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Democracy has evolved, now environmental protection needs to evolve

By Eric Claus - posted Thursday, 18 January 2018


There is no doubt that the human race has improved in its understanding of science and technology, but do we let that improved understanding convince us that we have improved in all other ways?

Are we more ethical than in past generations? Do we care as much about our fellow man? Do we care as much about the future of the human race? Life is now so much easier in the rich world, that it should be easier to be ethical. We don't have the pressures on us to survive like 100 or 200 years ago, when medicine and technology hadn't developed to make our lives so secure.

One example of social progress, that we can be proud of, is the development of democracy. It can be easy to think that we've always had systems in place that allowed every adult to have a vote in determining who controlled the government. In truth, though, the idea of democracy developed over centuries, the practical operation of democracy challenged some of the greatest thinkers in history and still challenges us today.

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Athens is widely considered the first democracy around the fifth century BC, but systems of democracy certainly didn't progress smoothly from there. Civilisations, knowledge and technology developed but most of humanity has been led by a series of Kings, Monarchs, Emperors and Dictators up until the 1990's.

One way to look at the evolution of democracy is to look at the kinds of people that were allowed to take part in selecting their government.

First nobody was allowed to vote. Monarchs ruled,

Then a few noblemen shared power with the Monarch,

Then wealthy property owning white men could vote,

Then white men could vote without a property qualification,

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Then men of colour, disliked religions and ethnicities in some countries could vote,

Then women could vote,

Over the same time that democracy was developing slowly, technology was developing quickly. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, technology can be developed by an individual or a small number of people, without the consent of the wider community. When Gutenberg was inventing the printing press, he didn't have to ask anyone for permission, he just went ahead and did it.

Second, when a new technology is developed it can often be quickly adopted and shared all around the world without waiting for broad community consensus. When people saw how the printing press worked, they could either use it or get left behind.

Democracy has developed slowly for the same reasons in reverse. First, either the consent or the overthrow of those in power is needed to expand democracy. Second, as democracy expanded, Monarchs and dictators in other places developed systems to resist democracy.

As technology improved at a rapid pace, life became easier for the human race and the human population rapidly increased. As population increased we started to make impacts on the natural environment. Impacts on the natural environment are directly linked to the growth in population.

  • When people started burning coal for cooking and warmth in small villages, the impacts from smoke were minimal. When villages grew to cities, the smoke from burning coal caused health problems and coal burning had to be outlawed.
  • When there were only a few cars in the early 1900's the impact from air emissions was minimal. When city populations increased with everybody driving cars, car engines had to be redesigned to reduce emissions.
  • When towns were small, people would simply throw their waste out a window. As towns grew larger, sewers were built to carry waste away and allow it to flow into rivers or the ocean. As cities grew even larger sewage treatment plants had to be built because the untreated sewage was polluting the rivers and oceans.
  • As the population has grown we have used up and degraded so much land for human needs that we've left very little for the other species we share the planet with.
  • As the population has grown even further, (currently 80 million or one new Germany per year) we are now in conflict with our own species. Refugees who were once welcomed from foreign countries, are now refused entry. Many refugees are escaping countries overstressed by environmental factors.
  • As described in the United Nations Environment Programme report Global Environmental Outlook-5 (2012): "The scale, spread and rate of change of global drivers are without precedent. Burgeoning populations and growing economies are pushing environmental systems to destabilizing limits."

The link between population and environmental protection puts us in the position of having to address the growth of population if we want to protect our environment in the future. Addressing the growth of population, though, requires the kind of patience and initiative that it took to develop democracy.

Similar to the development of democracy, population stabilisation measures like reducing immigration and removing tax breaks for more than two children, requires the consent of the full community.

Getting that full consensus for population stabilisation is further complicated because the relationship between population and protection of the environment is very uncomfortable, because of two opposing factors. First our own humanity and our close bond with other humans make it unnatural to want to limit the growth of humans in any way. In opposition, though, we know that we only have this one finite planet and its air, water, soil, biota and other resources to survive with.

These ideas get more uncomfortable when we consider that:

Stabilising the population isn't like inventing the printing press. It can't be done with just a few people. Without a full discussion of the issues, we won't be able to get the kind of consensus needed to change the current policy of high population growth.

In today's world, discussion of the issues goes through the media. Media coverage of high population growth rarely includes protection of the environment. Media organisations are businesses that need readers and viewers to make money. People don't tune in to hear the obvious. Even the biggest boosters of high population growth don't think there will be less pollution produced with higher population. Plus the media hates sad endings.

The first option the media prefers to degradation of the environment, is refugees and racism. That's what sells. Another issue the media prefers, is crowding and congestion. Proponents of fast population growth recognise that crowding and congestion have gotten worse in big cities over the same time that population has increased, but they say it isn't because of the population growth. It is because of poor planning by government.

Most voters know that crowding and congestion isn't because of poor planning, because every side of politics has had a chance to "plan better" and none has done it. The real reason is that there isn't enough tax money to keep up with high population growth. The average voter also doesn't want to pay higher taxes to increase population. Shamelessly, the same business interests that want high population growth also want lower taxes for themselves. That means they want the short term profits that come with high population growth, but they don't want to pay for the infrastructure needed to service the increased population.

Any discussion of population and the environment centres on long term impacts, which makes the discussion more difficult. Humans have not evolved to consider the long term. Humans have evolved with a fight or flight response to danger, which only reflects short term danger.

All these factors mean it will take some very special people to move us toward a stable population future, just like it took very special people to improve democracy. An example is women's suffrage. Only a small minority believe women should NOT have the right to vote, but only about 100 years ago, only women in New Zealand and Australia could vote.

In far less than 100 years there will only be a tiny minority who want to cram more and more people onto our finite planet.

A critical difference between women's suffrage and reducing population growth is that once the decision was made, women could vote as soon as the next election. The suffragettes were fighting for their own rights, as well as the rights of their daughters and granddaughters. With population stabilisation, demographic factors mean that it can take decades to stabilise the population. (A good example is that even though China's "one-child" policy was successful, it still hasn't stabilised the population 38 years after it was started.) That means that the activists that are fighting for population stabilisation now, are fighting for a result that many of them won't see.

It is difficult to determine the precise impact of women's suffrage and the flow-on effects of equal treatment of women, but it is hard to find anyone who thinks it has been negative.

It is also difficult to predict what will happen the longer we wait to stabilise the world's population, but it is likely that the same negative impacts that are happening today, will just continue to get worse.

These signs are all around us now, just like the signs for women's suffrage were all around one hundred years ago.

  • Madam Marie Curie won 2 Nobel Prizes
  • Clara Barton started the American Red Cross.
  • Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing.
  • Women wrote many of the greatest works of literature of the 19th century
  • Many women became doctors, lawyers and business owners despite the prejudice and restrictive practices of the times.

These signs for women's suffrage seem obvious now, but they weren't then. It took remarkable people to change the long held beliefs that women did not have the knowledge to cast a responsible vote and that giving women the vote, would upset traditional family institutions.

It will take remarkable people, now, to change the long held belief that more people always makes life better for everyone.

If these people are found and take action, it will be unprecedented in the history of activist movements because they will be fighting for the long term future of the environment and our civilisation, instead of something that has immediate consequences. They will be fighting for their children and grandchildren and everyone else's children and grandchildren, rather than for themselves.

Nothing like that has ever happened before.

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About the Author

Eric Claus has worked in civil and environmental engineering for over 20 years.

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