Population Growth, Resource Over-Consumption at Center of ‘Looming Catastrophe’, Stanford Biologists Claim
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 08. 4.08
photo by Michael McDonough
This next post is about something which I’ve found many environmentalists, and even more people who don’t consider themselves environmentalists, find very hard to discuss: Overpopulation and the corresponding Overconsumption of natural resources which we now face on this planet.
Yale Environment 360 is currently running a piece by Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich which discusses what they see as the central environmental crisis which we face: “Too Many People, Too Much Consumption.” It’s an important topic and a thought provoking piece, so I encourage you to read it in its entirety, but here are some choice bits to get you going:
There is no technological fix that will allow perpetual population and economic growth
The point, all too often ignored, is that this trend is being driven in large part by a combination of population growth and increasing per capita consumption, and it cannot be long continued without risking a collapse of our now-global civilization. Too many people — and especially too many politicians and business executives — are under the delusion that such a disastrous end to the modern human enterprise can be avoided by technological fixes that will allow the population and the economy to grow forever.
Population factor “greater than most people suppose”
Many past human societies have collapsed under the weight of overpopulation and environmental neglect, but today the civilization in peril is global. The population factor in what appears to be a looming catastrophe is even greater than most people suppose. Each person added today to the population on average causes more damage to humanity’s critical life-support systems than did the previous addition — everything else being equal.
Affluence = Overconsumption
Consumption is still viewed as an unalloyed good by many economists, along with business leaders and politicians, who tend to see jacking up consumption as a cure-all for economic ills. Too much unemployment? Encourage people to buy an SUV or a new refrigerator. Perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell, but third-rate economists can’t think of anything else.
We are overconsuming resources, but multitudes still go without
And, of course, there are the vexing problems of consumption of people in poor countries. On one hand, a billion or more people have problems of underconsumption. Unless their basic needs are met, they are unlikely to be able to make important contributions to attaining sustainability. On the other hand, there is also the issue of the “new consumers” in developing economies such as China and India, where the wealth of a sizable minority is permitting them to acquire the consumption habits (e.g., eating a lot of meat and driving automobiles) of the rich nations. Consumption regulation is a lot more complex than population regulation, and it is much more difficult to find humane and equitable solutions to the problem.
:: Yale Environment 360
Population, Natural Resources
Brits Break Silence on Population-Climate Change Links
Biofuels, Food, Population Growth to Put Increasing Pressure on Forests
The Elephant in the Room: Overpopulation
Shocking News: The Rich Have Bigger Carbon Footprints Than the Poor
While it's true that there is no technological fix that will allow for unlimited growth, when nations become wealthy (increasing their per capita energy consumption) with a broad middle class and widespread higher education, reproduction rates tend to level off and decline. A woman in USA produces 2.01 children on average. Most of the population growth in the USA over the past 20 years have been from immigration, not birthrate. Japan and most of Europe have birthrates below 2.0. Japan is expected to shrink in population from 120m today to 90m by 2050.
Over at Pregnant Pause the population rates of all countries can be seen. In general, the countries with the lowest per capita energy consumption have the highest population growth. I'd be interested to see a study that calculated the amount of economic and educational assistance from the first world to the third world that would cause population rates to drop. Obviously that's an expensive proposition, but the alternative is draconian laws like China's. Most countries don't have the governmental structures in place to implement that, never mind the ethical aspects. This way, it's a win-win. The third world countries get some alleviation from poverty, an educated population which can compete in the global economy, and populations decline.
There can be no doubt that, from a sustainability standpoint, we have been living above our means here in the wealthier nations. We are consuming finite resources and then throwing them away much faster than nature can replenish them. As more and more people adopt the habits we have set as an example, this will indeed lead to a crisis. The Earth is finite, and the supply of natural resources on it is therefore finite. Economic growth and increased consumption per capita cannot continue forever regardless of our level of technology.
But that doesn't mean the problem is inherent in our current level of resource consumption. For one, better technology allows us to do more with the same amount of resources by improving efficiency. Improved efficiency measures for energy consumption here in the States, for example, would leave us enough excess energy to solve our looming fresh water problems through desalination while still reducing total energy use.
Energy is also a good example; there is plenty of energy in the world, most of it solar, to provide 8,000 times current consumption levels. That means that is we used all solar power, then even if the population doubles and everyone used as much energy as Americans currently do, we'd still only be using .1% of the energy available on this planet. In other words, better technology would be sufficient to solve this problem, if we enact the right policies and regulations.
Material resources of all kinds are trickier, but even so I would argue that the problem lies not with consumption, but with disposal. Landfills (and other methods of marking certain resources as unusable waste or of dispersing them into the environment) should, quite frankly, be illegal, because they are the root cause of resource shortages. As we all learned in high school, matter is not created or destroyed. The physical resources available on the Earth today are just as abundant as they were 10,000 years ago. It takes technology and energy input to reuse old resources and trash for new purposes, but all the elements are still around. Every piece of matter is, in principle, recyclable; actually treating it as such will require a mix of technological, political, and cultural innovations and changes, but it can be done.
