They’ve found us, he realized, knowing he had only seconds to decide what to do.
□ Piano-Forbes: 2.5 billion
World Watch: 6.0 billion
Rocks-Runyon: 10.0 billion
These estimates of the Earth’s maximum sustainable human population were all made before 1990,. as the world’s attention began shifting from ideologies and nationalism toward matters of ecological survival. The three appraisals at first sight seem utterly at odds. Yet all were based on the same raw data.
In fact, their differences lie primarily in how each defined the word “sustainable.”
To Piano and Forbes, it meant a system lasting at least as long as ancient China had — several thousand years — that would provide all human children with education, basic amenities, and per capita energy use equal to half the consumption of circa 1980 Americans. A sustainable human population would use carbon-based fuels only as fast as vegetation recycled them and would set aside enough wilderness to preserve the natural genome.
These criteria proved impossible to maintain for long periods at population levels exceeding 2.5 billion.*
World Watch used looser constraints for their estimate. For instance, while “American” consumption levels were still seen as spendthrift, the authors did not call for rationing fossil fuels. Food was their critical concern, and although they failed to foresee many important negative and positive trends (e.g., greenhouse desertification vs. self-fertilizing maize) their major difference with Piano-Forbes arose from projecting “sustainability” only a hundred years or so at a stretch.
The Rocks-Runyon model has proven the most accurate one, in the simple sense that it correctly predicted we could (with difficulty) feed ten billion by the year 2040. It also clearly asks the least for the human future. Bare survival was its criterion — muddling through, with little worry spared for even a hundred years, let alone thousands of years, down the road.
And indeed, there are those who argue we shouldn’t be concerned so far ahead. After all, science progresses. Perhaps those generations will invent new solutions to make the problems we leave them seem academic.
Perhaps our descendants will be able to take care of themselves.
’These figures are challenged by groups promoting space colonization, who project that lunar and asteroidal resources, with limitless solar power, would permit Piano-Forbes life-styles for ten to twenty billion humans, sustainable for all foreseeable time. Their favorite analogy is Columbus’s discovery of the New World. The flaw in such schemes, however, is the initial investment needed before wealth from space can bring prosperity down to Earth. Governments and peoples, already living hand to mouth, will hardly put so much into projects whose bounty might profit their grandchildren, but not themselves.
• MANTLE
There was only one entrance to the deep cave complex. When armed men in blue helmets rained from the sky on jet-assisted parafoils, they had to hunt and thrash through the jungle for a time before they found that hidden opening. Then, silently, they began repelling down the shadowy chimney.
Sepak Takraw awakened to the sound of blaring alarms and at first thought it was only another Gazer run… whatever those were. The Kiwis working for George Hutton had remained closemouthed about the essential purpose of the gravity scans, though clearly they had to do with the Earth’s deepest interior. Whatever the Tangoparu techs were doing here in New Guinea, they sure took their work godawfully seriously — as if the world would end if they made one bleeding mistake!
Sepak had finally moved his sleeping roll up to a cleft in a narrow, extinct watercourse, because of the noise they made each time their big resonator thing fired up, sending bells and whoops echoing through the deep galleries. This time, however, when he stumbled toward the lighted chamber rubbing his eyes, he suddenly stopped and stared down at a scene of utter chaos. Had the New Zealanders finally done it this time, with all their noise? Invoked Tu, the Maori god of war?
They were dashing about like addled bowerbirds, and the bright cylindrical resonator swung wildly within its gimbaled cage as armed men swarmed into the hall. Sepak slipped into the shadows and kept very still. George bloody Hutton. What’ve you got me into! The government can’t be this upset over us keeping a few caves secret for a while!
Anyway, these weren’t regular police. Half the soldiers clearly weren’t even native Papuans! Sepak mouthed a silent whistle as commandos rushed past the dazed technicians to secure the area. No, these weren’t locals, nor even U.N. peacekeepers. By damn, they were real troops… ASEAN Marines!
Anyone who did the necessary ferreting knew Earth still bristled with sovereign military might. Perhaps even several percent of what used to exist in the bad old days. And even more weaponry lay “in reserve,” in treaty-sealed warehouses. Alliances still trained, still maintained a balance of power that was very real, for all its generations of stability. Only, on a planet aswarm with real-time cameras and volatile public opinion, those states and blocs generally took pains to use their martial forces gingerly.
So Sepak knew this wasn’t just a raid over some infraction of the secrecy laws. As the marines briskly rounded up the kiwi engineers, he searched in vain for emblems of the U.N. or other international agencies. He peered for the de rigueur Net-zine reporters.
Nothing. No reporters. No U.N. observers.
It really is national, then, he realized. Which meant more was involved here than just the government of Papua-New Guinea. A whole lot more.
And these guys don’t want leaks any more than George Hutton did.
Sepak melted even farther back into the darkness.
By all the holy cargo of John Broom… George, what have you got me into?
□ Archaic or obsolete activities or occupations:
… flint knapping, entrail reading, arrow fletching… smithing, barrel making, art appraising… clock making, reindeer herding, dentistry, handwriting… game-show host, channeler, UFOlogist… drug smuggler, golf course manager, confidential banker… sunbathing, drinking tapwater…
New service professions:
… household toxin inspector, prenuptial genetic counselor, meme adjustment specialist… indoor microecologist, biotect, prenatal tutor, cerebrochemical balance advisor… Net-SIG consultant, voxpop arbitrageur, ferret designer, insurance lifestyle adjuster…
World human population figures :
1982: 4.3 billion
1988: 5.1 billion
2030: 10.3 billion