6,000,000,001: A Population Odyssey

In this age of technology, life moves at a dizzying pace as humanity struggles desperately to keep up. Faced with a veritable glut of news--a war here, an earthquake there, interest rates falling or rising, the introduction of a new wonder drug--we are forced to pick and choose what is important enough to notice. We analyze the booming economy and judge it to be healthy because the Dow Jones closes at a record-breaking 11,000, but ignore the widening chasm between rich and poor; we latch on to the fact that this will be the most expensive presidential race in history, but decline to pay attention to falling voter turnout. More and more often, we gravitate towards the sound bite and the nickname, equating "memorable" with "milestone."

So it should come as no surprise when, in the next few weeks, there's a buzz in the air about the impending Y6B. (Note the catchy name, just short and cutesy enough to rank in pop-culture significance above the number of home runs that Sammy Sosa has to date but below that other infamous abbreviation, Y2K.) For the uninformed, Y6B is what interest groups have begun to call October 12, 1999, the date when the United Nations Population Fund estimates that the number of humans on this earth will rise above the six-billion mark.

There is a doomsday feel to such a figure, especially with the millennium approaching. Statisticians are already drooling over all those zeroes, and the frantic calculations that have ensued are a mathematician's dream. Bullet points on all the major news websites show the results of their labor: did you know that it took all of time for the world population to hit one billion in 1804, but only twelve years for it to jump from five billion to six billion? Did you know that one tenth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today?

But while such revelations are interesting and provide plenty of fodder for dinnertime discussion, they fail to address what Y6B ultimately means for the future of the planet. Unfortunately, the answer to "what is the impact of a rapidly rising human population?" is not as easily obtained as the statistics, which can only make a feeble attempt to describe what should be a major global concern.

The Y6B announcement by the U.N. has dredged up all the old population growth fears first vocalized during the 1960s, fears which included starvation due to the overuse of farmland, worldwide epidemics, irreparable damage to countless species and habitats, and even global chaos and anarchy. Forty years and 3 billion people later, we seem only a few small steps closer to understanding and solving the problem of widescale overcrowding. It's a multifaceted battle that pits the optimists against the pessimists and the economists against the ecologists.

There are many who see Y6B as a splendid accomplishment, one that reflects progress in the arenas of birth control, medicine, and technology. Thanks to modern healthcare, people have a longer life expectancy than ever before. A drastic reduction in the birth rates of most industrialized nations indicates that population growth is rapidly slowing. Moreover, although scientists long predicted that the earth could never support the numbers of people alive today, the ability of the human race to adapt to their environment seems (so far) to have debunked that theory. From this perspective, it would seem that we have truly become masters of our own destiny.

Others see the six billion mark as a harbinger of our inevitable destruction. They point to a wide range of current problems that are the result of overpopulation, from the mundane (increased traffic congestion) to the catastrophic (the worldwide AIDS epidemic, shortages in freshwater). Watchdog groups like Zero Population Growth point out that birth rates are actually rising in many developing nations, which do not have the resources to deal with such a situation. They also contend that no matter how sharply birth rates are reduced, the world population will continue to grow for another century merely because older generations are not dying as quickly as younger ones are being born.

There is a measure of validity on both sides of the argument. The reality lies somewhere in-between the environmentalist model, (humanity will succumb to natural restraints), and the economic model (human nature can circumvent such natural restraints). We may be able to bend the laws of nature a bit, but it would be both arrogant and foolish to believe that we can continue to overburden the earth indefinitely.

But knowing the significance of Y6B and doing something about it are two very different things. The widespread effects of the population increase have not yet begun to impress upon industrial nations; in fact, many of those nations feel they have "done their part" by reducing birth rates within their borders. What is often overlooked, however, is the environmental toll that modernized nations exact. Societal trends towards superconsumption ensure that one American middle-class child will use more natural resources in his or her lifetime than a family of eight living in Somalia.

It would be naive to believe that one solution could possibly "fix" the overpopulation problem, but the current practice of ignorance--paying attention to the media hype over Y6B but disregarding its many implications, for example--is something that we cannot afford. Much of the responsibility should fall to the U.N. and its member countries, who have the resources and the manpower necessary to help make a significant difference. Many of the best solutions have already begun to be implemented and need only to be improved and expanded upon. For example, the U.N. should be more proactive with its birth control information and distribution programs in areas that need it most. And industrialized nations need to continue to research and develop alternate energy sources, more efficient pollution controls, and better waste disposal methods.

Whatever the ultimate consequences of population growth may be, it is important to remember the danger of treating statistics as mere numbers. Regardless of the millennial hoopla that Y6B will doubtless create, its cumulative environmental, economic, and humanitarian effects are what we can ill afford to forget.

Alixandra E. Smith '02, a Crimson editor, is a Government concentrator in Kirkland House.