Remember that in a full accounting, technology doesn't just refer to science. The advances we make in our laws and societal structures that improve our efficiency and productivity and happiness are just as much technology as the latest gadget available at Best Buy. It is certainly true that we have been living above our technological means, and that we have been wasteful. It is also true that growth cannot continue forever, at least not as long as humanity is confined to one planet (and even then, there are limits). But with the right advances, there is no reason everyone in the world can't share the standard of living available in the wealthy countries.
There can be no doubt that, from a sustainability standpoint, we have been living above our means here in the wealthier nations. We are consuming finite resources and then throwing them away much faster than nature can replenish them. As more and more people adopt the habits we have set as an example, this will indeed lead to a crisis. The Earth is finite, and the supply of natural resources on it is therefore finite. Economic growth and increased consumption per capita cannot continue forever regardless of our level of technology.
But that doesn't mean the problem is inherent in our current level of resource consumption. For one, better technology allows us to do more with the same amount of resources by improving efficiency. Improved efficiency measures for energy consumption here in the States, for example, would leave us enough excess energy to solve our looming fresh water problems through desalination while still reducing total energy use.
Energy is also a good example; there is plenty of energy in the world, most of it solar, to provide 8,000 times current consumption levels. That means that is we used all solar power, then even if the population doubles and everyone used as much energy as Americans currently do, we'd still only be using .1% of the energy available on this planet. In other words, better technology would be sufficient to solve this problem, if we enact the right policies and regulations.
Material resources of all kinds are trickier, but even so I would argue that the problem lies not with consumption, but with disposal. Landfills (and other methods of marking certain resources as unusable waste or of dispersing them into the environment) should, quite frankly, be illegal, because they are the root cause of resource shortages. As we all learned in high school, matter is not created or destroyed. The physical resources available on the Earth today are just as abundant as they were 10,000 years ago. It takes technology and energy input to reuse old resources and trash for new purposes, but all the elements are still around. Every piece of matter is, in principle, recyclable; actually treating it as such will require a mix of technological, political, and cultural innovations and changes, but it can be done.
Remember that in a full accounting, technology doesn't just refer to science. The advances we make in our laws and societal structures that improve our efficiency and productivity and happiness are just as much technology as the latest gadget available at Best Buy. It is certainly true that we have been living above our technological means, and that we have been wasteful. It is also true that growth cannot continue forever, at least not as long as humanity is confined to one planet (and even then, there are limits). But with the right advances, there is no reason everyone in the world can't share the standard of living available in the wealthy countries.
"the enemy is us".....................
In response to JSDreyer's comment, I'd like to point out that some estimates have shown that if developing countries follow a similar leveling off of population growth to that which developed countries have shown, then world population can be expected to stabilize at around 12 billion or so.
It remains to be seen how different cultures respond to prosperity, and how wealth affects family size in other societies. But already in India women with even slightly more education than average say they want smaller families than they grew up in, so there are some good signs that fears of perpetual exponential population growth may be overstated. And as modern communications continue to help build a planetary culture, and ideas can flow freely, the benefits of smaller families should also become more widely known.
Don't forget, for most of human evolution many people didn't live long enough to reproduce. In such an environment it makes evolutionary sense to have many children. It may take a few generations for culture to catch up with technology, but when people become secure in the belief that their children aren't going to die in infancy, and when they no longer need children to work to help support the family, they stop wanting to have overly large families. In a wealthier society with better technology, access to education, and medical services, smaller families make more sense. Children do better in life when parents can devote more resources to them; when mothers and fathers both work, it is easier to take care of a few children than many; delaying childbirth gives mothers more opportunities to advance themselves, and also tends to reduce the size of families; and additionally, living in a more modern society entails better access to birth control.
No one wants to curtail a basic freedom, which is not only anti-democratic, but very diffcult, but no one wants to suffer the consequences of growth run rampant. However, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. After all, I encounter a lot of people (albeit in my hippy-upscale burgh) who have voluntarily curbed their consumption and have planned in advance for their family. I think the number of dittohead cynics out there, with the nihilist attitudes and in-your-face consuption patterns, continue to drop. After all, from the right and the left, come maturing perspectives that consumption cannot fill the hole left by lack of community and family.
Why is it that on one side of the argument like this and GW that we have folks with PHDs and on the other side people who can't even spell PHD or are some religious freaks or have some vested interest. Overpopulation is the elephant in the room that we need to tackle here and now.
I read an interesting paragraph in 'The World Without Us', which says how great it would be if we could reduce our population (through population control) to 1800s levels, but where we could have the medical and scientific advancements where poverty and hunger could be eliminated.
