Head Count

One of the most influential discoveries in recorded history was the Haber-Bosch Process, a process that allows scientists to take nitrogen from the air and turn it into usable nitrogen in the soil for plants. Since the wide-scale implementation of the Haber-Bosch process, more than half of the worlds population has come to rely on crops grown with the Haber-Bosch process. This has allowed the human population to explode as we circumvent the nitrogen cycle. 

In the 2007 best-seller Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth, by Alan Weisman, the argument that this population boom is destroying the planet. Weisman says the buildup of greenhouse gasses is threatening not only humans, but every organism on the planet due to the rapid climate change it causes, but Weismann also makes another argument. He claims that human population will become unstable and some force of nature will come about to cut us down to size. The exact quote is “Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization’s graph—or nature will do it for us.” 

Using Total Fertility Rates (TFR) population growth can be predicted by country and region. As we find out that some countries with a TFR under 2.1 children are losing people, some with greater than 2.1 are gaining them, but they gain a lot more than others lose, causing overall growth in the planet’s population. It can even be predicted how long it will take for the world’s population to double, creatively called the doubling time There are many worries that the growth is taking place in developing countries, putting even more stress on what resources can be had by any one person. It seems like nature is just not prepared to handle so many people created through the Haber-Bosch Process. This is widely viewed as a bad thing due to it’s pessimistic leanings, but I differ.

Yes, there will be difficulties faced that we cannot imagine, but humankind’s ability to singlehandedly render the nitrogen cycle, one of the fundamental processes of Earth irrelevant, is an outstanding positive. We can take whatever nature can throw at us, because every day it matters less and less. Our ingenuity will carry us to the stars and beyond. Any problem presented to us we can overcome