real or perceived insecurity is a problem, governments use technology to track their citizen against all the advances in civil liberties gained in the past 300 years (NSA, are you listening?). Societies are becoming ruled by systems, and civil servants expect you to serve them...

I could go on. But I think we all perceive this, without really wanting to think about it. The bottom line is more people means more of all of the above. Logically. It's not a choice. That's just the way it is.

For me it's dramatic. I'm glad I'll be dead in 50 years (more likely 30, but who knows, I like being a pain in the backside...).

Communist China was the only country EVER to try and address the issue. They imposed a one child policy. Brutally at times (forced abortions and severe financial penalties in some cases). It worked, insofar as the population growth has all but stopped. Several side effects have come up however: one is the age pyramid has gone upside down (too many old people, not enough young), the other is the imbalance between genders, every family wanting a boy, which leads to a male/female ratio of (depending on the source of data) 1.15 to 1.25 to 1 (the biological balance is 1.03 males to 1 female, I wonder why?). Female fetus abortion and infanticide mean that some 55 million male babies will not have a mate in China in 20 years.

No other country has ever tried this, and by the way, China was criticized left, right and bloody center for their “barbaric” ways in doing what they did (forced abortion????). Nobody else tried, and one has to wonder if there is a “good” way to do this

Now, some 50 years after starting the process, China is relaxing the rules, partly because they found that one cannot do this so quickly. It takes time to start a population control policy. One generation is way too short (a generation is 30 years, folks).

So. If humanity wants to start controlling it's population growth effectively, it will take, say, 2 or 3 generations before it has an impact. That's 60 to 90 years.

At a growth rate of 600, or even 500 or 400 million every 10 years, this means on the low end of the scale 2.5 to 3.6 billion more people BEFORE we start having an impact (it means 3.5 to 5.5 billion more on the high end...). So we'll be 10 to 14 billion by then... Does this make the need for action urgent? I think it does, big time.

Yet, who talks about it? Who is instrumental in making a change effective?

NOBODY!

NGO's fight against pesticides and GMO's and oil platform and nuclear energy, and advocate biodiversity and the fight against infant mortality or malaria etc, all worthy causes, but they don't attack the root cause, they attack the symptoms ... Hardly anyone talks about the real root cause. It's not sexy, doesn't sell (who will buy media not selling royalty and bad news, but talking about not having children?), or is not politically correct (forced abortion.... WHAT?). Who promotes population control or even worse population reduction, and why would they do that? Can Greenpeace raise money on this topic???

Churches promote zero family planning (they promote abstinence, bloody criminals, and it goes beyond population growth: AIDS actually works in this process, but at what cost?). Governments all over the planet (with very few exceptions) promote birth rates via children benefits, companies need more customers, i.e. population growth, unions want more members, nobody has an interest in stabilizing population, and even less in reducing it. Every organized part of our society has a vested interest in the continued growth of population. Ever heard of lemmings?

And by the way, how would we even start to achieve a move towards population control? Education takes 2 or 3 generations. How would the Catholic church react? Or the Muslim world? How would companies respond to a new economic model based on NO growth? Is it at all possible? Is mankind able to do this revolution?

I don't see it happening. Frankly, I think we are doomed. The race for growth is on. Countries lagging behind will continue to try and catch up and we can't blame them for it. Nobody is interested in fixing the problem, least of all our governments.

See you in 20 years, with another 1.5 billion people, less nature, more bad stuff in the rivers and everywhere, more noise from anti-this or anti-that organizations, none of which make any difference to the fundamental issue.

Sorry, I'm extremely pessimistic about the outcome for mankind.

No worries about the planet. It will fix itself once we're gone. Good luck to the next species!

Does this blog help? Probably not much, but then the more of us realize that population control IS THE REAL AND ONLY problem, the more of a chance we have to get something done about it. Vote for anyone who wants to address the issue! Otherwise nature will fix us, probably via a really good virus that will wipe most of us out (wars don't kill enough people – the 2^nd world war hardly killed 40 million people, just 1 year's worth of growth)

Comments welcome. Help me out of this gloom!

Greetings from Roatan, Honduras. Nice place.

The environment, industrial risk and shipping spills.

The environment, part 3.

Exxon Valdiz, Amoco Cadiz, Erika, tankers on the rocks, oil platforms blowing up, tens of thousands of gallons of oil, diesel, gasoline in the sea. Seagull stuck in muck, otters dying, turtles asphyxiated, oyster banks ruined, beaches a disgrace, fishing industries bankrupted. Terrible stuff!

Fukushima explosion and long term disastrous consequences - following Chernobyl..., refinery explosions, paper mill discharges into the rivers, airplane crashes, chemical spills, all with enormous environmental impact. Horrendous!

