Testifying at a meeting of the U. S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on March 21, 2007, Vice President Al Gore described global warming as “A true planetary emergency”. Neither I nor a majority of Americans agree with that, though I do not for a minute deny that Earth has been warming up.
I do agree, however, with Richard Heinberg, who wrote recently that “It’s not just climate change that threatens us, but depletion of resources including oil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, fish, topsoil, and minerals (ranging from antimony to zinc, and including, significantly, uranium; as well as destruction of habitat and accelerating biodiversity loss–which is exacerbated by climate change, but is also happening for other anthropogenic reasons. In essence, there are just too many of us using too much too fast.
“I would like to offer some perspective on how we have gotten to this point and what it might mean for our future, though I agree with Nassim Taleb that we are incapable of actually predicting the future. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that modern humans, Homo sapiens, can be traced back to an African origin around 160,000 years ago.
For most of those 160,000 years our ancestors lived in small groups as hunters and gatherers. Life expectancies were short and populations grew only very slowly. About 10,000 years ago humans started to practice rudimentary agriculture, mainly because global warming was already occurring as the most recent Ice Age was ending. As Jack Weatherford noted, “Around the world, humans seem to have switched from foraging to farming because of the whole set of changes produced by global warming.” Agriculture increased Earth’s carrying capacity for humans, and as crops and domesticated animals were improved and diffused around the world, population growth accelerated somewhat, but it was still, by modern standards, slow, and it was also sporadic. Populations grew when times were good, then declined when times were bad. Famines, diseases, and wars would take heavy tolls from time to time.By about one thousand years ago the human population had only grown to around 300 million, give or take perhaps 50 million. That is about the current population of the United States, but it represented the end result of 159,000 years of human population growth. Slow growth continued until the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, raised Earth’s carrying capacity again and set in motion a period of modern population growth that continues today, though at a rate that has slowed considerably from that in the late 1960s.
Around 1830, after 159,830 years, the human population reached its first billion. Since then, however, our growth has been unprecedented. During the 20th century the world’s population nearly quadrupled, from 1.6 to 6.1 billion, and since 2000 we’ve added another half billion or so to planet Earth, bringing our numbers to around 6.63 billion. Currently, we add close to another 80 million people each year.
We might describe this sudden and vast increase in human numbers as “irrational exuberance.” After tens of thousands of years, we suddenly, in less than two centuries, have increased our numbers more than six-fold. As Russell Hopfenberg (among others) has noted, “Increases in the population of the human species, like increases in all other species, is a function of increases in food availability.” As Descartes could have noted, “I eat, therefore I am.”
This rapid growth in our population could only have occurred with a vast and rapid improvement in productivity in agriculture. In turn those productivity increases have come almost entirely from our use of fossil fuels, primarily petroleum. If you looked at graphs of population growth and crude oil production side by side over the last 200 years, you would see enough similarity to convince you that it is not coincidence.
Our rapidly expanding numbers and use of fossil fuels have brought us to where we are today, and leave us wondering about the future. Even as we’ve substantially increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including CO2 and CH4, we seem to have reached a broader threshold. Global warming; acidification of the oceans; overfishing; fresh water scarcity; accelerated species extinctions; disappearing wetlands, tropical forests, and other habitats; the growing possibility that we are at or close to a peak in world crude oil production–these may all be signs that humans have now reached or exceeded Earth’s carrying capacity for our species. As eminent ecologist Garrett Hardin warned us, “The universe may or may not be infinite, but prudence demands that we assume that the portion practically available to humankind is finite.” Iconoclastic economist Kenneth Boulding put it this way, “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” It may be time to see that our numbers, combined with our expanding affluence and constant need to consume more of everything, have become Earth’s real problem.
Thank you Gary. Great (and very informative) post.
Alas, our human numbers, our consumption, our choice of energy sources, and our not-infrequent behavior much like bulls in a china shop, all in combination create a bit of a mess. Big paradigm shifts are warranted. We need to “do the math” without further delay.
