No wonder Bob Carr always looks morose. The poor man has fallen for the apocalyptic scenarios promoted by the peddlers of environmental gloom.
In a remarkable cry from the heart, the NSW premier announced that there is little hope for humanity ("The Doomsday Millenium", SMH 6 January). World population numbers have reached catastrophic levels and even in the unlikely event that they are reined in, it will be too late. The global environment has been irreversibly damaged. Perhaps the most we can wish for is to be distracted by the tinsel of mariachi bands and fireworks displays.
What I found particularly surprising was the premier's apparent certainty about the bleakness of the future. Less erudite greenies might be forgiven if they are blind to the hazards of predicting outcomes in systems as complex as those involving human societies and the physical environment. But as a well-read and thoughtful man, Bob Carr has no such excuse. He must be aware of history's marvellous tendency to utterly confound the jeremiahs of experts.
The past few decades have been particularly unkind to predictions made by those of Mr Carr's persuasion. When he stated that "only 30 years ago ... global warming was considered a possibility for late in the 21st century" he was telling only half the story. Thirty years ago, many scientists, including a number who are now riding the global warming bandwagon, were confidently warning about the ominous signs of world-wide temperature declines caused by industrial pollution. A new ice age, bringing devastating crop failures, would soon begin.
And thirty years ago Paul Ehrlich, the grand master of scary environmental stories induced by the "population explosion", was in full flight. The world's supply of oxygen would be seriously depleted by the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of tropical soils. By the mid-1970s 200,000 people a year would be dying from "smog disasters" in American cities. American life expectancy would drop to 42 years by 1980 as a result of pesticide-induced cancers. Ehrlich also told British biologists that if he was a gambler, he "would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000".
Questioned about his unenviable record as an environmental tipster a few years ago Ehrlich explained, "Everyone wants to know what's going to happen. So the question is, do you say 'I don't know', in which case they all go back to bed -- or do you say, 'Hell, in ten years you're likely to be going without food and water' and [get] their attention". Professor Ehrlich clearly got Bob Carr's undivided attention.
But those who foreclose hope by presenting the unknowable as awful and inexorable certainty are being wildly irresponsible, particularly when they are people whose words might be expected to carry some authority. Why strive for a better society, or for the amelioration of environmental problems, when things are so bleak? Young people foolish enough to take seriously Premier Carr's insinuation that they are unlucky to be alive at this "very scary moment" are more likely to take heavy solace in mind-altering substances than seek to become good citizens.
Mr Carr's argument about overpopulation and the devastation of nature depends on the idea that specific environments have a fixed carrying capacity, which can be "outstripped" by the birthrate. Because carrying capacity appears to be a soundly-based and quantifiable scientific concept, it is a powerful weapon for those who want to claim that there are intractable limits to population growth.
But while carrying capacity is great for mobilising anxiety about the environment, it is a very dubious scientific concept, at least as far as humans are concerned. Attempts to provide actual numbers for the earth's supposed carrying capacity produce extremely diverse results. The biologist and demographer Joel Cohen recently noted that in 1994 alone, published scientific estimates varied from less than 3 billion people to 44 billion, or over 7 times the world's current population.
Similar problems arise when claims are made about environmental capacity at a regional or national level. As Australian geographer Harold Brookfield has observed, despite repeated predictions about the human carrying capacity of country after country for over 50 years, "in almost every significant case these limits have been exceeded, while in most cases the present people are now better off than their less numerous predecessors".
Professor Brookfield could have added that at least in many developed countries, the environment is also better off. Analyses of major environmental indicators in the United States and Canada by the Fraser Institute and the Pacific Research Institute point to dramatic declines in overall pollution levels and significant improvements in the condition of forests, waterways, and wildlife habitat over the past couple of decades. Scientific and technological advances, flexible economic and political institutions, and a widespread commitment to sound environmental management all combine to allow a larger and wealthier population to create more, rather than "less nature".
Under the appropriate social, economic and legal conditions, such causal links can exist even in Africa, which Mr Carr seems to regard as beyond all hope. In a highly acclaimed recent study, Mary Tiffen and her associates examined changes over a 60 year period in a densely populated region of Kenya. They discovered that rapid population growth had been a driving force for greater prosperity and environmental improvement. Researchers in some other parts of Africa are making similar findings.
The greatest threat to prosperity and effective conservation measures in much of sub-Saharan Africa comes less from increasing numbers of people than from the terrible ravages of AIDS on the most productive and talented sections of the population. Deluded into believing that Africa already has too many people, there is a danger that many Western environmentalists will actually believe that this tragedy will be good for the planet.
This is not overwrought speculation. Lynn White, the historian whose famous and highly influential 1967 article blaming environmental degradation on the Judeo-Christian tradition made him an early hero to greenies, later wrote an extraordinary essay called "The future of compassion". This called for Christians to assist "a drastic global rollback in population". White said that while he hesitated to pray for a new Black Death himself, "perhaps, whether we pray for it or not, a global atomic war will once more temporarily solve the population problem".
I am sure that Premier Carr would be as appalled as I am by such demented statements. But they are little more than the logical outgrowth of the kind of foolishness he offered Herald readers last week.
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