Every time, commissions analyzing, judges ruling, fines, monetary compensations, clean-up costs, and lots of finger pointing, someone has to be responsible, right?

Quite right, BUT:

Have you ever had an accident at home? Burning oil on a hand perhaps, or an electric shock, maybe? Falling from a ladder anyone? How about car accidents, a slight trace of ice in the winter, or a moment of inattention, a flower pot falling from the balcony, or a roller skate left unattended? Banana peels ring a bell?

These are accidents we could avoid, and given that it concerns us directly, we do make a great deal of efforts to avoid them. Yet they happen.
All the time.

Industry spends an extraordinary amount of time, effort and MONEY to avoid accidents. Accidents are bad in many respects: they cost a lot of money and downtime (more money), they hurt people, including staff members, they damage reputations, sometimes irretrievably. Companies have mind boggling procedures to avoid accidents, traning procedures, safety procedures, ISO standards, double redundant safety systems, and so on. As an example, I know one oil company that has the following before changing a light bulb (I am not kidding, guess who it is?):

1) Describe the problem in detail, check the description by another person, do an impact analysis of the problem. Check if any regulatory approval is required before any intervention.
2) Describe in detail the intervention procedure, vet it by another person, approve it at a higher level.
3) Describe all the "lock-up" requirement (in this case, turn off the power, lock the power switch by another persone, check the lock-up by yet another person). List and have approved at a higher level all personal safety equipment needed.
4) Prepare the intervention, e.g. build the scaffolding, check the scaffolding by another person, approve the scaffolding as built by yet another one.
5) Re-check all the above before the person starts climbing the scaffolding. Have a stand-by assistant nearby to help if needed, who also verifies that the safety equipment is properly worn.
6) Proceed with the change of the bulb. Test that the intervention has been done properly by another person.
7) Dismantle everything and prepare for restart.
8) Before restart, check again that all is ready, cleared and cleaned.
9) Restart
10) Issue an intervention report describing all the above.

This is for a light bulb (company is BP, would you believe it?)... Imagine for a major refinery refit?

Shipping companies have incredible constraints placed on them (from the qualification of the skipper and crew to the age and regular vetting of the ship, loading procedures,  watch systems, redundant safety systems, etc...

Yet, accidents happen. Amazing no?

Oil tankers move about 2,000,000,000 metric tons of oil per year. This makes about 5.5 million tons per DAY. I couldn't find the average size of an oil tanker (they have increased in size over the years to reduce freight cost), but certainly to move 5 million tons EVERY day, means a very large number of tankers at sea at all times, particularly if one thinks that much of it comes from the Middle East or West Africa and has to travel across large oceans to reach Europe, Japan or the USA.
The average age of a tanker is 10 years. One third of them is 4 years old only. Big ones are newer, small coastal carriers are older.
All oil companies have a vetting system, basically disallowing the use of tankers more than 10 years old,  requiring double hulls, recent inspections, and all sorts of constraints on the shipping company.

Accidents happen. Shit happens. It happens at home, on the road, and at sea. It happens in plants despite all the safety procedures., and it will continue to happen WHATEVER we do.

Considering the number of man hours worked, and the volumes produced and shipped, the accident rate in industry is extremely small, and a very small fraction of the accident rate in private homes or on the road. In other words, industry is about as safe as it can be, and the usual finger pointing that happens after an accident is totally unfair. How would you feel to be fined or jailed because your spouse fell off a ladder while unclogging the gutter? It is true that the impact of industrial accidents/spills is much greater that whatever can happen at home or even on the road, but it does not negate the fact that safety is a prime concern of industry and shipping.

Shit will happen. It's bound to, and CANNOT be entirely avoided. Or rather it can, no more spills if no more oil is transported. No more big bang in plants if we shut down the plants. No more car accidents if we just prohibit cars (reminds me of the joke: alcohol kills on the roads, let's prohibit roads) and so on. But are we prepared to go back to the caves? Can we feed the world, and house the population, and basically maintain some sort of developed living standards by doing so? Answer is obviously NO.

So, my point is: What kind of life style do we want? Developed? Means accidents will happen.
No accidents or spills? Means back to the caves.

No other option, so let's stop pointing fingers and damning industry and shipping. They do their very best (with some few exceptions, and in such cases the punishment must be massive), and have a relatively superb track record. The problem is not with industry. The problem is with the demand placed on industry (and shipping), given the size of the population and the living standards expected.

So, just like with food, and fertilizers, and pesticides, and the general power requirements, industry is doing what is needed to keep the system going. It is the system (i.e. numbers of people and individual requirement) that creates an unfix-able problem for the environment.

We need to talk about population control and/or reduction and life style expectations. This is the issue. Nothing else.

This will be the topic of my next blog.

Comments welcome.
Cheers from Roatan, Honduras.