As a person who follows some of the scientific aspects of some of the problems, and as a person who has been wrestling with the media (and glad to still be breathing!), I’d love to also understand the problem that seems to be plaguing the field of economics.
And, of course, the quotes you often reveal are great.
My only thought is that, even though all these problems are related, as you say, and even though our numbers are central, the matter of “urgency” (and other such words) regarding climate change is, as part of the broader puzzle, one key, although these types of words often depend on definitions and “what do you mean?”, and details, and differing risk profiles, and so forth. Put another way, I’d say we need to address all these things, quickly. Addressing one without the other will just delay, and create, the buildup of problems of one sort or another.
Also, unfortunately, these types of problems impact people in different socio-economic situations differently, and they also serve to undermine stability. That doesn’t seem to bother some people, who have a feeling that they can move to high ground, to a gated community, and get access to water, no matter what. Not only is that not very fair or caring, but it’s not realistic or wise either. Do people really think that, if the world becomes a very difficult place, with 5 billion unhealthy and unhappy people, the other billion or two billion people can live in healthy and stable situations? We need to wake up.
I think one statistic goes something like this: For every one-person increase in US population, the world’s population increases by roughly 30. So, not only do we need to somehow address the total, but we also have to learn to “get along” much better than we’re used to.
Anyhow, great post. Cheers.
well framed, the sum total in concise terms.
i still meet tremendous resistance to overpopulation facts.
wherever i live, very few believe that resources are indeed finite or that wilderness is shrinking under food production profits.
in fact comments and local articles accuse greens of saving animals or sterilizing ethnic groups or stressing the poor.
how sad when the very people who will suffer most are the above. and numbers speak, in billions.
Thanks Jeff, thanks Nadine for more, much needed wisdom.
I agree, the majority of people do not have a grasp of the systemic nature of the world. The common thinking, ‘I will be ok, the hell with the others’, is a fallacy. So, regardless of morality, it is very practical to be concerned about the well being of all.
The thing is that the real consumption is not coming from the places where the population growth is happening. Countries with high consumption are wealthy countries, and wealthy countries are all, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, low birthrate countries. Saudi Arabia’s an exception because of their oppression of women; no other wealthy country is as oppressive for women, but allows them a proper education and life choices. Relatively prosperous, educated women have less children. Even poor and educated women have less children.
What lies at the heart of the discussion of population and its dreadful effects on the environment is a Westerner with few or no children’s fear that all those teeming masses of dark-skinned poor people will one day demand an equal amount of wealth.
If the world were to try to live like the US, with its 4.5% the population and 25% the consumption of the world, it would require 555% the resources of the world. Whereas if the world tried to live like India, with its 17% the population and 7.4% the consumption, it would require only 43% the world’s resources. And it’s Indians who are having lots of children.
We in the West consider that having a GDP growth of 4 or 5% is marvellous. But we consider that India having a population growth rate of 1.6% is a terrible disaster.
Why do we consider a growth in consumption of the West to be a good thing, but a growth in population of the Third World to be a bad thing? Both are a growth in consumption of the Earth’s resources. Why is consumption of more resources good when it’s the West and bad when it’s the Third World? Are we really concerned about the impact of our consumption on the Earth, or more concerned with knowing that the Earth can only give so much, the pie is only so big, and we want to make sure our Western world slice stays big?
I think racism and self-interest lies at the heart of the discussion of population.
Kyle, I agree with you that much of the overpopulation discourse is skewed and self-referential, as far as coming from Western minds.
This being said, my concern is that I do not see why countries like India should stay poor. They want to have their fair share of the pie also. And if, and when they do, overpopulation will become a horrendous problem.
My belief is the world should address both the issues of overpopulation and overconsumption at the same time, and the same standards should apply to all world citizens. This means for Americans a low carbon diet, and for other countries with high birth-rates, a one-child policy like in China.
Two things:
First of all great post, Gary. Read u every day at DOT EARTH.
Two: JEff; a blogger gave you a nice shout out today, i sent it to you via private email, go look: cc to laM as well.
