Humans and the future's "era of solitude"

John Gray, the ex-Thatcherite turned globalization critic, has a very intriguing article in the New Statesman about the ecological devastation of the future. Rather than referring to the typical explanation of human mismanagement of the environment, he cites the coming threat of overpopulation:

According to Edward O Wilson, the greatest living Darwinian thinker, the earth is entering a new evolutionary era. We are on the brink of a great extinction the like of which has not been seen since the end of the Mesozoic Era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared. Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. On current trends, our children will be practically alone in the world. As Wilson has put it, humanity is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic - the era of solitude.

...In truth, the root cause of mass extinction is too many people. As Wilson puts it in his book Consilience: "Population growth can justly be called the monster on the land." Yet according to all the mainstream parties and most environmental organisations, the despoliation of the environment is mainly the result of flaws in human institutions. If we are entering a desolate world, the reason is not that humans have become too numerous. It is because injustice prevents proper use of the earth's resources. There is no such thing as overpopulation.

A little later in the article, Gray cites an even more surprising problem - the belief in the righteousness of human dominance over nature - and notes,

The belief that the earth belongs to humans is a residue of theism. For Christians, humans are unique among animals because they alone are created in the image of God. For the same reason, they are uniquely valuable. It follows that humanity can behave as lord of creation, treating the earth's natural wealth and other animals as tools, mere instruments for the achievement of human purposes.

To my mind, such religious beliefs have caused an immense amount of harm, but at least they are coherent. It is perfectly reasonable to think humans are the only source of value in the scheme of things - so long as you retain the theological framework in which they are held to be categorically different from all other animals. But once you have given up theism, this sort of anthropocentrism makes no sense. Outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it is practically unknown. The view of things in which we are separate from the rest of nature and can live with minimal concern for the biosphere is not a conclusion of rational inquiry. It is an inheritance from a single, humanly aberrant religious tradition.

The fashionable belief that there is no such thing as overpopulation is part of an anthropocentric world-view that has nothing to do with science. At the same time, there is more than a hint of anthropocentrism in Wilson's suggestion that we are entering an age of solitude. The idea that, unlike any other animal, humans can take the planet into a new evolutionary era assumes that the earth will patiently submit to their inordinate demands. Yet there is already evidence that human activity is altering the balance of the global climate - and in ways that are unlikely to be comfortable for the human population. The long-term effects of global warming cannot be known with any certainty. But in a worst-case scenario that is being taken increasingly seriously, the greenhouse effect could wipe out densely populated coastal countries such as Bangladesh within the present century, while seriously dislocating food production elsewhere in the world.

The result could be a disaster for billions of people. The idea that we are entering an era of solitude makes sense only if it is assumed that such a world would be stable - and hospitable to humans. Yet we know that the closer an ecosystem comes to being a mono-culture, the more fragile it becomes, as Mark Buchanan demonstrated in the NS two weeks ago ("The extinction of species", 8 July). The world's rainforests are part of the earth's self-regulatory system. As James Lovelock has observed, they sweat to keep us cool. With their disappearance, we will be increasingly at risk. A humanly overcrowded world that has been denuded of much of its biodiversity will be extremely fragile - far more vulnerable to large, destabilising accidents than the complex biosphere we have inherited. Such a world is too delicate to last for long.

His conclusion is stark and, perhaps, unexpected:

The increase in human population that is currently under way is unprecedented and unsustainable. It cannot be projected into the future. More than likely, it will be cut short by the classical Malthusian forces of "old history". From a human point of view, this is an extremely discomforting prospect; but at least it dispels the nightmare of an age of solitude. The loss of biodiversity is real, and very often irreversible. But we need not fear a world made desolate by human proliferation. We can rely on homo rapiens to spare us that fate.