8 Billion People
For the first time in the history of the Earth, written in fire, water and life, we Homo sapiens, a very recent species, have crossed the line of 8 billion inhabitants. I do not regard this as a glorious milestone, but rather as a worrying warning sign. We have nothing to celebrate, but much to reflect on at all levels. This fact brings us face to face with serious and complex ethical, ecological, philosophical as well as religious challenges. I list 4 of the most decisive ones.
1. The pace of growth is unsustainable. It is estimated that by the end of the Palaeolithic, some 12,000 years ago, before the Neolithic revolution that took place with agriculture and livestock farming, the human population of the planet –by which time only Sapiens remained– was around 1 million; 2,000 years ago, at the time of Jesus, it was around 200 million; in the year 1800 it was around 1 billion; in the year 1900 it was almost 2 billion; and in the year 2000 there were 6 billion of us; twenty years later, we number 8 billion.
The figures shout for themselves: this rate of human population growth –despite its gradual slowdown– is still unsustainable. It is unsustainable for the planet and its limited resources, for the other living species that inhabit it, and for all the peoples left behind. Perhaps the Earth, thanks to science and technology –and the fair distribution of resources, were that to happen– could feed 15 or 20 billion humans, but we are not alone and we cannot be ruled by the good of humanity alone. Let us be very clear: what is unsustainable for all living things will eventually become unsustainable for humans as well.
2. Inequality is the reason why birth rates fall in rich countries and remain high in poor ones. The fact that the birth rate is falling in the former, and not in the latter seems paradoxical, but it is basically for the same reason: inequity, unjust inequality. If the birth rate is falling in rich countries, it is mainly due to increasing economic insecurity, lack of work-life balance and fear of the future. And if it remains high in the poorest countries, that is mainly due to the submission of women, the lack of economic autonomy, the lack of contraception, high mortality, the need for extra pairs of hands to bring home bread and to care for elderly parents in the absence of a public care system. They are different forms of the same inequality, which leads some neither to want nor to have children, and pushes others to want them or to have them without wanting them. They are contradictory symptoms of an irrational and inhumane global economic system that prevents some from begetting and forces others to do so. Paradoxes of this human species of ours that is so gifted and needy.
The real solution will not come from family policies –promotion of birth in some places and birth reduction in others– however necessary they may be. Even less so will it come from immigration policies that open or close borders at the dictates of the economic interests of the wealthiest. There will be no solution for some as long as there is no solution for everyone. We will never be wise unless we know how to be brothers, nor will we be free as long as we do not acknowledge ourselves as equals.
3. It is inhuman for the human species to take over the entire planet. Despite all the diseases, famines, epidemics and wars, the human population on the Earth has not stopped growing; it continues to grow and will continue to do so for at least some time to come. That fact reveals life’s power and passion, but the price paid and the disasters caused by this growth are so appalling that I am torn between admiration and sorrow for this human species that more optimistic people called Sapiens, Wise. This species is capable of the most sublime and the most horrible. It is a guardian angel and an exterminating angel: we poison the air and the waters, we ravage the forests and the seas, we inject diseases into other animals to cure our own, we multiply filthy macro-farms and cruel slaughterhouses, we continue to hunt for pleasure and kill bulls for fun, and a million species are right now threatened with extinction because of us. Are we not all children of the same Earth and the same life?
We are the most contradictory species. The most care-dependent, and the most invasive and predatory of the nature of which we are a part. The most powerful and the longest suffering. We are the most intelligent and the most foolish of all animals, for we do not know how to live with what we have and die when our time comes. And it is not due to any “original sin” or divine punishment, but to the evolutionary brain development that has established us in this state of constitutive imbalance or difficult, almost impossible balance. Almost. Something or a lot is in our hands today more than ever, thanks to science, among other things. But science will not be enough. If we really want to move towards the deep balance of our being, we must free ourselves from the greed to win, to possess, to grow at all costs. And to begin by recognising that we are not the lords and masters of the Earth, that we are Earth, that we are of the Earth and that the Earth is stronger. We will not grow in humanity as long as we do not learn to decrease in order to share.
4. The Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on natality is irresponsible. The Sapiens species created a “God” in its own human image –a height of wisdom or foolishness– and the major monotheisms established that the human being –preferably male– is the image, the only or the supreme image, of the omnipotent “God”. Christianity went to extremes in its divinisation by claiming that “God” was fully incarnated only in a male Jewish man, although Jesus of Nazareth, prophet of liberation, had nothing to do with this dogma of exclusionary incarnation.
It would be gravely irresponsible for the Christian churches to continue to cling on to this dogma to the letter, and to the anthropocentric-androcentric worldview that underpins it, and to continue to teach that the human species is the noblest and most worthy of all creatures, the centre, the height and the meaning of all creation. As if the Earth were the centre of the cosmos and life had emerged only here and human beings signified the end of evolution. All this has become unsustainable.
The Catholic Church continuing to interpret literally the divine command in Genesis “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) amounts to irresponsibility that is gravely ignorant, or ignorance that is gravely irresponsible. As it does for it to continue to rely, to the letter, on the world of the past to legitimise its defence of the birth rate, its anachronistic doctrine of what it calls “natural” procreation and its absurd condemnation of contraception, its deep-rooted patriarchalism, its stubborn, hurtful homophobia, its pernicious obsession with sexuality, the painful consequences of which are plain to see.
It is time to redefine our place and responsibility on the earth, in the community of the living. It is time to reflect on and decide whether together we want to save ourselves, or allow all of us to be lost.
Aizarna, Basque Country. 20 November, 2022
(Translated by Sarah J. Turtle)