Three: THE VACLAV KLAUS CLIMATE JOKE AWARDS:
Global warming, what’s that? Not on this planet!
New Yorkers, who have some of the best senses of humor (and tragedy) in the world, might get a kick out of the newly-created Vaclav Klaus Climate Joke Awards, to honor “jokers” in the climate denial “movement”. We need some fact-Czechers to help this effort out, completely nonprofit and not funded at all by the oily indstries. Peek here. Safe for work. Created by a former New Yorker:
http://climatejokeawards.blogspot.com/
The thing is that if India wants to become as rich as us in the same way as us, there simply don’t exist enough resources in the world for them to be rich and us to be rich. For India to live like the US – 25% resources, 4.5% population, ratio of 25:4.5 or 5.56:1 – would take 5.56 x 17% population, or 94% of the world’s resources. That would leave the US with just 5.5% of the resources for 4.5% of the population, assuming the other 78.5% got nothing.
That the US spends more on its military than the rest of the world put together is perhaps not a coincidence. To protect a disproportionately large share of the world’s resources requires a disproportionately large share of the military spending.
The pie is only so big. You don’t need a big knife to cut the pie, you need a big knife to make sure you get the biggest slice.
Of course there is the issue of what kind of rich do you want your country to be? You can be a wasteful industrial rich, an ecotechnic society rich, or something in between.
Let’s say that Sven drinks 100 bottles of lemonade a year, but every bottle is washed and reused by the lemonade company, all the water used to wash it recycled, the factory powered by wind turbines, the farm that grew the sugar entirely organic and physically next door to the lemonade factory. And let’s say that Sven’s buddy Bob drinks 10 bottles of lemonade a year, but tosses them in landfill, and gets them from a factory powered by coal-fired generation, and the sugar comes from a farm using lots of petrochemicals, 1,000 miles from the factory.
It’s plain that even though Jim consumes more lemonade than Bob, Bob’s lemonade-drinking has more impact and uses more resources. So the question is whether India as it becomes richer tries to be like Sven, or like Bob.
Unfortunately the culture of the US – Bob’s culture – is the dominant one in the world, so that’s the model they’re following. As I noted here, even greenie’s model of sustainability, Cuba, has been building fossil fuel-fired stations in preference to renewables.
It’s often described as I = P x A x T, where I is impact, P is population, A is affluence and T is technology.
However, really there’s a flaw in the way we understand that equation, in that we usually think of “technology” as this ever-increasing thing, so we think, “as technology gets better, T will increase – so if everyone goes high-tech while population and affluence go up, my God, the impact will be huge.” But in fact the technology is a variable factor. Low technology generally has a low impact, but high technology may do, too. Think of irrigating a field: a treadle pump is low-tech and low-impact, a diesel pump medium-tech and high impact, but a photovoltaic cell and electric motor high tech and low-impact. So the “T” isn’t a simple factor.
And why is it that increasing “A” affluence leads to higher impact? Why is that necessarily so? Is that not simply the Western wasteful industrial model of affluence? If Sven spends $10,000 on an antique table, is he not as affluent as Bob who spends $10,000 on burgers? But which of them has the greater impact from their affluence? Perhaps the factor should rather be “W” for “waste”. This then would tell us the reason that Sven with his 100 bottles of lemonade and antique table has a lower impact than Bob with his 10 bottles and burgers. Bob is more wasteful than Sven, thus has a greater impact.
Population is a big factor in the equation, however population changes slowly and predictably. When a country gets more food, that increases the population growth; when women are educated, that decreases it; when per capita wealth increases, that decreases it again. Unless people are proposing genocide, population can’t be decreased quickly. We improve education and wealth, and the population will continue rising for a while, then level off and finally drop. But that takes decades at best. So we set that in motion. What do we do in the meantime? Presumably we look for other things we change change in our I = PWT equation.
