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Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat
A small portion of the world's people use up most of the earth's resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions
It's the great taboo, I hear many environmentalists say. Population growth is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet, but we are afraid to discuss it.
It sounds like a no-brainer. More people must inevitably be bad for the environment, taking more resources and causing more pollution, driving the planet ever farther beyond its carrying capacity. But hold on. This is a terribly convenient argument - "over-consumers" in rich countries can blame "over-breeders" in distant lands for the state of the planet. But what are the facts?
The world's population quadrupled to six billion people during the 20th century. It is still rising and may reach 9 billion by 2050. Yet for at least the past century, rising per-capita incomes have outstripped the rising head count several times over. And while incomes don't translate precisely into increased resource use and pollution, the correlation is distressingly strong.
Moreover, most of the extra consumption has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population.
By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world's people take the majority of the world's resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Take carbon dioxide emissions - a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world's richest half-billion people - that's about 7 percent of the global population - are responsible for 50 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.
Although overconsumption has a profound effect on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts of our high standard of living extend beyond turning up the temperature of the planet. For a wider perspective of humanity's effects on the planet's life support systems, the best available measure is the "ecological footprint," which estimates the area of land required to provide each of us with food, clothing, and other resources, as well as to soak up our pollution. This analysis has its methodological problems, but its comparisons between nations are firm enough to be useful.
They show that sustaining the lifestyle of the average American takes 9.5 hectares, while Australians and Canadians require 7.8 and 7.1 hectares respectively; Britons, 5.3 hectares; Germans, 4.2; and the Japanese, 4.9. The world average is 2.7 hectares. China is still below that figure at 2.1, while India and most of Africa (where the majority of future world population growth will take place) are at or below 1.0.
The United States always gets singled out. But for good reason: It is the world's largest consumer. Americans take the greatest share of most of the world's major commodities: corn, coffee, copper, lead, zinc, aluminum, rubber, oil seeds, oil, and natural gas. For many others, Americans are the largest per-capita consumers. In "super-size-me" land, Americans gobble up more than 120 kilograms of meat a year per person, compared to just 6 kilos in India, for instance.
I do not deny that fast-rising populations can create serious local environmental crises through overgrazing, destructive farming and fishing, and deforestation. My argument here is that viewed at the global scale, it is overconsumption that has been driving humanity's impacts on the planet's vital life-support systems during at least the past century. But what of the future?
We cannot be sure how the global economic downturn will play out. But let us assume that Jeffrey Sachs, in his book Common Wealth, is right to predict a 600 percent increase in global economic output by 2050. Most projections put world population then at no more than 40 percent above today's level, so its contribution to future growth in economic activity will be small.
Of course, economic activity is not the same as ecological impact. So let's go back to carbon dioxide emissions. Virtually all of the extra 2 billion or so people expected on this planet in the coming 40 years will be in the poor half of the world. They will raise the population of the poor world from approaching 3.5 billion to about 5.5 billion, making them the poor two-thirds.
Sounds nasty, but based on Pacala's calculations - and if we assume for the purposes of the argument that per-capita emissions in every country stay roughly the same as today - those extra two billion people would raise the share of emissions contributed by the poor world from 7 percent to 11 percent.
Look at it another way. Just five countries are likely to produce most of the world's population growth in the coming decades: India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The carbon emissions of one American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians.
Even if we could today achieve zero population growth, that would barely touch the climate problem - where we need to cut emissions by 50 to 80 percent by mid-century. Given existing income inequalities, it is inescapable that overconsumption by the rich few is the key problem, rather than overpopulation of the poor many.
But, you ask, what about future generations? All those big families in Africa begetting yet-bigger families. They may not consume much today, but they soon will.
Well, first let's be clear about the scale of the difference involved. A woman in rural Ethiopia can have ten children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Munich. In the unlikely event that her ten children live to adulthood and have ten children of their own, the entire clan of more than a hundred will still be emitting less carbon dioxide than you or I.
And second, it won't happen. Wherever most kids survive to adulthood, women stop having so many. That is the main reason why the number of children born to an average woman around the world has been in decline for half a century now. After peaking at between 5 and 6 per woman, it is now down to 2.6.
