Whenever I discuss transhumanism in general, and defeating death in particular, I invariably get the same response. "The world's already overpopulated." It's a major point of contention for almost everyone who isn't familiar with the future that we transhumanists envision.
Generally, this is a problem that transhumanists disregard. Asking a transhumanist how the world will handle population growth is like asking Beethoven if he'll be able to read music in a convoluted key signature. It's really a non-starter, but why?
For many people, there's a bit of a "gut feeling" factor, and it has merit. Can we really a picture a race so advanced that it has defeated ageing, merged it's mind with machines and enhanced it's own intelligence, and presumably elevated its own existence to that of some race of demi gods, being defeated by overpopulation? It's a little strange to think about, as one would think such a radically advanced civilization would have solved such petty problems and moved on to more sublime causes.
I am less concerned with the gut feeling, though, and more concerned with examining exactly why it is that we needn't worry. After all, strongly held but unsupported notions have had a tendency to end up being wrong(See: the Earth is actually round).
Transhumanists will presumably consume more energy than humans do, and thus they will also consume more resources. So how can we be so sure that their population will not be a major factor? Well, a few reasons:
- Space Mining
- There are already several companies in existence which are spending time and money finding asteroids which are suitable for mining operations. It has been estimated that a single asteroid could add more than a trillion dollars to the economy. These include deep space industries and planetary resources.
- Advanced Construction Technologies
- Right now, construction is very inefficient. While the materials have changed some, we still build using scaffolding, hammers, nails, and other tools which are almost as old as reason itself. Some modern companies, such as Deep Space Industries with Micro Gravity Foundry, are already examining advanced construction methods, which will allow us to do more for less, which brings me to my next point.
- More Real Estate
- Using advanced construction methods, it may very well be possible to create a vast amount of habitable real estate for humans to utilize.
- Family Planning
- Imagine that tomorrow morning you get a note in the mail from your doctor, congratulating you on the fact that you are going to live for ten thousand years! Wow, that would be exciting. At the tender young age of less than a hundred, with the vast majority of your life ahead of you, and the best in birth control methods available to you(including the option of spending most of your time frolicking in cyber space, where sexual reproduction is not possible) the first thing you are going to do is get yourself knocked up with a biological child, right? Wrong.
- Advanced Energy Solutions
- There's more than enough energy from just the sun to power humanity several billion times over. Assuming our future selves figure out something a little more efficient than solar panels, we shouldn't have any problems with energy dependence even if we limited our energy source to solar. That said, nuclear fusion appears to be on the horizon, and, once we get that right, our energy problems are a thing of the past.
The list actually goes on and on, the end conclusion being that the technologies we are creating today will vastly reduce our concerns regarding overpopulation and resource depletion in the future. We will, judging from what we see today, be a much more efficient and resource rich society decades from now. This is our response to the "we can't live forever because of overpopulation" argument, but it doesn't mean that we should ignore the question of resource management and overpopulation entirely.
Our civilization is at a precarious spot in its development. We are, every day, faced with new and exciting developments and challenges, the likes of which we haven't matured enough as a society to fully understand and manage yet. The steps we take between now and the day that Artificial Intelligence assumes control of our destiny will be the difference the twenty second century being a time of rapid expansion into both space and cyberspace, or a time of rubbing sticks together to start fires in caves.
While the future can certainly be devoid of overpopulation problems and resource scarcity, in order to enable the development of those grand technologies we must become a more sustainable society TODAY. If, due to our own negligence, we are still completely reliant on fossil fuels thirty years from now, and those fossil fuels run out, we WILL NOT become a transhumanist society. We will become a pre-industrial society, and irreversibly change the course of human history. A society which does not have fossil fuels available as a stepping stone cannot maintain the energy levels required to advance beyond our current stage of development, and we would never achieve this level of progress again.
The choice, the responsibility, is ours. Which future will you enable?
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