Immortal

63

Donald Wolfe stood to one side of the speakers’ podium and stared out across the huge blue, green and gold General Assembly Hall beneath the towering, domed, seventy-five-foot ceiling. Representatives of member states sat behind tables that faced the raised speaker’s rostrum. At the podium sat the president of the General Assembly, with the secretary-general of the United Nations to his right and the under-secretary-general for General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services to his left.

The secretary-general moved to the rostrum as he addressed the leaders of the majority of the world’s nations arrayed before him in the enormous amphitheater. Behind him, two massive screens flanked an eight-foot-diameter United Nations emblem, each screen showing his face as he spoke. Heads of state and their translators occupied hundreds of chairs rising up and away before him, listening intently to the man often considered to be the true leader of the free world.

‘Our purpose, today, is to deal with the debate on our population: its growth, health and future over the next fifty to one hundred years. There have been a number of studies conducted by official bodies both within and outside of government, each attempting to provide a solution to the growing problem of supply and demand, in real terms, across the globe and, now, the situation is reaching crisis point.’

Donald Wolfe sat amongst the audience, trying to ignore the prickly heat irritating the collar of his shirt. He was nervous, he realized, more so than he had expected to be as he listened to the secretary-general.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, to lead the discussion on this most serious of topics and the implications for the spread of infectious disease, please welcome Colonel Donald Wolfe of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.’

There was a polite ripple of applause as Wolfe got to his feet and walked across to the dais, shaking the secretary-general’s hand before clearing his throat and looking up at the massed ranks of world leaders.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by warning you that what I have to say to you today will not be palatable. It will not be considered politically correct, perhaps not even morally correct, but in the light of the threat we face from an unspoken truth that is becoming more dangerous to human survival than climate change and nuclear proliferation I believe that somebody must speak out, and I take this opportunity to do so.’

Three hundred faces were fixed upon his, an absolute silence as every man and woman listened to the sound of his voice. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Wolfe realized why people fought their way to the top of the political sphere: for the power. The knowledge that what you were saying could change the lives of millions, perhaps even billions, was intoxicating. He took a breath before continuing.

‘Today, the population of our planet stands at approximately seven billion. Of those, just over one billion live in the developed Western world. We are the consumers, the guzzlers of gas. But daily we are being joined by millions more from the developing world, as emerging powerhouse economies like China, India and a resurgent Russia seek to emulate our success, our prowess, our prodigious consumption of energy and resources.’ Wolfe paused for a moment, before hitting them with a big one. ‘It has been estimated that by 2006, we were consuming resources forty percent faster than the earth could replace them. When those resources are gone, we will see the utter collapse of modern society into something approximating medieval Europe.’

A ripple of whispers fluttered through the audience, and Wolfe capitalized on the energy among them as he continued.

‘It has been calculated by scientists that due to technologies improving such things as farming, humans are now ten thousand times more populous on our planet than nature would normally allow any predator to be. Your own United Nations Environment Program, involving fourteen hundred scientists over five years, concluded that human consumption now far outstrips available resources.’ Wolfe smiled, and gestured outside. ‘New York City consumes as much electricity in one day as the island of Crete consumes in one year.’

Wolfe scanned his audience with eagle eyes, saw that they were waiting for his next revelation.

‘Our planet has what’s known as a carrying capacity: an ability to support a finite volume of flora and fauna. Since the middle of the last century, our bloated consumption of the most crucial substance to the survival of life — fresh water — has caused a chain reaction that now threatens to be the catalyst for the fall of mankind. Without sufficient water, agriculture, the very thing that has allowed our species to spread across the globe, is being undermined. A global decline in world agricultural capacity began in the 1990s and continues to this day, growing exponentially. Groundwater aquifers around the world are failing, producing a grain deficit. Despite all of our efforts and all of our charities, the number of people malnourished in the world has grown by one hundred million per decade, not because we haven’t exported grain to those countries who need it, but because their populations have swollen to such gargantuan proportions as to be unsustainable even with our agricultural technology.’