The problem with having frank discussions about overpopulation is that for every progressive ignoring overpopulation, there's one ignoring the fact that some people are talking about overpopulation as a way of shifting the blame for overconsumption to poorer nations—who typically consume less resources but have higher rates of population growth. We have enough to support the number of people we have now, if so many of them weren't trying to live like US Americans. Or we have enough to support drastically fewer who live like US Americans. Either way, what's your solution—get all the USAians to give up their cars and profligate lifestyles, or get all the poorer people to submit to sterilization or reproduction restrictions?
In an economically just world, population wouldn't be ballooning out of hand in some nations and falling or remaining level in others. The way to control population growth is unequivocally through creating economic justice. And the way to economic justice is to redistribute wealth... meaning USAians can no longer live comparative lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Unfortunately, instead of seeing steps toward economic justice, we are seeing greater and greater income disparity, so that increasing numbers of citizens of first world nations like the US are living closer to "third world" lifestyles, while those making money off the disparity continue, on the balance, to put their excess toward unnecessary material goods and polluting lifestyles. We can expect to see population growth renew in the US as more people suffer from deprivation and hardship.
Why do people in poverty have more children? Rich people have advanced explanations ranging from "they don't know any better" to "they want to cheat welfare". There are many factors ranging from lack of availability of health care and reliable sex education, to the need for more workers, to the fact that being in constant low-grade fear tends to lead to the decision of any organism that feels threatened to help ensure survival by increasing population. Take away poverty and empower women and you almost always restore a steady population state.
Population is not the disease, it's a symptom.
Forget it. With the vast number of eco-chic yuppie parents I encounter who are happy to have 2+ kids because they can buy so much "green" crap for them, I know we are doomed.
You know the argument that with efficiency comes greater energy consumption? You know, buy a Prius and then feel comfortable driving more, thereby offsetting any savings over the SUV? Same goes for popping out screaming monkeys. Oh boy, now all the diapers are eco friendly, let's have another kid. I know its not that simple, but the same unconscious decision process is indeed at work here.
How about simply an adoption "rewards" program. Governments can calculate what it would have cost the planet for your first world hyper consuming rat, then calculate for the third world rat you can adopt. If you adopt, you get a reward based on the savings to the planet.
Oh wait, that would be too simple.
Queue self-absorbed-me-monkeys who insist that creating a child is somehow green and responsible...
Its an ironic battle against nature-- human nature.
Humans got to the top by evolving to have plenty of kids and not getting their minds to outsmart their sex drive. Those that did had fewer kids to spread their genes.
Birth control! Wouldn't hurt if men got into the habit of freezing some sperm and then getting 'fixed.' The other elephant in the room on this issue is organized RELIGIONS exploiting the devoted to increase membership (ever wonder why there are so many Catholics?)
Wow, I thought this was a forum of respect and learning, but as someone without a PHD and as a Christian, I am now pigeonholed as too stupid to understand how population affects the environment or too brainwashed to think about my impact. I would have to say that there are things that should be considered when having children, but it can be done without sucking up a lot of resources, i.e. hand-me-downs and family heirlooms. I think that consumerism is the bigger problem, namely the thinking that "My child deserves better than a used carseat."
Oh, and one other thing, population control was implemented by the Nazis. Something about only certain people of a certain status deserve to live. I think that it is a fine line to tread between urging responsibility and sounding like an elitist snob or worse.
"We have enough to support the number of people we have now"
there are a lot of problems in believing that even if our population stopped growing right now that we would be ok and the earth can support us.
There are many external things happening around us that will end up affecting us in the future if things do not change. For one Populations of non human life: There are many animal and plant extinctions happening every day due to our actions. I believe there is a tipping point here as well, how long before we make certain linch pin species extinct causing a collapse on that front? We all know what the food chain is and what it does, what happens to that chain when too many of the links get broken? We are at the top of the chain, if we kill off those lower on the chain then we can expect a collapse from that. One simple example: Bee's. We rely on this insect heavily, to reproduce our food, which in turn feeds live stalk which we also consume. Hard to think of it but one simple insect could be all that is between human life and human extinction.
There is a certain type of lizard from a region i can not remember and scientists have concluded that the entire forest ecosystem that they live in would be gone if this lizard went extinct. They are the only animal in the forest capable of digesting the fruit produced leaving the seed intact. All of the other animals require the fruit of the tree to survive and a lot of the vegetation that grows in the area requires the tree's shade. One animal is all that keeps the ecosystem alive.
Look at all of the fisheries that have closed down, all the places that are not producing fish anymore because we have completely destroyed the ecosystem.
Our survival relies on the ecosystem working and staying productive, yet every day we destroy more and more of it, killing off working parts stressing the system until maybe one day when it finally collapses.