I do not necessarily think that the Earth is overpopulated with humans and obsessing about the overpopulation of Earth may result in immoral justifications for reducing populations. Some thinkers even believe a deliberate population reduction has already been happening for years by nefarious design, but I will not go into that subject here.

My view is that humans are analogous to being some of the most complex “stem cells” of Gaia, as we can be whoever we want, consciously choose whatever actions we want to take out in the world and choose what we want to grow. We could choose to grow a permaculture garden or practice silvopasture on a plot of land increasing wildlife and insect habitats while providing food for our family. On the other hand, we could instead choose to pave over that plot, put up a cell tower, dig a quarry, and sell unnecessary merchandise to our neighbors to make a lot of money to buy more stuff we don’t really need. It is up to us. Most of the environmental degradation happening on the planet is caused either directly or indirectly by conspicuous consumption of resources as detailed by many authors (including in one of my previous posts). However, notice that in a conversation about population many people usually mutter “too many people” under their breath, never “too many machines” or “too many things,” for example. The programming runs deep. Though, choosing to have small families does seem to be a wise choice given the state of the planetary ecosystem right now and would allow for a gentle stabilizing of the world population.

Despite what we see going on environmentally around the world, it seems a bit ridiculous to automatically assume that humans are born inherently greedy and thus become selfish destroyers of nature. Another possibility is that in modern societies many humans are starved of meaningful relationships, nutritious food, and high quality air/water, in a similar vein to how cancer cells are previously healthy cells that are starved of oxygen and proper voltage. Thus these cells must resort to anaerobic respiration to maintain growth at the expense of the larger system (the body of the organism in this case). It seems that many of us humans resort to “anaerobic” activities in a feeble attempt to fill the inner void of our psyches and bodies. Cut off from real community, intimacy, authentic relationships, nutrient dense food, good quality air and high quality water (all examples of real wealth), people will fall into many different addictions in an attempt to make up for these losses. Buying a mansion, multiple cars, excessive electronic gadgets, overindulging on high fat, high sugar foods, taking various drugs, watching pornography, random hook-ups, these actions seem to all be desperate attempts to fill unmet needs with environmentally and/or psychologically damaging consumption, and I have even taken some of these actions myself trying to create an environmentally-conscious life here, they are not easy to avoid.

It does not necessarily have to be this way however, many people are finding ways to escape the socioeconomic matrix by building organic farms, homesteads, environmental non-profits and other things. The matrix is very difficult to escape from as I can personally attest, so I am making due at the moment by just trying to focus my attention on alternative environmental science subjects and volunteering. I agree with the notion that a universal basic income would allow more people to take more financial risk in building environmentally sustainable systems. Many of my own environmentally destructive decisions (such as agreeing to work on questionable ‘environmental’ projects in corporate America) have been made due to financial woes. Though, I would obviously like to see the UBI provided without government stipulations such as vaccine passports or carbon credits, for example. Good luck to anyone else wanting to make the journey on creating a more green world!

Further reading on this topic: https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/concern-about-overpopulation-is-a-red-herring-consumptions-the-problem/

A quote from Richard Reese’s book What is Sustainable also speaks to this topic:

“A while back, a friend spent time with the MicMac teacher, Albert Ward. She was furious and frustrated about how we civilized humans were destroying the planet. Albert told her that if she wanted to heal Mother Earth – which he really felt didn’t need our help – the first step was to heal herself. She needed to discover who she was, and then she needed to be herself.”