This is getting close to the "replacement fertility level" which, after allowing for a natural excess of boys born and women who don't reach adulthood, is about 2.3. The UN expects global fertility to fall to 1.85 children per woman by mid-century. While a demographic "bulge" of women of child-bearing age keeps the world's population rising for now, continuing declines in fertility will cause the world's population to stabilize by mid-century and then probably to begin falling.
Far from ballooning, each generation will be smaller than the last. So the ecological footprint of future generations could diminish. That means we can have a shot at estimating the long-term impact of children from different countries down the generations.
The best analysis of this phenomenon I have seen is by Paul Murtaugh, a statistician at Oregon State University. He recently calculated the climatic "intergenerational legacy" of today's children. He assumed current per-capita emissions and UN fertility projections. He found that an extra child in the United States today will, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra Chinese child, 46 times that of a Pakistan child, 55 times that of an Indian child, and 86 times that of a Nigerian child.
Of course those assumptions may not pan out. I have some confidence in the population projections, but per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide will likely rise in poor countries for some time yet, even in optimistic scenarios. But that is an issue of consumption, not population.
In any event, it strikes me as the height of hubris to downgrade the culpability of the rich world's environmental footprint because generations of poor people not yet born might one day get to be as rich and destructive as us. Overpopulation is not driving environmental destruction at the global level; overconsumption is. Every time we talk about too many babies in Africa or India, we are denying that simple fact.
At root this is an ethical issue. Back in 1974, the famous environmental scientist Garret Hardin proposed something he called "lifeboat ethics". In the modern, resource-constrained world, he said, "each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in." But there were, he said, not enough places to go around. If any were let on board, there would be chaos and all would drown. The people in the lifeboat had a duty to their species to be selfish - to keep the poor out.
Hardin's metaphor had a certain ruthless logic. What he omitted to mention was that each of the people in the lifeboat was occupying ten places, whereas the people in the water only wanted one each. I think that changes the argument somewhat.
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53 Comments so far
Show AllThank you Mr. Pearce for defeating those bunk Malthusian arguments. Prepare to be pelted by the Malthusian forces and good luck.
In the economically intertwined, yield obsessed, media and telecommunication intensive world we live in today, separating consumption from the population equation demonstrates one of the following:
1) stupidity, or
2) neocon rhetoric
There is nothing progressive about population blather - hidden behind it is usually a suburban, elitist, anti-immigrant, anti-working class attitude.
"Then die they should - and decrease the surplus population!"
- E. Scrooge
Leftist - I read all of your comments re this article and notice you seem to know a great deal about what "they" do and what "they" want and about how "they" live.
And you quote Ebenezer Scrooge to (prove?) your contention that those of us who believe the world is grotesquely overpopulated are "elitist, anti-immigrant," yada yada yada.
I just want to say I'm amazed by you. (Laughing out loud here)
The author does not posit that no connection between population exists, only that the correspondence is not 1 to 1.
Attacking the author's ideas might be of more interest.
As countries become "developed" they become more urbanized. Children are needed in an agricultural or rual economy. They are worthless in an urban economy.
Check out the rates of urban growth in China. Check out the rate of population increase. True the government discourages children, but often turn its back in rural areas, since they need the agricultural labor to feed the country.
During the past six to twelve months there has been a reverse migration to rural areas as unemployment and economic insecurity increase. The White House garden is a great symbol of a return to rural roots and self-sufficiency. Bullshit..it's all about economics. Massive reverse migrations in China.
And as people return to the countryside, there will be an increase in population.
And the population growth rates in Ethiopia... USA for Africa and Band Aid kept millions of Ethiopians alive in 1985 who are now, this year facing famine. And the wars between Eritrea, Tigre and Ethiopia are on hold so nothing to do but stay home and have kids.
Population has everything to do with economics.
We need farmers in Bourkina Fasso (Upper Volta) to use scarce water to grow perfect green beans (haricot verte) for the Parisian market.
C'est la vie
Here come the Malthusians. So you are saying its OK to be overcrowded, congested, and overpopulated as long as we don't consume anything? Malthusians indeed. Jennifer likes to live like a sardine in a can.
