OVERPOPULATION & AGING
To live means to die, no fact is truer - yet we avoid the topic. This attitude needs rethinking, for Death’s face will simply be more visible in the near future. This is not apocalyptic or tragic, but an unavoidable consequence of demographics, one that needs no catastrophes. Pension and health care planners already deal with one stage of aging. But the last stage also needs practical planning, for then humanity will have to manage an unprecedented number of burials and cremations….
FUTURE GRAVE SPACE - AN INESCAPABLE ISSUE
Looking ahead, according to the United Nations, crude mortality (actual deaths, not % of population) will more than double between 2000 and 2050 (assuming constant mortality rates):
- From 1995-2000, about 265m people died, a small 2% increase from 50 years before
- But from 2025-2030, 460m deaths are projected, a 73% increase
- And from 2045-2050, it will climb to 600m, another 30% increase on that.
- In 2050 there will be 5 times more people over 80 than today!
The coming "age of majority". Have we thought seriously enough about the final implications - for us and for our earth?
Looking backwards, it is probable that more people are alive today than have cumulatively lived over the earth’s history. We can thus speculate that in the next decades we will need to find more space and fuel for burials and cremations than we have cumulatively used since man has existed on earth!
In this regard, we should remember that burial plots, like fossil fuels, are consumed cumulatively and definitively; they should not be considered a renewable resource.
The sheer scale of the burial space issue poses very serious environmental and social challenges. If we do not prepare now - logistically, psychologically, spiritually - we will be scrambling for solutions when the wave crests.
EXISTING SOLUTIONS?
- Life expectancy gains are no panacea
At best they delay the inevitable a few years. Even the UN’s most optimistic scenario - constantly decreasing mortality; no AIDS or other potential “setbacks” - predicts crude mortality rising from 2005 to 2030 by about 33%, with another 33% on that by 2050. “Setbacks” would radically darken this picture - South Africa’s cemetery space crisis due to AIDS is an ominous example.
- “Recycling” of grave space is a poor compromise
First, it requires more time between burials in the same earth than we will have when the wave crests; and second, we live with a deep cultural expectation that our final rest will be eternal. Most European families are already forced to accept a rest ad aeternum of only two or three decades.
- Cremation alone cannot be considered the cure-all
Many religions (Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians) and sizable cultures (the Chinese!) remain strongly against it; it is not carbon-neutral in terms of fossil fuel use and air pollutants; and finally, most who are cremated end up using some space in cemeteries anyway. (Billions of urn niches add up to significant space requirements.)
- Vast new suburban or rural cemeteries are simply unjustifiable, “green” or otherwise
They would simply consume too much scarce green-field or wilderness. Even the so-called conservation cemetery, a form of “green burial” which sharply restricts enduring grave markers and exploits the deterrent effect of human burials to protect restored or wild lands, cannot be considered a real solution. For under the forgivable enchantment of environmental zeal, it loses sight of and sacrifices the archetypal human needs for meaningful memorialization and guaranteed perpetuity. More importantly, it requires such low burial density that unjustifiable amounts of green-fields would be needed for hundreds of millions of burials.
In combination these ideas would contribute to a solution. But even then they may not be sufficient, since the scale of our problem will dwarf anything in human experience. More importantly, they each have the indicated drawbacks - environmental, economic, cultural, or spiritual.
BUT WHAT IF A WORKABLE SOLUTION ALREADY EXISTED?
A solution which integrated these partial solutions and which could absorb the massive numbers without sacrificing ANY arable lands or precious wilderness for new cemeteries; without forcing cremation on the unwilling; without continuing the farce of a twenty-year “eternal rest”; and most importantly, without throwing away the final dignity of individual lives in a desperate rush to solve the purely logistical problem of “hygienic body disposal”?
Fortunately, we can be optimistic - such a SOLUTION may already be waiting!
