I recently read an article by Jamal Ghadi, here in Medium that stimulated a concern that I’ve had for fifty years, and have spoken about on numerous occasions.
So I’m revisiting it, one more time.
Man’s deliberate destruction of this planet.
Much of the damage, this planet absorbed. It was capable of sustaining live, as we’ve known it, for the last ten thousand or so years.
But when one looks at the earth’s requisite and essential natural cycles, in geologic terms, — it becomes self-evident that we may well be here here for a short time, and in the end, not a good one.
Climate change is rapidly making man’s choices clearly illusory and idiotic.
We, the population of this planet, are on an unsustainable ride to environmental collapse caused by humanities greed. Our choices are about to lead us to a point where sustainability is no longer even viable.
Throughout the world, the poorest and least capable of finding answers, are the most stressed, the most ‘at risk’, yet the richest nations, but more particularly the richest people, the billionaires and the 1% of the world’s most greedy, now account for the vast majority of its ‘pure consumption’.
Capitalism, that demands incessant growth within a finite ecosystem, is irrational and unsustainable. It doesn’t matter ‘what’ the consumption itself is about, food, water, oil, power, all of it impossibly finite, yet this world’s growth continues.
At what point does its ‘carrying capacity’ become impossible?
Most populations do not grow exponentially, rather they follow a logistic model. Once the population has reached its carrying capacity, it will stabilize and the exponential curve will level off towards the carrying capacity, which is usually when a population has depleted most its natural resources. In the world human population, growth may be said to have been following a linear trend throughout the last few decades.
However, predilection becomes impossible once climate change and the details of its arrival onto the scene throws all of man’s data into the abyss. Even the most advanced computers cannot rationalize the unknown. Man is now at the mercy of nature, due to his own greed.
Which Brings Us Back To Water
We have made an error in our assumptions. The world’s weather systems are predictable, right? We have all this empirical data, now over two-hundred years of it. Yet, this little blue orb is at least 4.2 billion years old.
I mean, what could go wrong, our intelligence is…nothing more than arrogance.
We have mucked with the world’s natural control mechanisms, and now, we’re about to discover what the means for man, the parasite of this planet.
It isn’t oil that makes the world go round, it’s water. Energy, without water, is near irrelevant.
Sure we can plumb the earth’s depths for aquifers, we can desalinate ocean water, regardless of whether it makes sense or is a rational long-term response.
But what can we do without water?
As it turns out, not much.
Man has, in the space of a mere 150 years destroyed the natural environment and its control systems. The ocean, the atmosphere, the flora and fauna and the mechanisms that enabled stasis among these systems. Predictable as the monsoon, or wet weather on the Canadian Pacific Coast, we thought we ‘knew’ weather, and what was responsible for its generation and patterns.
Our arrogance and our hubris has known no bounds.
Well, all that is about to change. We are now in a world of unknowns and best guesses, on top of which is layered man’s greed and unwillingness to change.
Well, change is inevitable. But the amount and speed of change is now going to overwhelm man’s technology and his arrogance.
Water, Water… Everywhere but where You Need It.
Man’s ability to control where water is collected and where it is used, no longer correlates with ‘where it is needed’. We are discovering the limitations associated with our engineering and what we thought was our ‘knowledge’.
Both were assumptions. Both were incorrect.
What we needed to do was not to assume anything. In our arrogance we assumed that what we thought we knew was enough.
It obviously wasn’t.
Through our greed, globalization and capitalism, principally, we now find ourselves in a position where we have passed the rationality of what was ‘sustainability’, although some still talk of it wistfully, as though it still exists as an option.
The reality is much different than our assumptions.
So…here comes the hard part.
The Limitation of Growth in Populations
The World’s population growth rate peaked in 1963 at 2.2% per year and subsequently declined. In 2017, the estimated annual growth rate was 1.1%. The last 100 years have seen a massive fourfold increase in the population, due to medical advances, lower mortality rates and an increase in agricultural productivity made possible by the green revolution. ( A period during which technology transfer initiatives resulted in a significant increase in crop yields.)
Yet, while growth in developing countries has peaked, in some countries growth is still above 2% annually.
The United Nations Population Division projects world population to reach 11.2 billion by the end of the 21st Century.
A 2014 study in Science, concludes that the global population will reach 11 billion (now 8.2 billion) by 2100, with a 70% chance of continued growth into the 22nd Century.
And Now The Limitations and Rational Outcomes
While science and technology may well discover new means to provide enough food to sustain mankind, the probability in relation to the provision of adequate water supplies is much less likely.