Well? I'm used to living the apartment life in the city and frugally, mister !
"So you are saying its OK to be overcrowded, congested, and overpopulated as long as we don't consume anything?"
No, but by ignoring the policies that put us there, the Malthusians lack proper credibility.
Living in an apartment and using public transit in a "crowded city" (no US city would be crowded by European standards) yeilds by far the smallest carbon footprint tna any other lifestyle.
In most cities, it also affords access to culture and real cusine, locally grown produce from public markets (never seen one in suburbia or the sticks - only supermarkets out there), and solidarity-building, face-to-face sidewalk encounters with neighbors and shopkeepers - something also unheard of in suburban-freeway-wastelands.
I used to live right near a metro rail station but after I moved to a cheaper condo out in the suburbs, I have no choice but to drive as parking at the station and the timing wouldn't work out. Getting the metro rail as far out to the suburbs outside St Louis City is a long shot as the suburbanites are too used to driving their own vehicles and do their NIMBY baloney to derail the project. My granduncle in Florida told me that the metro stations in his state plan on using biocrude on upcoming light rails. Now that would be lovely for a change. No more coal-powered trains.
"ignoring the policies that put us there, the Malthusians lack proper credibility." Thats rich "proper credibility," if it were so easy. The real problem we have here is that when we crawled out of the trees we developed a brain that tricked us into thinking we were intelligent and could solve any problem. It turns out we have gotten where we are now by sheer luck, and because there weren't that many of us we could fake it with all our dim witted ideas of living and progress. Because of the numbers of population that we have now and the need to consume so we can keep everyone busy working we are now going over the cliff. Just like the lemmings we act like. Tough luck. Nothing lasts forever. This is historic. The demise of a self centered species that has come to believe that we are immortal.
Consumption has been reduced recently in the wealthier nations. People in the U.S.A. are now probably using only 9.45 hectares instead of 9.50. Perhaps a severe and perpetual depression would be a good thing. The word depression has bad connotations. Let's rename it a correction. Actually, declining production in the worlds' major oil fields will put the world into a series of recessions with an ever downward slope. This idea is taken from 'The Long Emergency' by Kunstler.
Read what Kunstler has to say about overpopulation. He most definitely does not agree with the author of this article.
The United States has the highest population growth rate of any so-called modern industrialized society. Sure, tell the immigrants who come here "for a better life" and also tell native born Americans to reduce their consumption rates. Sure, tell them to stop buying houses in the suburbs and buying SUVs and stop drinking Coca-Cola and stop eating at Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King, and all those other restaurants. Tell them to stop buying new clothes all the time because they want to look good. Yes, tell them to buy nine-inch black and white television sets and no video games. Sure, tell them to stop pursuing the consumptive American dream (yes, a failing economy may impose this anyway). Sure, they will listen to you.
This article seems as though it could have come from the Catholic Church in a bid to criticise and prohibit birth control and abortion.
I have met numerous people from India who said they moved to the US to escape the problems besetting them from overpopulation in their own country. I don't think that they are interested in giving up their nice houses here, and they themselves used the word overpopulation to describe conditions in their own country. Furthermore, the environmental scientists who were born and raised in India and China, and educated in India and China, and who are still living in India and China, have been writing that the health-threatening pollution problems in their countries are directly attributable to excessive population growth there. It is not only Western environmental scientists who see the connection between population growth and environmental destruction. Do you want full employment? Our entire economic system is based on the idea of continuous growth which means increasing consumption. Yes, some of us would like to change it: tell us how.
Oh, yes, please tell Americans to eat less or no meat, for cattle and pig production use dangerous amounts of environmental resources. I myself am a vegetarian, and I think most Americans would like to string me up from a lamppost after torturing me if I suggested that they stop eating meat also.
Over the past decade, I've worked with scores of folks from India (I'm a software analyst). I have engaged many of them in discussions of life in the US as compared with life in their home country.
Most of them do not want to live in the US (and yes, I asked). With all of India's problems, they still love their home and came here for one reason: to make as much money as possible.
q
Agreed, all the upper-middle class suburban Indian "professionals" here in Pittsburgh, maintain their culture, have built ornate Hindu, Jain and Sikh temples. Other Indians run Indian restaurants (yummy - especially south Indian) amd indian grocery stores for largely Indian clietele.