What, then, should we focus on, if we want quick change? There remains in our I = PWT equation just W. Waste. This turns out to be connected to technology, but that’s not all of it. It’s also how we choose to do things. Cable cars existed before the private cars, and so are lower-tech, yet they use less resources for the same amount of travel; they are less wasteful. Bicycles are lower-tech and less wasteful still. Growing vegetables organically is lower tech than with lots of petrochemicals, but which has less impact?
Westerners chiding Third Worlders for their high impact makes me think of neighbours on a street. Let’s imagine two apartment buildings, Western and Third. Western has 14 middle-classed people living in it, and puts out 37 rubbish bins a week. Third has 86 working class and poor people living in it, and puts out 63 rubbish bins a week. Quite a bit of the rubbish Third puts out comes from the takeout restaurant that the residents of Western go to a lot.
Western says, “Wow, that Third is really overcrowded and makes a lot of rubbish, we’re worried about how much rubbish they’ll be producing if they get better jobs, it’s a big problem. If only there were less people in Third, we’d have less rubbish on the street.”
The USA, EU and Japan together have 14% of the world’s population, 50% of the world’s wealth, and produce 37% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions; much of their wealth comes from the greenhouse gas emissions produced in other countries, such as trees being felled in Malaysia, so that indirectly they’re responsible for about the same as their wealth share, 50%. Thus, 14% of the population is responsible for 50% the impact, while the other 86% is responsible for the other 50%.
The wealth of the 14% is increasing at 4-5% a year, while their population is steady; the wealth of the 86% is increasing at 1-2% and their population at 1%. The wealthy one-seventh the world says, “well obviously the problem is population.” No. Even if we believed I=PAT, the faster-increasing factor is A, in the West. P and A both are increasing more slowly in the Third World.
The impoverished masses are not a threat to the global environment. It’s the wealthy minority who are the threat. That’s us. The grain used to fill an SUV tank could feed a person for a year; that fuel could be burned in a week by a typical driver.
Waste. That’s the important factory. Yes, population matters. But population control is a human rights issue. Women have a right to an education, and all people have the right to not live in utter poverty; if that is granted, population steadies and then declines. But waste remains in the West.
It’s not just racism, it’s classism. The poor have long been blamed for a lot.
Thanks Kyle. These are very convincing maths! And bring us back to the need for industrialized countries like ours to revisit our dysfunctional ways of living.
I wonder how Gary would respond.
What a great essay, very nice overview/summarization.
To Kiashu’s point about classism, see creation of a different planet, part 1 about which nations put most of the CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere and who is doing most of it today. Of course it is the usual suspects, the US and EU. Other parts of that series of posts may be relevant too.
Marguerite,
I couldn’t say it better myself except to add that Americans should be on that one-child policy as well. Our population is still growing by a million per year. Any steady population growth is unsustainable.
And thanks for addressing the population issue. It gets too little attention.
[...] ten books he has authored or co-authored is a textbook on population geography. Read his excellent overview of population and environment issues. It may be time to see that our numbers, combined with our expanding affluence and constant need to [...]
I am not comfortable with a one-child policy. I don’t see how it’s enforced without financial penalties and forced abortions.
In China, the financial penalties are actual fines for multiple children, and that while your first child receives a free education, any after that must pay for it. The effect of that is that wealthy people can have many children, and poor people can’t; and if they do, they become more poor. That does not produce an egalitarian society, but a class-based society, one with little social mobility – which causes crime and civil conflict down the road.
I don’t think I have to say why forced abortions are bad. Whatever your feelings about abortion, I don’t know of anyone who thinks forced abortions are good.
The best route to declining birth rates is increasing the prosperity and education of women. Poor illiterate women have lots of babies; prosperous and literate women not so many; wealthy and highly-educated women, no child or just one child. Proscriptive population control measures act to perpetuate the poverty and low education of women; increasing their prosperity and education lowers the birth rate and makes the country better-off overall.
