Why a collapse of global civilization will be avoided: a comment on Ehrlich & Ehrlich

Ehrlich FRS & Ehrlich [1] claim that overpopulation , over-consumption and the future climate mean that 'preventing a global collapse of civilization is perhaps the foremost challenge confronting humanity'. What is missing from the well-referenced perspective of the potential downsides for the future of humanity is any balancing assessment of the progress being made on these three challenges (and the many others they cite by way of detail) that suggests that the problems are being dealt with in a way that will not require a major disruption to the human condition or society. Earlier dire predictions have been made in the same mode by Malthus FRS [2] on food security, Jevons FRS [3] on coal exhaustion, King FRS & Murray [4] on peak oil, and by many others. They have all been overcome by the exercise of human ingenuity just as the doom was being prophesied with the deployment of steam engines to greatly improve agricultural efficiency, and the discoveries of oil and of fracking oil and gas, respectively, for the three examples given. It is incumbent on those who would continue to predict gloom to learn from history and make a comprehensive review of human progress before coming to their conclusions. The problems as perceived today by Ehrlich FRS and Ehrlich will be similarly seen off by work in progress by scientists and engineers. My comment is intended to summarize and reference the potential upsides being produced by today's human ingenuity, and I leave the reader to weigh the balance for the future, taking into account the lessons of recent history. The population explosion (and its Malthusian societal disruptions) that Ehr-lich FRS predicted for the 1990s has not come about [5,6], and the concerns in this present Ehrlich paper are not tempered by the mounting evidence of the demographic transition that occurs when the majority of people live in cities and have access to education. In Japan, Europe and North America the population, excluding immigration, is in decline. Some studies indicate that a peak of 9 billion people in 2050 will be followed by a decline to a population of approximately 6 billion in 2100—less than that in 2000 [7] and bringing new problems of unwanted infrastructure assets! The UN is revising its future population estimates downward [8]. If we look at the waste in the contemporary food chain, at the point of growth, in transit to the market …