They fly home as often as they can.
The probelm with India is not crowding - there is still plenty of tillable land to support it's largely vegetarian population. The probelm is horrible distribution of wealth and the driving of it's people off the land and into the slums (or suicide) by capitalist neoliberal economics.
Leftist, you are right about the "horrible distribution of wealth" in India. The elite in India (and many other "developing") nations are living like parasites, sucking a disproportionate amount of resources for themselves, importing all kinds of "luxuries", paid with export of resources and the labor of poor people, living with a sense of entitlement, all the time blaming the poor for demanding fairer policies, attacking politicians who attempt to level the field as "populist" - basically living an arrogant, mindless and sometimes ruthless life. I know it's a long sentence, but that's the way I have to describe the elite (some of them call themselves "middle class" these days) in some countries. Their aping of "western ways" is dangerous - because of the large population and because of a certain "trickle-down" effect and making an already bad environmental situation even worse. And they can't understand why, when pushed to the brink, some people turn to crime or take up arms to fight the establishment. Reducing consumption is the key - I'm not sure the so-called educated people in several countries understand that.
" … to make as much money as possible."
Yes, the very consumerism that they cannot accomplish in India because of overcrowding. If they loved it so much in India, they could go home. Nobody is stopping them.
Not quite true -- the people who enforce the poverty in India stop Indian emigrants from returning.
much of the resources being discussed are used industrially, rather than 'consumed' (meaning 'taken into individual possession')...while some of us certainly have dietary issues, to use the word 'consumption' to describe resource usage without confronting the large percentages required for industry is misleading...while reducing population levels is certainly important, it is more the quality of life that is at issue, than quantity...industry must drastically reduce moving forward...
The first industry that needs dismantling is corporate farming.
q
The problem is that we (as a whole) of the Western world, especially in the US, do not want to acknowledge the planetary destructive nature of our exploitative economic system. The Malthusian bogeyman is just too attractive. It allows us to blame all the poor people in the Third World, rather than look in the mirror and see our own complicity.
Yes, it's very easy to point fingers at people in other regions and tell them they need to reduce their populations while continuing to fete celebrities begetting to four to eight kids, egging on couples going to their designer fertility clinics and popping out twins left and right, so caught in narcissism one can't see the loss of habitat that's happening right in one own neighborhood, the good ol' USA.
Halving the worldwide population (one child per family for a couple of generations) would halve the consumption of the rich nations and would reduce the overcrowding in poorer nations. But to start a process of this nature it will be necessary to enhance the standing of women and provide them with a sound education.
If humans don't limit their population voluntarily, nature will do it for them; we have a choice.
Growth in consumption and growth in population have little to do with each other. Capitalist economics require growth in consumption completely indepenedntly of population.
One example - US households are much smaller than the 1950's - many have no children at all - yet a 1,200 square-foot home was considered adequate in the 1950's but now even a single child suburban couple lives in a home with at least 4,000 square feet.
In the 1950's people did just fine without central air conditioning, or AC at all. Now, middle class USAns consider it a basic survival need - even in New England.
Same with car use, use of electronics, etc...etc. And the energy requirements for all these "needs" has grown far faster than population.
If this is true, then why do the elite business leaders, bankers, developers, and realtors plan and work so hard in every city and town across this country to increase their populations at a steady clip? Why do our federal, state and local municipal governments continue to subsidize population growth with taxpayer money even as they reduce basic services and education?
The reason why is because they know that more people equals more money for themselves. The econometric model of population forecasting is always based on the wet dreams of big business.
See the work of planner Eben Fodor to get a grasp on the growth subsidies.
It is important to point out that we all are fully aware that world population cannot grow without limit. But the Malthusians don't ever seem to aknowlege that a lot is alredy being done to address population growth and all experts predicting population growth to stop over the next century.
Instead, most Malthusian population-ranters always seem to have thinly velied nativist, anti-immigration and (a rather dated) anti-Catholic, even racist atitudes behind their rants. Some even come damn close to promoting eugenics and euthanasia.
Economic growth far outstrips population as the burden being imposed on the planet's atmosphere, water and soil.
