Sustainability of equality: a paradox for democracy

Abstract

There are too many people in the world: we all know it, but there are perverse incentives preventing us from doing anything about it. Democratic ideals, resource mismanagement, human adaptability and scientific advances, all play a role in deciding whether equality of resource consumption within our world population is sustainable in the present age. There are a couple of axioms that need to be accepted: (1) the planet has finite inhabitable space and resources, and (2) the human population cannot continue to expand indefinitely. The global human population is currently 7.6 billion (Cohen, 2017; World Population Clock 2018). The maximum sustainable global human population has been conservatively estimated to be 10 billion (United Nations 2001), and is expected to exceed this between 2050 and 2100 (United Nations 2017a). Any population expansion clearly has implications for standards of living and quality of life, but with continued growth even the minimum survival needs of everyone living on our planet will soon outstrip its capacity to provide. It follows that we must actively control population or face disaster (Higgs, 2017). However, this requires political intervention without allowing the adoption of a eugenics agenda. We argue that democracy, through the welfare state, can lead to a greater degree of economic and social equality. This economic and social inequality has a tendency, through rising incomes, higher levels of education, and the greater emancipation of women, to reduce fertility rates. However, we also argue that in terms of achieving an environmentally sustainable population that, due to a number of individual and political interests, liberal democracy appears unlikely to develop policies to safeguard population sustainability on a global scale.