Lockdown diary 9 – as long as i am not free to travel, i consider it to be still in lockdown: so here’s another one.

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I met a bloke in Morrison’s car park last week.  Paul, his name was.  He started to chat to me about Peaches the campervan which led to interesting stories of his experiences in Australia of buying a camper.  I had places to go and things to do, but this guy was interesting enough to spend an hour or so talking to.  Plus, I was too polite to tell him that I had places to go and things to do.

He had just recovered from a hairy Covid experience and had an amazing amount of facts and figures in his head concerning his worries about this world, in particular the increase in world population (as well as the consumption of oil by the US and a number of other things – this is Totnes after all).  We had a lot in common.  I lived in Slovakia, he had lived in Hungary.  I had lived in Jordan, he in Palestine.  We established that we had similar world views.  He told this story:

“So, Pete, imagine you live next to a beautiful lake.  Every morning you take a walk around the lake and your life is wonderful.  You walk your dog and enjoy nature.  You have a neighbour.  A grumpy neighbour, who you try to avoid.  But one morning, as you are walking around the lake he is there, but smiling for a change.  ‘Pete’, he says, ‘look at this beautiful lily I have here.  It’s one of the rarest lilies in the world.  The are only a few left today, but it can double itself every day. I will put it in the lake. Tomorrow, there will be two of them and the day after four.’

‘That’s great,’ you say.

And sure enough the next day there are two of this most beautiful and rare lily in the lake.  And the day after four of them. 

Three months later the lake is choked by the lilies.  There is no oxygen left in the water and all of the fish have died.  It is full.  My question to you, Pete, is this: when was the lake half full?   It is not a trick question.”

I could not work out the answer, because I am slightly dense when it comes to maths and this made me panic, as well as seeming like maths to me.

“It was the day before,” he said.  “Remember that it doubles every day.”

So I went and looked up the figures he had quoted me and the world population since 1963, when I was born and now (the nearest I found was 2020).  And then for the previous 57 years before I was born (the nearest being 1900).  Paul was of a similar age to me.  This is what I found:

So perhaps he has a point.  There must be a tipping point above which our planet can no longer sustain its human population.  And it is doubling every “my lifetime so far” (57 years).  If you want to go back one further 57ish years, it was 1,200, 000, 000 in 1850.

Paul very nearly died from his Covid infection.

You meet some interesting people in Morrison’s carpark in Totnes. I somehow think that the loss of population due to the pandemic made me think about this on some other level. You could even look at all this from a religious point of view, or you could look at this as one of the results of our lifestyles and the population explosion as contributing factors. Who knows?

Think about it: the resources available to us; world population doubling every sixty years or so. The day before…

9 thoughts on “Lockdown diary 9 – as long as i am not free to travel, i consider it to be still in lockdown: so here’s another one.”

  1. Hi Pete. Have just read your last post about population. I too have lookedthis up recently. It is a sobering thought how our numbers have become way too big for any planetary sustainability. Likewise, I thought about the pandemic. Actually, the loss of life due to covid, to date, will have no marked effect on world numbers. This is mostly because the majority of people who are currently dying are older and not of breeding age.
    I view this pandemic as a small tremour before the massive earthquake that is the environmental crisis. It will strike relatively soon. 80 -100 years seems to be the average figure having read scientific reports from around the world.
    As I am ever an optimist, I feel sure that once we have destroyed ourselves, the planet will recover and be a lot better off without homo sapiens.

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      1. You are correct, Pete. The scientific evidence I have read indeed suggests we are at ‘the day before’. Nobody knows for sure when the tipping point will be reached. What all scientists do seem to agree on is that when that tipping point is hit, events will spiral out of control, in planetary terms, at incredible speed and that the outcomes are not predictable because of the number of variants that are affected. The wakeup call truly as to be now. Yet here we are, and I’m still having to log my objections to schemes like the expansion of Southampton Airport. Here is one of the most damaging proposals to our local environment but people don’t see it. It will inevitably be approved, despite being turned down twice, because the lobbyists are richer and more powerful than the average citizen and their friends control our country. For over 1,000 years, we have been ruled and lorded over by a handful of powerful fools. In 2021, nothing has changed! However, as an optimist, I know my next pint of ale will still taste good, the walk I go on in the countryside tomorrow will still feel good and life, for now, is good.

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  5. Interesting post. My nephew is a farmer and I remember many years ago, I think it was the AIDS crisis, he said not to worry about diseases. The way the population keeps increasing, we will more than likely all starve our selves into extinction. 🤔

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