Are elephants big? No, people are bigger now!

A look at a macro-species suggests addressing the macro-picture: As every species strives to multiply maximally, every admired plant or animal is a would-be virus, consuming its neighbours and thereby its own resources; had it not been for natural enemies, resource and other constraints.

Succeeding in such frenzy of species overestablishing themselves can only happen for a few, eventually only one that keeps beating the opposition. Reminiscent of Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick, the early winner in such ecology-destroying race, driven by an idée fixe or monomania would become helpless when its resources become exhausted; self-destruction the inevitable result. Fortunately natural enemies bring constraints to all participants in their shared living space, balancing nature in each ecology. Thus rampant growth of any single species beyond what conditions allow is prevented.

Optimisation is still achieved by the universal natural tendency of blind and determined maximisation, leaving it to the external constraints to yield the balance. Every animal or plant does what comes natural, stepping on the accelerator, disregarding the brake as prudence does not enter the scene. In traffic we have learnt the folly of this; in ecology humanity needs to do so as well as our survival feature is the brain. Nature brought diversity via the hard struggle, balancing things in the even battle where nobody annihilates its foe of the moment totally.

The excessive winner species look fat and ugly to their fading victims and neighbours. Currently, humanity avoids all limits and death in all conceivable ways, thereby killing the world.

Cerebral dominance has enabled humans to remove too many of the natural constraints to their numbers growth on earth. For now! The rate of human population growth under the favourable conditions people have crafted for themselves is too high although many expect that "it will sort itself out automatically in time". As in the case of a virus, the growth rate speeds up until self-annihilation brings an abrupt correction.

Could natural processes restore balance? Maybe not without some hardship at best, at worst calamitous corrections. People have learnt to trick nature too well for willingly relinquishing its hard-earned advantages. We have sciences to deal with HIV, Ebola, hunger and whatever comes next, until...

If it were teeth or claws that enabled our species to dominate in resource and space usage, no possibility of an alternative strategy could be expected. In the case of humanity, the brain being its hallmark tool, early warning is still possible. We could still listen and learn.

When the earth still housed several concurrent, but separate human civilizations, some did live to see the ruins of others that had lost their foothold through blindness to their risk profiles, a yet inadequate survival sense. Once the global village had arrived, however, growth in people numbers in one integrated, earth-wide society becomes less likely to be managed voluntarily. Blance of power precludes that. Our crowning success of solving too many problems regarding our obstacles may become our nemesis.

No pussyfooting with carbon footprints to postpone the evil day will work any longer. Pollution and a glut of waste, plastic and more, will team up with shortages of most resources. There is currently no natural incentive for containing human numbers growth. The knee-jerk response of our time: Running out of resources and space must be overcome at all costs. We choose not to think about controlling our own numbers as a viable solution.

War and killing people, which weve been rather good at throughout human history, never brought results; it is now a discarded dream of gaining Lebensraum. The problem requires something much smarter, a solution that is kind to all on earth, not only people. How long will that take? Do we have the time? Will we develop the will?

Sending surplus population to Mars and planets at other stars, light-years away, is developing far too slowly to serve as an escape in numbers from earth. The scale of the universe has (so far) been too big for us. Our science is not yielding solutions as fast as we need them. We have to mend our ways.