February 8 2015
HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN THE EARTH SUPPORT (3) Conclusion
God created a perfect world – still with us – and in spite of all the damage we have done to it, come time, the world will heal itself. All it needs is a few thousand years without the evil influence of us, human beings who – and here my Calvinistic streak pops up again – are born and conceived in sin and therefore children of wrath.
While I write this it occurs to me that there is no possibility that we can be present during this recuperative period, because it is impossible to totally- and I mean completely –live harmoniously, holistically, perfectly pure lives in a world suffering from human-induced ills: the world has to be cleansed of all traces of pollution before redeemed mankind can live there again, because contaminated earth breeds contaminated people. In other words we have to be ‘teleios’ – always aware what our actions will be in the short and the long run. In Matthew 5: 48 Jesus tells us not to be like the pagans but to be ‘perfect – teleios – as your heavenly Father is perfect – teleios.
For God time is no problem. With God a thousand years are like one day, which also means that God can cause the healing process to speed up.
In the first episode I mentioned that I would use a quote from a book I wrote which I gave the title of Day without End referring to the perfect state that is to come. In that book I imagined myself in that renewed world and describe what I think I will experience there and who I will meet, including Jesus. Here is an episode in which I travel with 3 other people in Africa the continent where we possibly originate. Here‘s an excerpt.
As we approach a waterway, we see a virtual paradise; trees and fields and water streams and animals in an almost chaotic abundance. A herd of antelopes is grazing and they just barely lift up their heads when we come close. Giraffes, their necks craned as usual, have their heads well in the trees. They, too, barely turn to us as they watch us with one eye. Some wildebeests are drinking and pause only briefly as we arrive. None of them show the slightest inclination to bolt from our presence as they would have in the former time. It seems as if the entire animal population has come here to meet us and greet us. This combination of water and fertile land, of low lying land and higher elevations has created a natural habitat for both a vast array of land animals and water fowl, all rich in colors and outspoken in their melodies.
“Now I see why you want to travel via water ways,” Jethro says. “It is there where eventually all animals and humans meet; the fish, the fowl, the fast-footed all need water!”
Our map shows us that we have reached one of the side arms of the Nile. Initia becomes quite excited now that we have arrived at this beautiful launching point for our African voyage.
Arctica checks out the large papyrus growing in abundance along the water’s edge. Faint memories of thousands of years ago have awakened in her, when her ancestors made ocean going vessels from these very plants and travelled from Asia to the Arctic. However, before we have an opportunity to explore the possibility of constructing a river vessel, we are startled by a sound.
It is a tom-tom, the African telegraph system, relaying messages from one tribe to another, quite close, and in the distance, a more faint reply can be heard.
We look at each other, realizing other people are here, people familiar with the ways of old. People are here, indigenous people, and they are talking to each other, perhaps already signaling the arrival of four strangers, people totally unlike themselves. How is that possible? Where do these people come from? Were they there when Jesus sat on his throne and celebrated with us the wedding, sealing the covenant that would bind us, humans, forever to his New Creation? Of course. Then they must have gone here without delay. Makes sense.
“Let’s go and find them,” says Initia, “I am sure they can help us build a boat or suggest to us where we can find suitable material.”
Jethro, the experienced outdoors man, gauges the direction and the distance of the drums, and we set out on foot.
The drums grow louder and louder, and then stop.
Not far away, at the edge of the river, we see tents, about a dozen of them, and a number of large canoes on the shore. We see sails as well, but no people. Where are the people?
While we are wondering, a face appears in the opening of the central tent, and then a hand beckons us to come and join the festivities in progress. As we approach, we see the large drum standing behind the tent.
Later I describe how these native people, so extremely knowledgeable in the ways of nature, meet Jesus. Life-long students of their own world they have concluded that there is a God, an all-wise deity, who had created it all, and they had worshiped him. Now they meet the Creator in their own setting.
How do these people live in the New Creation? They know exactly what nature provides in fruits, plants and other edibles and where to find them. They are the original hunter-gatherers. Their way of life is the only sustainable in the long run, and that’s what Day without End shows.
Today’s unsustainable situation
What is happening now? I ended the previous instalment with condemning The Green Revolution. Here is what the article The Oil we Eat says about this:
“More relevant here are the methods of the green revolution, which added orders of magnitude to the devastation. By mining the iron for tractors, drilling the new oil to fuel them and to make nitrogen fertilizers, and by taking the water that rain and rivers had meant for other lands, farming had extended its boundaries, its dominion, to lands that were not farmable. At the same time, it extended its boundaries across time, tapping fossil energy, stripping past assets.
