How do we think about Population in the Anthropocene? rightly starts from the observation that the population topic has become a conspicuous absence in anthropocene studies. Tainted by difficult legacies of eugenics, population control, and sterilization policies mainly directed at women in the Global South, population is an awkward topic in environmental history. At the same time, the growth of humanity toward 9 billion people on earth is a decisive factor of global emissions. Where should environmental historians stand on population?
This is a bold question, and the chapters of the book argue convincingly that the link between population and emissions needs to be problematized. The contributors suggest that the cause of emissions is not simply population growth, but a technological human civilization in breach of planetary boundaries, and the injustices between those who emit, and those who emit so much less.
What comes through the chapters of the book is less a debunking of the idea that something is deeply problematic about population growth, and more the idea that we must rethink the very entity of population. This claim makes the book a crucial contribution to the humanities and social science discussion about the Anthropocene, without necessarily pretending to offer solutions. Donna Haraway’s Making Kin proposition — to shift the focus beyond reproduction in the family and toward a larger web of extended social relations — is the proposed frame in several chapters. Other chapters fall back on the (old) idea that modernisation — education, employment and access to employment — might bring population growth figures closer to the Western norm quicker than we think, and that environmental events themselves have a limiting impact on human societies. A third perspective that informs the book, mainly by degrowth historian Mathias Schmelzer, is voluntary limitation — a call, perhaps mainly to the West, that we limit reproductive desires in order to respect planetary boundaries. These are in a way all hopeful, optimistic reflections that emphasize human rationality and a way forward in adaptation and global justice: the reshaping of humanity into a more enlightened entity.
While we must absolutely give weight to such optimism, the idea of population is of course also linked to much darker scenarios, and they receive less attention in the book. One of those scenarios is the possibility of human extinction, probably not tomorrow but perhaps sooner than we think. Human extinction figures more in the apocalyptic desires of longtermists than in climate change scenarios, but it is a real possibility. How should we as critical theorists think about population in the context of perhaps substantial loss of human lives? Does it become an insignificant problem, or rather an acute matter of reproduction in view of species survival?
Longtermists argue that the solution to profound population challenges lies in radical modification and the extension of the notion of humanity to other sentient beings, including AI. Presently, this perspective stands against other visions of population as multispecies or more-than-human. Aware of the anthropocenic condition, Longtermists commit to forms of eugenic improvement that, while avoiding mapping exactly onto historical eugenics, are deeply anchored in a futurist and postapocalyptic frame.
These are aspects that might perhaps have received more attention in a book that brings up this very important issue. The same goes for what is perhaps the more realistic scenario for our present times, namely that the idea of human population becomes caught between, on the one hand, increasing and catastrophic weather events with mass loss of human lives and loss of ‘biomass’, and on the other, elite access to technology-assisted reproduction and various forms of in-vitro selection, etc. There are extraordinary prospects for longevity for some in our divided world, and increasingly poor chances of survival for others.
While human extinction is perhaps not the plausible scenario in our generation, mass loss of human life due to climate change and warfare — arguably war plays an important part in the Anthropocene — certainly is. Perhaps voluntary respect of limits is one aspect of the global condition, but it leaves a curious void in the place of global regulation, international organisations and human rights. All interested in such matters should definitely start with: How do we think about population in the Anthropocene?