And the signs of this new reality are evident around the globe, with some continents being impacted increasingly hard as time marches on.
The Sad Example of Iran
“Iran may have to evacuate its capital if it doesn’t rain.”
These are the words of Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, on state media, very recently.
If rain does not come to Tehran, ten million people might need to pack their lives into suitcases and leave urban settlements dating back to 4400 BC.
The land in Iran is sinking and water is vanishing as Iran faces the driest autumn in nearly 60 years. Tehran has been surviving on aquifers for its water supply, which have been over-pumped for years.
Right now, on Saturday, November 29th, 2025, Tehran has two weeks worth of water remaining.
Two weeks.
Mashhad, the country’s second-largest city is down to 3% in remaining reserves.
The following chart illustrates the severity of what is no the fifth year of consecutive drought in Tehran.
Of course, many will say, ‘Well this was predictable, I mean, this is Iran.” Absolutely, more than 82% of Iran is arid or semi-arid. But like the problems now in evidence in places like Los Angeles, or Mexico City, this problem was engineered, – man-made, one dam and one well at a time.
States seem to believe that they can ‘engineer’ themselves out of risk. They cannot.
California is a great example of this, but we’ll come to that later.
Since 2008, scientists have been warning that the aquifers under Tehran were rapidly drying out. It takes nature 100,000 years to create an aquifer, yet man has destroyed them within 150 years.
And so, the reality should be obvious. We do not, and cannot, control Mother Nature. The fact that the majority of mankind wants to live along the coasts of its respective countries, irrespective of the availability of water, is now becoming patently obvious.
Los Angeles, Capetown, Mexico City, Jakarta are simply canaries in the coal mines of human existence.
What was Sustainability?
When we look at this question in relation to not just water, but everything that society requires, it’s obvious that man is in deep do-do.
We passed sustainable in 1908.
Yes, 1908. At that time the world’s population was estimated to be 2.2 billion human beings. It was then estimated that the world could comfortably sustain that level of population, indefinitely. But, of course, man, as efficient as he is at procreation, threw those numbers out immediately.
And so it is that we now require four earth’s to simply sustain man, currently.
It will be five and a half ‘earth’s’ by 2100, if we are lucky enough to survive that long.
Nature Now Dictates Our Futures
The number of problems arising in relation to humanities, not just sustainability, but Survivability, are many.
CO2 emissions have not been this high on planet earth in 60 million years. So much for data and our current level of ‘knowledge’.
The earth’s water cycle is being radically changed due to global warming, desertification, changing ocean currents, warming of those currents, and the melting of polar glaciers and sea ice.
Mountain glaciers are disappearing, and with them, the primary source of water for a majority of the planet’s occupants, both human and animal.
Man’s destruction of the Amazon and the impact that global heating is having on earth’s northern boreal forests means that massive amounts of forest are dying. And the dying of forests, results in fires of such immensity, that in some northern countries like Canada and Russia, forest fires actually continue year round.
Even more worrisome is the vast amounts of methane and CO2 being emitted from the permafrost in the Arctic, where the actual amount of methane being contributed to the earth’s atmosphere is almost incalculable.
Worse, acidification of the oceans means that the plankton responsible for every third breath we take on earth, is dying. Once the oceans die, there is no way back.
We, humanity will become immersed in warfare. Fighting for resources so scarce, we will kill for them.
None of This Is Conjecture
We can now virtually see the ‘end of days’. Not some religious event, but the reality imposed by our own greed, ignorance and arrogance.
Man could have maintained a symbiotic relationship with planet earth, but Capitalism and the 1% of the richest and most avaricious of men decided for all of us, what the future would hold.
The earth’s natural environment, its systems that sustain us, and the ability of earth’s natural environment to sustain man’s never-ending assault on it, means our days are numbered.
I am a life form in the waning years of my existence, yet I aspire to see my children and their children thrive into the foreseeable future. That has become almost impossible to foresee.
Man is unwilling to ‘curb his enthusiasm’ or restrain his greed. Sustainability has disappeared, Survivability is even suspect.
The question has become, is ‘Man’ worth saving, seeing as he is the parasite that will eventually kill the host.…
Powerful breakdown. Water scarcity isn’t a distant scenario anymore it’s the first signal that our entire growth model has crossed its limits. Tech can stretch timelines, but it can’t rewrite planetary math. Until we treat stability as a resource, not an assumption, crises like Iran become previews, not exceptions.