The Opposite of Growth
Assuming that we avoid an apocalypse arising from the continually escalating violent desperation in the Middle East, the Trump bid for the presidency, where despite the fact that he is totally unsuited to govern, change his own nappy or play with grown-ups he might yet be a triumphant Trump. To my surprise I read that if Australians could vote in the US elections more than 20% would vote for Trump. Bloody hell.
In a world that is slip-sliding to the right and apathy in a miasma of untruths, Russian disinformation bots and anti-social social media, we might want to think about a future world. A more ideal world - one more rational than this. Just in case we ever survive. To take our mind off things.
It is suggested that we might be alone in the universe because, given the probability of intelligent life arising in other parts of the universe, a more advanced civilisation should have visited us by now. Even given the number of alien imposed rectal probes on the unsuspecting rears of America’s southern states, the evidence that this has happened is both slim and insanitary.
Because we think that all intelligent life must be like us, or at least the idealised us, we think ‘alien’ life forms will be benevolent, intelligent and kind. They would not demonstrate our actual behaviour of exceptionalism, violent competition, and historical contempt for the environment and other life on our planet. Well, if they’re not like our benevolent view of ourselves, I would contend that they, having seen us once, would avoid the place like the plague leaving signs at the periphery of the solar system saying in large neon lights ‘Go no further’. If they are like the real us, the probability is that they have annihilated themselves perhaps more than once and are charred fragments many light years away.
As a cheerful and hopeful thought, consider that humanity might be a self-correcting mistake, as earth would have been, would be, probably a better place without our species. Or at least without Elon Musk.
Back to the thesis: in 2006 in a blog entitled ‘There are too many people” I wrote about an ideal number of humans on the planet and speculated on the arbitrary number as ....the same number of people as lived before the great sewerage works of London were completed - about 1876 by Sir Joseph Bazalgette - as an acknowledgement that it was engineers that  gave us clean water and sewage disposal that have contributed most to the population explosion. Not medicine or the invention of disposable nappies. So that’s about 1.5 billion people which is still an incredible lot and in rabbit terms would have us reaching for the Myxomatosis.”
I may have been generous with the numbers, but global population estimates of that time have an error factor as public records could be a bit haphazard. But anyway, that is about a sixth of the world’s current population - and we are assuming that, having shrunk, it isn’t ever going to get larger. Please.
Being an intelligent person* you would have long ago realised that a world based on perpetual growth is not sustainable on a finite small blue planet on the edges of the Milky Way galaxy.
According to UN estimates, only when the world population will have grown to 10.4 billion in 2086, at which point the population start to decline. Australia’s population would be over fifty million.
If we divide the population of Australia by six, that means that Australia would have four and a half million people, not the two million there were in 1876, and not be growing at the current rate of a person every 54 seconds. It wouldn’t be growing at all. Population growth zero. Boringly for ever and ever the population would be four and a half million people. Or less.
It is over three hundred and seventy years before we reached my optimum of a sixth of the worlds current project population, if we could manage an annual population decline of -0.5%. It would be good if it were quicker, but I am going to pass over the way that the world might level down to a population of 1.5 billion at a higher rate,as the most likely scenario of a global environmental collapse is not a pretty thought. But the sane way, through fewer children, probably isn’t nearly quick enough given a growing and aging population.
In general, it has been observed as the material sophistication and education of a society grows the number of children born declines. This is currently shown in the more affluent western countries such as Japan and Italy where the population is falling at -0.54% and -0.29% respectively, and there are 1.3 births per woman respectively. In Nigeria it is currently 5 births per woman.
You may see there is a problem here, as that means that at some stage everybody has a lifestyle equivalent to say France or Australia. In a consumer society this means an awful lot of disposable nappies and fast food outlets. An enormous lot of energy consumed, a lot more massive data centres internalising AI essays on Plato’s Republic and its relationship to regional Italian cooking, tonnes of processed food and a lot of tattoo parlours. Even more rubbish. Call me naive, but we are totally fucked.
So the next three hundred and fifty years might be a tad difficult to survive. But let’s have a moments optimism and presume that somehow the world get though.
You may have thought about the Australian economy once in a while, but to me it is an economy that works only because of an ever-growing population. The things that we export, the coal, iron, bauxite, gas and wheat that actually make all the money, don’t take that many people to put on a boat and sell overseas. We don’t make very much here at all, we are as a German Economic Minister said, ‘cutting each other’s hair’. No cars, planes or buses and no sophisticated electronics. What we do is build houses and run glorified corner stores that feed the incoming population, who slide into newly created housing estates chewing up arable land
So, in a world of negative growth, a shrunken population, what are we going to do? For a while parts of the commodity export trade will be necessary, but if we take away the Australian home-building sector and its peripherals what do we do? Where are all the tradies in their massive dual cab monsters going to go? What are all the factories in China making sanitary wares going to do? With less than five million people, what do is everyone going to be doing? Given the levels of technology that should be available, not having as hard a time of it as they did in Australian in the 1870s. A lot more barbecues and less tourists.
I just point this out as a problem that nobody seems to be dealing with. Business and capitalism generally thinks that everything must keep on going the way that it is, because that is what it is entirely predicted upon. More and more rather that less and less. And you might see an opportunity for an alternative political reality, rather than one invested in maintaining the status quo.
There are definite eventual upsides to this of course. Global warming should cease to be an ongoing problem - that is if it hasn’t gotten rid of us by then. Forests will regenerate, the seas might recover, and many farms can revert to nature. The nature of cities would change and grass would grow through the asphalt. A bonus for the environment.
Oh happy days.