Whoa, curb the hyperbole, please!
If I say that Malthus was, in my view, essentially correct, that doesn't make me anti-progressive (or worse). It means that I'm trying to be intellectually honest. When some progressives (thankfully, not all) tar and feather the Malthusian perspective, I can't help but wonder if they do so because Malthus' ideas might threaten certain leftist ideologies. Just a guess--maybe I'm wrong...
In any event, I think it's more appropriate to say that consumption and overpopulation should not be regarded as an "either/or" situation but "both/and." Both are severe problems that need serious attention.
Being poor is not my idea of a solution to anything. Let each sovereign nation decide for itself what balance it wants between high population and low standard of living that it can sustain using only it's own resources and any fair trade with others. I vote for the high standard of living low population density. If India wants to continue low standard of living high population density that is their choice but we do not have to let them immigrate here.
I'm not sure what high standard of living you have in mind. Does this high standard of living also have to be sustainable? How about efficiency? I mean, how much resources are needed - both from within the country from outside - to maintain this high standard? Unless these questions are asked, the lessons ahead will be very hard indeed.
I am a small farmer. I have fought the consumer mentality all of my life, preferring to live frugally, buying as little as possible, producing what I can for the good of real honest people, out of the natural ways and harmonies of the earth. As a small farmer, I am being hounded mercilessly by consumer (corporate) regulations. I remember being in an argument with my coop representatives from Organic Valley, asking for (demanding really) respect for my beliefs. What I got was: 'Oh, but don't you see? We're ALL consumers.' What a dim-bulbed idiot lady! I hope you stupid consumers and consumer-enablers all burn in hell...every last one of you.
Please tell me more. I do not know what issues farmers face.
We don't have much choice in this; we solve the problem with some hardship, or the problem will solve us with starvation, wars, diseases etcetera. Time to check out the site http://www.optimumpopulation.org/. We are too prolific and we should stop breeding at our present rate if we want some kind of world to leave to the next generations.
The dismantling of the gigantic, poisonous, global US military industrial complex would take us far down the road to environmental sustainability, and also to having enough resources to educate and raise the standard of living of the women of the world, which would lead to population stability. Neither consumption nor population can increase infinitely on a finite planet.
We fought for the right to promote our views above facts, in the gladiator arena, err debate arena, so please, turn up my microphone, I'm being drowned out.
Opinions! On the left we call them views, and on the right we lump them into one word - faith! We all hold them dear to our hearts! They constitute our identity! What else separates us from our mother countries? We don't recognize their languages or cultures! Views dammit! Opinions!
If I want to put forth my view that population is most devastating, beyond all empire monsters, get out of my way, cuz this is the land of opportunity and I have my eye on getting my own TV show, and I'll bring on guests and let them spout their views too! Damn the facts!
The Audacity of Liberal Opinion is here to stay!!
The larger fact about consumption is that under our "biggest profit take all" system is that needs which could be met in less demanding, more efficient ways are by-passed in favor of ways that maximize profit, while doing little to enhance the standard of living. Transportation is the most obvious case in point. Public transport could probably meet the needs of at least 90% of motorists at any particular time – if sufficient coverage by public transport were available – but profit creates a strong counterincentive to sell every person a vehicle, charging for fuel and insurance as well, and demean public transport as "socialism."
I will propose the first Global Start Date for consideration: the Autumnal Equinox of 2012, Sept. 22...that would give us this spring and summer to get the rest of the world on board, then 2010 and 2011 to get things planted and growing (thinking from a Northern Hemisphere point of view), so we might be harvesting meaningful stuffs by late 2012...I am not a farmer, although I am converting a good portion of my acre-fraction to food, so I don't know how reasonable this timeframe is, but we need to make a huge, global life-change, and we'll need food, and we need to do it quick...
So, anybody else ready to quit their jobs, give up their cars and electronic gadgets, socialize housing and start working on producing food? Circle the date on your calendars - September 22, 2012...
Anybody have a better date to start?
The production of crop per hectare has imporved greatly over the past thirty years. By using environmentaly unfriendly techniques that continue to ruin the land that the farmers till.
