Timely subject, as lefty environmentalists have just been attacking the Jeff Gibbs / Michael Moore film, Planet of the Humans, for the crime of mentioning overpopulation, invoking the threat of eco-fascism just as you and Jason describe:
Then comes its most immoral and damning gambit: the claim that reducing the population is among the only effective remedies.
We see old white male after old white male declaring there is no solution to climate change except reducing the population. (With this many white guys, we can only guess which groups of people are supposed to stop reproducing.) We are told to face up to our own apocalypse—that humans should “know when it’s their time to go.
The claim that it is all those overpopulated countries that are causing the problem (especially coming from a boomer white guy in Michigan) would be deeply problematic even in “normal” times. But in the middle of a global pandemic that is killing a disproportionate number of black and brown people, it is more than just racist. It can be seen as an incitement to eco-fascist population controls.
The film offers only one concrete solution to our predicament: the most toxic of all possible answers. “We really have got to start dealing with the issue of population … without seeing some sort of major die off in population, there’s no turning back.”
Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When very rich people, such as Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, “it’s not us consuming, it’s Them breeding.” It’s not hard to see why the alt-right loves this film.
Population is where you go when you haven’t thought it through. Population is where you go when you don’t have the guts to face the structural, systemic causes of our predicament: inequality, oligarchic power, capitalism. Population is where you go when you want to kick down.
They must have missed the part when Gibbs explicitly mentions the multiplying factor of consumption in western lifestyles:
It took modern humans tens of thousands of years to reach a population of 7oo million. And then we tapped into millions of years of stored energy known as fossil fuels. Our human population exploded. It increased by ten times in a mere 200 years. Our consumption has also exploded, on average ten times per person, and many times more in the western world. You put the two together, the result is a total human impact 100 times greater than only 200 years ago. And that is the most terrifying realisation that I’ve ever had.’ (from 47:40)
Though the film’s analysis is limited by only zooming in on growth over the last 10,000 years, missing the step change that occurred with farming and looking only at the industrial period which merely accelerated processes that had already been set in motion (albeit to rapidly devastating effect).
Jason is brave to go after the sacred cow of female education and emancipation, though he does it clearly and undeniably as usual. I’ve had frustrating discussions before trying to get people to focus on the underlying material factors of why there has been this boom in the first place, but I guess there’s too much benevolent white saviour feel-goods to pass up by not stepping in to pull 3rd world women out of poverty, and thus solving All the Problems. Maybe the way to do it is by pointing out that h/ger societies are the most egalitarian along gender lines, most obviously because they aren’t required to act as baby factories for a booming agricultural workforce. Education & emancipation, and the move to city living that usually results, is only possible with fossil fuels and mechanisation picking up the tab on all the agricultural labour. Outsourcing in other words, and unsustainable when the oil runs out. Anyway, the point about the affluent 1st world depending on a deliberately impoverished 3rd world (or whatever other terms are being used nowadays) is key, and something liberal anti-poverty campaigners have failed to grasp for decades. Almost like they don’t want to understand…
I liked the idea of extending the idea of kin in your article, not just to other humans but to nonhumans too. Maybe you could expand a little on what you think that would look like? It strikes me that there’s a great yearning for that kind of connection, especially among young westerners who, thanks in part to their education & emancipation (funny that!) as well as the insane priorities the capitalist/consumerist economy forces on us, are often not in a position to have a steady home, raise a family or even sustain long term relationships. How do we go against those trends and start to claw back some of our most basic, fundamental birthrights?
Best,
Ian