“David Pimentel, an expert on food and energy at Cornell University, has estimated that if the entire world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years. Pimentel has his detractors. Some have accused him of being off on other calculations by as much as 30 percent. Fine. Make it ten years.”
If the entire world would eat as the USA, obesity would be a world-wide curse. It already is becoming a global phenomenon thanks to the sugar content in corn, America’s biggest crop. Agriculture in North America is not about food; it’s about commodities that require the outlay of still more energy to become food. All together the food-processing industry in the United States uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces.
That situation is totally unsustainable. We know what carbon- derived energy does to God’s creation: every carbon calorie adds to the destruction of whatever we hold dear. Thus, whether we like it or not, if we aim for eternal life in God’s creation, we need to do without energy derived from carbon sources, be that coal, natural gas or refined products. It appears that wood fires are allowed. Why?
Jesus, in the last chapter of the Gospel of John meets his disciples at the water edge, and when they spot him, “they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.” No doubt the coals are from wood. Fish can be harvested on a sustainable basis. Agriculture too can be redeeming.
The new creation needs no technocrats, no automobile designers, no lawyers or preachers or insurance sales personnel. It does need experts in natural edibles, people knowledgeable of living off the land, skilled in organic gardening, in harvesting what the earth offers in perpetuity. God, in the Garden of Eden, showed Adam and Eve (Genesis 2: 16) “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.” Thus basically a vegetarian diet, something to start now, I believe.
According to Genesis, the early people lived for hundreds of years, one, Methuselah almost 1,000 years. Whatever the length of life, in the very early days the air was so pure, the water so perfect, the soil so unspoiled that people lived almost forever. Now, when none of these natural conditions are in force, sicknesses are increasingly rampant.
How many people can the earth support?
Of course, I cannot give a number. I can with a good degree of confidence say that it will be far fewer than 500 million. That was the number of people alive before the Industrial Revolution, the onset of the Carbon Age, and even then deserts grew, as trees were used for fuel.
It took 150,000 years for the world population to reach One Billion in the early 1800’s. Thanks to oil it skyrocketed from there on. When the world had a mere 100 million 1600 years ago even Rome had trouble continuing its life style, which collapsed after the year 450 A. D. Due to the general weakening of health about the year 1300 – due to famine – almost half the European population died from the Black Plague.
We are creating similar conditions again, a prelude to the Great Collapse. We now are like cattle that spend their adult lives packed shoulder to shoulder in a space not much bigger than their bodies, up to their knees in shit, being stuffed with grain and a constant stream of antibiotics to prevent the disease this sort of confinement invariably engenders. Their manure is rich in nitrogen and once provided a farm’s fertilizer, but the feedlots are far removed from farm fields, so it is simply not “efficient” to haul it to cornfields. It is waste. It exhales methane, a global-warming gas. It pollutes streams. It takes thirty-five calories of fossil fuel to make a calorie of beef this way; sixty-eight to make one calorie of pork. That’s why it all will end with a bang. The Great Bang -supposed to have been the beginning of our world but now discredited – will end it all when Christ will return to claim his own.
Various estimates put the number of the people who have ever lived at about 100 billion. “Many are called, few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14). That makes sense, as the one world we have, even under ideal conditions, can only support a limited number of people, because it has to last forever. If there have been 100 billion of us greedy customers, and if 100 million is the top figure the earth can support in perpetuity, then simple arithmetic tells us that 1 in a 1000 are among the chosen. Oops that hurts! Since our, the last generation, is also the most destructive, the number is probably less for us 21st century people. It reminds me of Luke 18: 8 in which Jesus lamented “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Yes, we are the last generation, the generation of the Internet, of universal mostly useless television, of useless space travel, of universal waste, and frivolity, of useless lives without meaning, religion-less religion. We are the last and also mostly the lost generation.
How do we prepare for The End? 2 Peter 3 gives us the answer:
“The day of the Lord will come like a thief…….Since everything will be destroyed (by fire) what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed it coming…………We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness….. Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”
In light of recent developments, especially world-wide pollution and Climate Change, living holy and godly lives entails loving creation- God’s first love – with all our hearts, all our souls, all our intellectual powers, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We can only love God when we love his creation. It’s to the New Earth to which the redeemed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing and everlasting joy will crown their heads (Isaiah 35: 10).
How many can the earth support into perpetuity? That’s God’s business. God offers us a choice: Life or death. Deuteronomy 30: 19: “See I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Choose Life.” Live in harmony with the world God loved so much: John 3:16.
Next week: Peak Everything!