It is predicted that much of the land will not be able to produce crop at the same rate within fifty years. And dont forget the mother of all environmental hazards, Monsanto. If we have patents on the human genes, and the like, our fears will be compounded greatly by these companies, and humanity itself maybe jeopardized.
Love
Zero
All right: tell the giant corporations to stop consuming so much energy and natural resources: they will just lay off 300,000 more people.
The environmental, ecological, and biological scientists of India and China and many other non-western countries, after a life time of study, declare that we cannot save our environment anywhere on this planet if our population keeps growing, rich countries or poor countries. Ach, they're just scientists; what do they know.
Ecological footprint is a very simple concept - how much land is needed for each person to support his needs and lifestyle - the land needed to grow food (and that includes the area of the ocean to supply seafood as well), supply the energy and other resources AND to absorb and process the waste that is produced (that includes the landfills, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, the forest cover needed to reabsorb the carbon dioxide that's produced by burning fuels - trees can absorb only so much in a year). Right now we are treating the atmosphere and nature as a dumping place, forgetting or not caring that this is not private property, but shared by all and what happens to the atmosphere or the forests will affect everyone. The ecological footprint and the carbon footprint (a sub-set of EF) of most western nations and certain rogue eastern nations (the real axis of evil, in my opinion) are way too high. Think per capita. And don't forget all the colonization that took place in the Americas, Australia and Africa by the Europeans - if you were to pack them back into Europe, it would look worse than any third-world slum. Population growth needs to be stopped and total population needs to go down - but that can happen only gradually unless there are major disasters - natural or man-made. Reducing consumption can and must happen first. The argument to maintain a so-called standard of living is a pathetic attempt at justifying the current system and lifestyle without thinking about sustainability or equitable distribution of resources. It's dangerous.
"Even if we could today achieve zero population growth, that would barely touch the climate problem - where we need to cut emissions by 50 to 80 percent by mid-century. Given existing income inequalities, it is inescapable that overconsumption by the rich few is the key problem, rather than overpopulation of the poor many."
Therefore overpopulation in rich countries has a proportionally larger negative effect than that in poorer countries. Overpopulation IS the key problem. Overconsumption makes it worse.
I consume too much.
Over and over I see this silly argument. Seems awfully obvious to me that given the multiple crises now faced by the human race--peak oil, climate change, other environmental crises, the continuing presence and proliferation of nukes and other weapons coupled with the increase in corruption everywhere, the only thin hope for passage to the better world we could have in a few decades is if we finally wake up, overcome the tyranny of the corporation, and take all possible steps as rapidly as possible to bring the human race back into balance with the limits of the only planet we've got. This means we must reduce our population AND the consumption of the richest fourth or so, and it will only be possible if we allow ourselves adequate resources by giving up warfare at long last. Enormous resources are going into this insane game we keep playing, pf defining each other as enemies and devising ever more fiendish ways to kill a few of the group currently defined as "enemy." This is crazy and enormously counterproductive and expensive. If we knock it off we will liberate sufficient resources to convert to renewable energy production, and provide basic healthcare and education for all (worldwide). I believe it will be for nought unless we deal with the reality of overpopulation, however. There is a strong argument that humanity is way beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth, and has only been able to reach this point because of the subsidy provided by cheap oil--the energy of millions of prehistoric years, distilled into the densest energy source we've ever found. We can build solar panels and windmills, but this takes a lot of resources and energy and some say it isn't possible for such sources to replace oil and coal. Notably, they are the source of fertilizers and pesticides--without which it's questionable whether we can feed increasing numbers of humans (while their new houses displace the agricultural land they depend on, along with the water needed for irrigation). I do not want India to maintain its population and lifestyle--I'd rather see a gradual decline in population coupled with an increase in consumption on the part of the poor. On the other hand, the new Chinese mentality of trying to get rich appals me.
Yes, I worry about overpopulation, and no I am not anti-immigrant, suburban, anti-Catholic (not any more than I'm anti-Christian in general, and anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish and anti-Hindu). I think we need a one-child-per-woman policy, worldwide, no exceptions.