Wolfe looked around at the various individual countries’ heads of state.

‘Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico and Pakistan are all importing grain due to internal deficits or are on the verge of doing so. Northern China’s food production is forecast to decline by almost forty percent by the end of this century. Here in America, the Los Angeles basin, an area reckoned to be naturally able to support a maximum of one million people, is home to a mega-city of thirty million people, and our population is the only one in the developed world still growing, predicted to rise to four hundred thirty million by the year 2030. By that time, we may no longer have enough resources to export the grain that keeps so many other countries from starving, because we’ll barely have enough water to produce enough grain to feed ourselves.’

Wolfe subtly changed his tone to a more hopeful oratory.

‘We have talked, endlessly, of reducing our carbon footprints, of recycling and carbon capture, of alternative energy sources and radical economic strategies to reduce our consumption of both the electrical energy and resources available to us on our planet. We have passed laws to drill into pristine environments in the pursuit of oil, gone as far as the Antarctic to assuage our thirst for energy, and yet all of this time we have ignored the fact that as fast as we seek solutions to our crises, they are made irrelevant by the increased demands of our growing population. It is estimated that global human population could exceed twelve billion people in the next fifty years.’ Wolfe paused. ‘Just think about that number for a moment. Twelve billion people, almost twice as many as are alive today.’

Wolfe shook his head.

‘We are fighting a losing battle, when within our reach all along has been the solution to our problem. Population itself. It has been estimated by the United States National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition that world population needs to be reduced by two-thirds in order to achieve a sustainable use of natural resources.’ Wolfe let the weight of his words sink in. ‘If all nations were to follow this advice, resources would no longer be an issue for humanity, nor would pollution or the specter of anthropogenic climate change.’

Wolfe looked about at the hundreds of faces watching him.

‘It is time to act before the escalation of resource wastage becomes irreversible and our security upon this planet unsupportable. If we are not willing to do it for ourselves then at least we should consider doing it for our children, for it is they who will shoulder the burden of our inaction. But it will not be conflict through inadequate resources that will bring about their downfall. There is a far greater disaster awaiting them if we do not act.’

Silence reigned throughout the chamber as they listened.

‘Forty-five percent of humanity live in cities, often in conditions of squalor and disease. It is only a matter of time before a major pandemic, one that festers and flourishes in these hotbeds of sickness and is able to spread rapidly, begins the next major disaster in human history. We think of pandemics as explosions of some new and exotic disease that appear without warning, but in fact they fester for years, decades even, before becoming established. The HIV-1 virus entered the United States many times before taking hold in 1969, over a decade before it was identified. Modern flu viruses like HN-51 appear and disappear, struggling to take a permanent hold in human populations. Soon they too will emerge as true killers, and they will decimate the populations they infect.’

Wolfe looked around the amphitheater at the people of power arrayed before him.

‘I have provided you with press packs that cover these facts in more detail. Pass them on,’ Wolfe said, ‘to your staff, to your ministers, to anyone with the will and the means to influence what we do next on the global stage to prevent the eradication of our species by disease. We have a choice, ladies and gentlemen: either we control population for ourselves, without unnecessary loss of life, or I predict that within the next five decades nature will control population for us, and millions, perhaps billions, will pay the price. Our sons and daughters will be among them.’

Donald Wolfe reached into his pocket and produced a bottle of water that he had purchased a week before — one of several thousand he now stored in his home to guard against the coming apocalypse, and lifted it to show the entire audience before him.

‘Water. Something so simple that we take it for granted — we even bottle and sell it when we can so easily access it from our taps. Yet one billion people worldwide cannot perform this simple act, of accessing clean water. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to raise your glasses and show your support for action against the destruction of our world, of our species, which has begun already in the draining of the world’s fresh water supply. We must act now, before it’s too late to act at all.’ Wolfe paused. ‘Is there anyone in the hall who is not willing to act?’

Wolfe watched as every single man and woman sitting before him lifted their glasses.

‘To humanity,’ Wolfe toasted. ‘And our role in saving it.’