I analyze changes in the demographic profiles and urbanization rates of 201 countries, and assess 69 global indicators of the human condition, in order to evaluate whether the human population is endangering its persistence and future quality of human life (tragedy of the commons). Encouraging changes in age profiles signal a slowing down in human population growth during the Anthropocene while exponential increases in several economic, education, and health indicators support an optimistic outlook for the future of humanity. But rapid growth by a larger number of negative indicators foretell a global human tragedy plagued by long-term increases in pollution, global warming, waning food production and unparalleled declines in biodiversity. Urgent action is required to avoid further collapse of the Earth System.
AraralE (2013) Ostrom, Hardin and the commons: A critical appreciation and a revisionist view. Environmental Science and Policy36: 11–23.
2.
DiamondJ (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press.
3.
FerriéreRLegendreS (2013) Eco-evolutionary feedbacks, adaptive dynamics, and evolutionary rescue theory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences368: 20120081.
4.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (2015) Status of the World’s Soil Resources (SWSR) – Main Report. Rome: FAO and ITPS.
5.
FretwellSDLucasHLJr (1969) On territorial behavior and other factors influencing habitat distribution in birds. Acta Biotheoretica14: 16–36.
6.
GilpinMEAyalaFJ (1973) Global models of growth and competition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA70: 3590–3593.
7.
GodfrayHCJAveyardPGarnettTet al. (2018) Meat consumption, health, and the environment. Science361: (6399) eaam5324.
8.
GyllenbergMParvinenK (2001) Necessary and sufficient conditions for evolutionary suicide. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology63: 981–993.
9.
HamiltonWD (1964) The genetical evolution of social behavior. Parts I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology7: 1–52.
10.
HardinG (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science162: 1243–1248.
11.
HardinG (1998) Extensions of ‘The tragedy of the commons’. Science280: 682–683.
12.
High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security (HLPE) (2017) Nutrition and Food Systems. Report. Rome: High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security.
13.
LloydWF (1833) Two Lectures on the Checks to Population. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
McNickleGGDybzinskiR (2013) Game theory and plant ecology. Ecology Letters16: 545–555.
15.
MalthusT (1798) An Essay on the Principle of Population. St Paul’s Church-Yard: J Johnson.
16.
MeadowsDHMeadowsDLRandersJet al. (1972) Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books.
17.
MorrisDW (1987) Tests of density-dependent habitat selection in a patchy environment. Ecological Monographs57: 269–281.
18.
MorrisDW (1988) Habitat-dependent population regulation and community structure. Evolutionary Ecology2: 253–269.
19.
MorrisDW (1994) Habitat matching: Alternatives and implications to populations and communities. Evolutionary Ecology8: 387–406.
20.
MorrisDW (2003) Toward an ecological synthesis: A case for habitat selection. Oecologia136: 1–13.
21.
MorrisDW (2011) Source-sink dynamics emerging from unstable ideal-free habitat selection. In: LiuJHullVMorzilloAet al. (eds) Sources, Sinks, and Sustainability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 58–81.
22.
MorrisDWKingstonSR (2002) Predicting future threats to biodiversity from habitat selection by humans. Evolutionary Ecology Research4: 787–810.
23.
MorrisDWLundbergP (2011) Pillars of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24.
MorrisDWLundbergPBrownJS (2016) On strategies of plant behaviour: Evolutionary games of habitat selection, defence, and foraging. Evolutionary Ecology Research17: 1–18.
25.
MorrisDWLundbergPRipaJ (2001) Hamilton’s rule confronts ideal-free habitat selection. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B268: 291–294.
SpoonerFEBPearsonRGFreemanR (2018) Rapid warming is associated with population decline among terrestrial birds and mammals globally. Global Change Biology24: 4521–4531.
32.
StearnsSC (1992) The Evolution of Life Histories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
33.
SteffenWBroadgateWDeutschLet al. (2015) The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review2: 81–98.
34.
SteffenWRockströmJRichardsonKet al. (2018) Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA115: 8252–8259.
35.
TurnerG (2014) Is Global Collapse Imminent? MSSI Research Paper No. 4, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne.
United Nations (2017a) World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, Key Findings and Advance Tables. Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Working Paper No. ESA/P/WP/248.
38.
United Nations (2017b) File POP/7–1: Total population (both sexes combined) by five-year age group, region, subregion and country, 1950–2100 (thousands). Estimates, 1950–2015. Available at: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/ (accessed 13 April 2018).
39.
WilsonDS (1975) A theory of group selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA72: 143–146.
40.
WilsonDSWilsonEO (2008) Evolution ‘for the good of the group’. American Scientist96: 380–389.
41.
World Health Organization (2016) Global Report on Diabetes. Geneva: WHO Press.
WynesSNicholasKA (2017) The climate mitigation gap: Education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions. Environmental Research Letters12: 074024.
44.
ZalasiewiczJWatersCNSummerhayesCPet al. (2017) The working group on the Anthropocene: Summary evidence and interim recommendations. Anthropocene19: 55–60.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