Of course, some people, both in the Third World and the First, prefer that the women of the Third World stay poor and uneducated. In the Third World it means that uneducated men can stay in charge (something uneducated men are in favour of), and even the poorest and worst-off male has someone beneath him. In the First World it means we get to have a cheap labour force to make our t-shirts and cocoa beans, and also to be cheap domestic workers, sex slaves and so on.
Whereas if we helped the women to become more prosperous and well-educated (for example by microloans, they’d start demanding a say in the running of their own country, better wages and so on. Neither the elites of the Third World nor we in the First World are too keen on that idea.
You may be interested in an essay written by Adam Werbach, that is very much in accord with your point:
‘A Call for the End of the Population Movement’, available in pdf on the Act Now Productions website
Thanks for correcting me on my one-child policy comment. I was referring more to the end result, not so much the policy to get there!
I agree with Kiashu’s point, “The best route to declining birth rates is increasing the prosperity and education of women.” I also agree with Kiashu in that, “I am not comfortable with a one-child policy.” But I don’t see an alternative unless you beleive that we are well under the carrying capacity of the world. Population growth increases poverty and a host of other social ills including the disempowerment of women.
I disagree that a one-child policy necessarily entails forced abortions and don’t know enough about China’s policy to say if it that’s a part of it in that country. What I’ve read says that it is not, but you never know unless you’re there, especially in a nation lacking a free press.
One of the most enlightened steps taken in reaction to high populations growth rates appears to be in, of all places, Iran. See learning from Iran about family planning.
Marguerite,
Thanks for the pointer to the Adam Werbach paper. It presents an argument that we’ve seen before, and he offers it with his heart firmly in the right place wishing for a better, more just world for everyrone. Even so, I don’t think trying to hide or de-emphasize information serves anyone well, particulary women.
When Werbach says, “Today’s six billion person population will become 9 billion people in the next fifty years and then will begin to decline,” he’s refering to the UN’s medium projection — by no means a given, just a projection based on a particular set of assumptions. Worse, there are any number of draconian reasons (war, famine, disease) the population might stablize at that level and then decline. In think few assume that in 50 years we will have a world in which the population stablizes and then declines due to world-wide achievement of prosperity. It’s important to think of the human costs of crowding in a world of scarce resources.
I guess I could be called a population activist, but I could also be called, and would prefer to be called, an activist for both women’s empowerment and sustainable development, the latter two have more meaning to me that the first. But why should I chose one over the others. Why can’t I be all three? What I see myself as is a human being who is interested in human welfare and who sees economic justice and equal rights for all as an integral part of that.
Werbach concludes,
Seems to me that the population movement is an integral part of the whole, and hiding that is just another way of condescending to people who have had enough of that.
I tried to make the case for activists coming together, rather than “dissing” each other, in the thousand item triage.
BTW the Adam Werbach paper is at A Call for the End of the Population Movement (PDF).
It seems that we are all on the same boat here. Agreeing on the end, less people, and using intelligent and humane means to get there. Trinifar, thanks for the Iran case study.
My main takeaway from our discussion is the need for many different perspectives to get at sensible solutions. I need to thank you all for contributing.
Dear Trinifar,
Once again, we have you to thank for some incisive contributions to one of the most remarkable discussions I have seen to date.
Keep going.
Sincerely,
Steve
[...] 20, 2008 by lamarguerite From Gary Peters, another guest article, this time in response to the current world food [...]
After reading the discussion I need to clarify something from the point of view of an economist, : – as an economy gets richer, both wants and resources increase or will resources decrease while wants increase? I was wondering if newer improved technology and newer resources would mean an increase in resources as well? For e.g. if capital (produced means of production) is a resource and labour is a resource, then there can be increase in resources as well, though land will always be scarce…… I need to know if this line of thought is right (from point of view in economics)
Thanks to Gary Peters. This discussion remains one of the very best ever presented on recognizably real human-induced global challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health now threatening the family of humanity.
[...] Herman Daly and Juliet Schor. Also, I’ve got to direct your attention to a comment posted by Gary Peters, who provides an apt quotation from John Stuart Mill, circa 1848. Here’s a teaser: [...]
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