After Abundance
Scarcity, Dialogue, and the Hard Work of Being Human
One of the most likely civilization-shaping events of this century is a dieback of the human family, accompanied by the collapse of numerous fragile societies. A dieback (sometimes called a die-off) refers to a rapid and catastrophic reduction in the population of a species. I borrow the term from botany, where it describes the death or severe decline of a plant, tree, or forest. It does not imply human extinction, nor anything remotely close to it.
Humanity will likely be around for a long time. By virtue of our extraordinary physical adaptability and cognitive power, we are a superspecies. Over the long arc of time, if we are to survive—much less flourish—we will do so only by learning to live in a relatively harmonious, sustainable relationship with the rest of the planet. In the short term, however, we appear determined to burn down the house that shelters us.
Within the next thirty to fifty years, it is likely that the world’s farmers will no longer produce enough food to feed everyone. For decades, food has been globally abundant, if unevenly distributed. Even so, billions have gone hungry or malnourished, and millions have died each year from diseases their weakened immune systems could not resist. What, then, happens when scarcity becomes real rather than merely political or economic?
The likely result is a catastrophic dieback in which hundreds of millions – perhaps billions – of people either die from starvation and related shortages of water and energy, or are never born at all. Global civilization, as we currently know it, will fragment. Nation-states would weaken or fail, giving way to smaller, more localized political and economic units – some functional, some not.
The bitter irony is that we already possess the knowledge and technology needed to avert such outcomes. Yet we are unlikely to deploy them in time, because our civilization is structured (materially, economically, and ideologically) in ways that systematically prevent us from acting in the long-term interests of humanity or the biosphere that sustains us.
A dieback, however grim, is not extinction. To anthropomorphize nature for a moment, dieback is one of the blunt tools through which ecosystems restore balance when a species overshoots the carrying capacity of its environment. Humanity may well persist for millions of years, but with far fewer numbers, and in far closer alignment with the limits of the Earth.
For those alive in the coming century, these are bleak possibilities. If they are even partly accurate, they imply unprecedented human suffering and the loss of much of the planet’s biological richness. The rest of nature will suffer alongside us because humans do not fall from a precipice alone. In desperation, we will likely clear remaining forests for farmland, drain aquifers, and exhaust the last reserves of fossil fuels. Rather than retreat wisely, we will grasp and pull everything down with us.
I am reminded of a conversation I once had with my elementary school principal, decades after I left his school. He asked whether I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I answered, “No sir, I don’t.” His silence prodded me to add, “But I do appreciate that his teachings – at least, what I understand of them – are in line with many of the great sages of history.” Unimpressed, he said, “Wouldn’t it be more practical to believe? If you’re wrong, no harm done. But if you don’t believe and you’re wrong, you’ll suffer everlasting fire and eternal damnation.”
At the time, I regarded this as a crude manipulation of fear, an appeal to pain and death dressed up as logic. Yet here I find myself employing a similar argument. If we are mistaken, if we have exaggerated the danger, then little harm is done by striving for a cleaner, more equitable, less crowded world. But if we delay while the world is indeed careening toward collapse, the consequences will be catastrophic. Determining the validity of these claims, then, is among the most urgent tasks facing civilization and each of us within it. We can either lend a hand or add resistance.
As Eldridge Cleaver is often quoted as saying, There is no more neutrality in the world. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
In The Dream of the Earth the Catholic priest and Earth scholar Thomas Berry wrote “Such a description of our human presence on the Earth tends to become paralyzing. While that is not my intention, it is my intention to fix our minds on the magnitude of the task before us. This task concerns every member of the human community, no matter what the occupation, continent, ethnic group, or age. It is a task from which no one is absolved and with which no one is ultimately more concerned than anyone else. Here we meet as absolute equals to face our ultimate tasks as human beings within the life systems of the planet Earth.”
My aim in these posts, on my website and in the book for which I seek a home, is simple: to offer enough reliable information and careful interpretation that each person can decide how to proceed with the smallest leap of faith and the greatest possible grounding in knowledge.
We cannot speak precisely of future events, but we can look courageously at the world as it is. We can acknowledge our ignorance, recognize our biases, and ask questions whose answers may unsettle us. Dialogue—this long, evolving human conversation—remains one of our most powerful tools. We listen to those who came before us. We test ideas ourselves. We argue, refine, and revise. And slowly, imperfectly, the human story advances.
Armed with dialogue, humility, and the simple miracle of the opposable thumb, we grasp what we can and begin, together, to move in a better direction.