Yes, I recognize that it isn't politically possible, any more than is giving up war, and that our numbers will plummet quite soon instead due to some combination of disease (engineered or natural), warfare, or environmental catastrophe. But I can dream, that I'm a member of an intelligent species...
I'm happy to see someone realize that Mr.Pearce's arguments don't fly with her.Nor do they fly with me.Consumer lifestyle for some like those with multiple domiciles,SUVs and other things might be excessive-yes indeed.But let's not deny people in developing countries standards of living.Mr Pearce relegates us to a population-polluted world.ZPG is the answer not denial of cell phones,personal computers and a high standard of living.There's no turning back to the stone age !!! One child with quality of life until the world's population is substantially produced.How does Mr.Pearce answer to finding work for everyone and other multiple demographic problems.
And now for your up to date methane release forecast:
The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica has collapsed. That's another 4,000 square miles of ice that has become heat-absorbing open water in summer.
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April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Fossilized coral reefs formed the last time the Earth was warmer than today show sea levels could rise rapidly by the end of the century if global warming triggers a collapse of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
A “catastrophic” rise in the ocean of 4 meters to 6 meters (13 feet to 19.6 feet) is possible, said Paul Blanchon, a scientist at the National University of Marine Sciences in Cancun, Mexico, whose team studied the fossilized reefs. The death and re-emergence on higher elevation of reefs 121,000 years ago could only result from a rapid increase in ocean levels caused by the breakdown of ice sheets, he said.
A 20 foot rise now?!?! Hey Florida, what does a 20 foot ocean rise plus a 20 foot storm surge do for your state?
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I've never seen the Arctic Ocean's ice pack this mushy before (Cryosphere Today), not on April 15. Typically, the peak of the winter ice is in March. A windy day has already opened up large leads in the Arctic pack ice, leads that absorb the spring sunlight well. In particular, the ice pack north of Spitzbergen is mush. 10 mile wide leads above Siberia and above the Yukon are also troubling this early in the summer season. I'll be brutally honest and call for a record Arctic methane release this summer, followed by more of guess what next summer.
As a poster said earlier, it is not possible to separate population and consumption, nor our technologies, from the carrying capacity equation (K = PCT). To try and do so is stupid and plays into the hands of proponents of never-ending growth and larger families. It's a head in the sand approach.
The population problem exists at home, in the US, the UK, Europe and other more industrialized regions, just as more or more than in the less industrialized regions. More people living in smaller urban areas do not live in a vacuum away from the surrounding bioregions. As populations burgeon in those urban areas, pressure mounts to expand the built environment not only up but out. We are already running out of water, species, clean air, etc.
In my neck of the woods, Portland, Oregon, the plan is on to double the population in the next 50 years. Not only is this reckless, it is naive. No thought is given to where we will grow our food when the prime farmland that was supposed to be held in reserve is taken, as the plan now calls for. Where will we get our water to drink as the mountains dry up and the pure water reservoir we've enjoyed can no longer supply our basic needs, not just wanton abuse. More people living in urban areas both up and out means more people having deleterious impacts on the wild areas in their efforts to recreate outside the city.
And why should we want to keep doubling our population, even if it were possible to do so? Is every sperm sacred??
I hear your state is undergoing the same population unevennees as is my state of MO. I take it that rural OR is depopulating while Portland looks to be gaining more in population density, correct? If so, that's mirroring the same pattern out here in MO. The Kansas City and St Louis areas, suburbs and cities, are increasing their population densities while the rurals are depopulating. It's utterly depressing when you look at the whole picture.
It would be nice if that were the case, but that's not what I'm seeing in Oregon. What you will see is more sprawl and corporate alleys in all the rural areas. Of course, the economic downturn may be helping that to change. It may be our only hope.
I hate to burst the doom cloud hanging over the naysayers, but most of the problems facing humanity have been solved by Monsanto. They have patented a genetically modified human that thrives on all the toxins the company has developed which otherwise degrade the planet. One of the genetically modified tester models promoted in the new brochure can eat DDT for breakfast and shit organic cucumbers in time for its own lunch.
All people do not consume equally, and less consumption does not necessarily mean living in poverty or crowded conditions: buildings themselves involve very little consumption. But increasing population will still increase consumption -- it's just that an increase in American population will increase it faster.