The Human race has run out of continents to colonize, cultivate and populate. There are no new frontiers left to discover. we’ve reached the limits we’ve reached lands end.
Over the last couple of centuries since the discovery of oil our population has grown to numbers never seen before.
The emergence of coal as an energy source eliminated the carrying capacity limits to population growth that any traditional and biomass energy based culture would eventually face. Similarly, the predominance of oil after the middle part of the twentieth century raised the carrying capacity even further.
The consumption of crude oil have coincided with the highest population growth in history. After the depressed population growth during World War II, growth rose quickly to the highest rate the world has ever known.
Oil has propelled our population across the globe and to the stars. We have overrun the earth. The final continents have been discovered and covered with our buildings, towns, cities and farms.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said the number of people forcibly displaced by violence and persecution around the world rose to more than 123 million by the end of 2024 — an increase of around 2 million from the previous year.
UNHCR said figures recorded at the end of last year show that displacement has almost doubled over the past decade. (Source)
Many of those fleeing the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have fled to neighbouring countries like South Sudan, Chad and Egypt.
The world is straining from our teeming masses of people over consuming and overbreeding.
When any species overruns its habitat it has to flee to other areas to eke out a living. Humans have the ability to manage their own reproduction and create a sustainable population.
Deer culling is often necessary to manage their numbers and protect the environment, as well as for the welfare of the deer themselves. Overpopulation from overbreeding deer can lead to habitat damage, biodiversity loss, and increased risk of disease and starvation within the deer population.
“Humanity is in overshoot—global heating, plunging biodiversity, soil/land degradation, tropical deforestation, ocean acidification, fossil fuel and mineral depletion, the pollution of everything, etc., are indicative of the increasing disordering of the biosphere/ecosphere. We are at risk of a chaotic break down of essential life-support functions.”
Humans are not separate from the web of life and its rules. We will run into the third law of thermodynamics where we do not have enough resources – housing food and energy to provide for everyone at a reasonable cost. The countries where the people flee from will have to bare the brunt (UK included) with higher costs of living. public services overwhelmed and political tensions as the population swells and presses and strains against one another.
Elon Musk wants us to colonize Mars. The why don’t we terraform the Gobi Desert?
‘Musk’s primary motivation is to create a safe haven for humanity in case of a catastrophic event on Earth, such as nuclear war or global climate change.’
By destroying our only home through our addiction to oil and technological progress we are creating a safe haven on Mars so we can carry on injecting our civilizational drug and laying waste to the biosphere.
“Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you’re enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today- and promise population control tomorrow.”
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
To be continued