The Fate of the Species
by Fred Guterl
Bloomsbury
The world can comfortably hold two billion people but we now have seven billion. So, the planet is already grotesquely overpopulated, with dire implications, according to scientist Fred Guterl.
'Among ecologists, it is a truism that a population cannot keep growing faster and faster forever. The truism is easier to accept for a bacteria or rodents or seagulls than for humans, but that doesn't make it any less of a truism,' Guterl writes.
True, we can fit low-energy light bulbs and eat home-grown food, but the risk to civilisation remains vast, thanks to our thirst for invention. 'This is mainly a book about technology, about artifice, about the unintended consequences of the success of Homo sapiens,' Guterl writes. 'What I'm aiming for is telling some stories about real dangers we face. I won't give you a balanced view ... I am going to try to answer the question: how bad can it be?' Very, Guterl says.
For starters, thanks to our plague-like species, the sixth 'mass extinction event' in earth's history is under way, with more than 200 species dying out daily. The loss of countless species could cripple the biosphere with awful results, if our immune systems are not wrecked by 'superviruses' that Guterl puts under the microscope.
Another threat that Guterl documents is a ruinous climate shift sparked by global warming. Other nightmares include a collapse of the computer systems underpinning the world economy, and nuclear war - the threat he grew up with, which whetted his interest in doom. Then there are those mutant artificial organisms called frankenmicrobes.