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It's Not Sex, It's Money
Population growth is not a problem - it's among those who consume the least. So why isn't anyone targeting the very rich?
It's no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: it's about the only environmental issue for which they can't be blamed. The brilliant Earth systems scientist James Lovelock, for instance, claimed last month that "those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational." But it's Lovelock who is being ignorant and irrational.
A paper published yesterday in the journal Environment and Urbanization shows that the places where population has been growing fastest are those in which carbon dioxide has been growing most slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for instance, sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5% of the world's population growth and just 2.4% of the growth in CO2. North America turned out only 4% of the extra people, but 14% of the extra emissions. Sixty-three percent of the world's population growth happened in places with very low emissions.
Even this does not capture it. The paper points out that about one sixth of the world's population is so poor that it produces no significant emissions at all. This is also the group whose growth rate is likely to be highest. Households in India earning less than 3,000 rupees (£40) a month use a fifth of the electricity per head and one seventh of the transport fuel of households earning 30,000 rupees or more. Street sleepers use almost nothing. Those who live by processing waste (a large part of the urban underclass) often save more greenhouse gases than they produce.
Many of the emissions for which poorer countries are blamed should in fairness belong to the developed nations. Gas flaring by companies exporting oil from Nigeria, for instance, has produced more greenhouse gases than all other sources in sub-Saharan Africa put together. Even deforestation in poor countries is driven mostly by commercial operations delivering timber, meat and animal feed to rich consumers. The rural poor do far less harm.
The paper's author, David Satterthwaite, points out that the old formula taught to students of development - that total impact equals population times affluence times technology (I = PAT) - is wrong. Total impact should be measured as I = CAT: consumers times affluence times technology. Many of the world's people use so little that they wouldn't figure in this equation. They are the ones who have most children.
While there's a weak correlation between global warming and population growth, there's a strong correlation between global warming and wealth. I've been taking a look at a few super-yachts, as I'll need somewhere to entertain Labour ministers in the style to which they are accustomed. First I went through the plans for Royal Falcon Fleet's RFF135, but when I discovered that it burns only 750 litres of fuel per hour I realised that it wasn't going to impress Lord Mandelson. I might raise half an eyebrow in Brighton with the Overmarine Mangusta 105, which sucks up 850 litres per hour. But the raft that's really caught my eye is made by Wally Yachts in Monaco. The WallyPower 118 (which gives total wallies a sensation of power) consumes 3,400 litres per hour when travelling at 60 knots. That's nearly a litre per second. Another way of putting it is 31 litres per kilometre.
Of course, to make a real splash I'll have to shell out on teak and mahogany fittings, carry a few jetskis and a mini-submarine, ferry my guests to the marina by private plane and helicopter, offer them bluefin tuna sushi and beluga caviar, and drive the beast so fast that I mash up half the marine life of the Mediterranean. As the owner of one of these yachts I'll do more damage to the biosphere in 10 minutes than most Africans inflict in a lifetime. Now we're burning, baby.
Someone I know who hangs out with the very rich tells me that in the banker belt of the lower Thames valley there are people who heat their outdoor swimming pools to bath temperature, all round the year. They like to lie in the pool on winter nights, looking up at the stars. The fuel costs them £3,000 a month. One hundred thousand people living like these bankers would knacker our life support systems faster than 10 billion people living like the African peasantry. But at least the super wealthy have the good manners not to breed very much, so the rich old men who bang on about human reproduction leave them alone.
In May the Sunday Times carried an article headlined "Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation". It revealed that "some of America's leading billionaires have met secretly" to decide which good cause they should support. "A consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat." The ultra-rich, in other words, have decided that it's the very poor who are trashing the planet. You grope for a metaphor, but it's impossible to satirise.
James Lovelock, like Sir David Attenborough and Jonathan Porritt, is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust. It is one of dozens of campaigns and charities whose sole purpose is to discourage people from breeding in the name of saving the biosphere. But I haven't been able to find any campaign whose sole purpose is to address the impacts of the very rich.
The obsessives could argue that the people breeding rapidly today might one day become richer. But as the super wealthy grab an ever greater share and resources begin to run dry, this, for most of the very poor, is a diminishing prospect. There are strong social reasons for helping people to manage their reproduction, but weak environmental reasons - except among wealthier populations.
The Optimum Population Trust glosses over the fact that the world is going through demographic transition: population growth rates are slowing down almost everywhere and the number of people is likely, according to a paper in Nature, to peak this century, probably at about 10 billion. Most of the growth will take place among those who consume almost nothing.
But no one anticipates a consumption transition. People breed less as they become richer, but they don't consume less - they consume more. As the habits of the super-rich show, there are no limits to human extravagance. Consumption can be expected to rise with economic growth until the biosphere hits the buffers. Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, in Lovelock's words, "hiding from the truth". It is the worst kind of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.
So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich destroying our living systems? Where is the direct action against super-yachts and private jets? Where's Class War when you need it?
It's time we had the guts to name the problem. It's not sex; it's money. It's not the poor; it's the rich.
- Posted in
50 Comments so far
Show AllGeorge, great work as usual. Here is a solution. Free public transport. It is the achilles heel of the fossil-fuel industry. It will drive a stake through the heart of the autosprawl system. http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
The rich believe that they are rich because God favors them and that the poor (which now includes most of us who used to be the secure middle class) are poor because God doesn't approve of us. They really believe this. There is no way they can be convinced otherwise, and the disruption that would be caused by an attempt to redistribute wealth by force would harm the poor because the rich have all the tools of repression at their fingertips.
Free public transport is a wonderful idea, but how would it be enacted?
We need the best minds of a couple of generations to stop being driven my madness (understandable as it is), starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through streets and get creative in figuring out ways to get at the minds of those who have power but are psychologically on the fence and might be reachable. We need a communications revolution using all the techniques of advertising to upset their psychological apple cart and make them believe that the excrement that's starting to hit the air conditioner will mess them up too. We can't change their minds through persuasion but maybe imagery of some kind can do it.
Can this be done? I don't know. But it's worth a try. The alternative is to give up and let it all go bad.
"Can this be done? I don't know. But it's worth a try. The alternative is to give up and let it all go bad."
Of course the people can be convinced to stand up, fight, and win the class war, very easily. Today, the people are sick and tired of living in the elites' latrine. It's going up in flames any day now, marking the end of the "last gilded age".
George, I usually enjoy your articles very much but I have to disagree with this one.
We human beings have a propensity for getting lost in details and not seeing that forest for the trees.
Here's my take.........
Mother nature has been stashing away carbon in the form of oil, coal, gas, etc for many millions of years. The many species that now inhabit the earth are the product of that evolving system. Along comes modern humans, and mostly due to insatiably greedy white men, in 200 years we release a significant portion of that carbon that our earth mother has been burying for perhaps a billion years. Or more.
The ecosystems are changing rapidly. The true question is, can we adapt as a species? Maybe. But not as we are now.
Growing enough food to feed 10 billion requires huge expenditures of energy. Then all that food has to be distributed to the masses. More huge energy expenditure.
The logistics of feeding and transporting that many people is staggering. If not downright impossible. And we are not solving the problem. It's getting worse.
As for "green energy".....how much energy is required to manufacture enough solar panels and wind turbines to stop consuming oil? For 10 billion people? A lot!
Let me put it another way. If the power went out in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Dubai, Tokyo, etc.,.....could all those people start growing their own veggies? Even if you grew a garden on every rooftop and every empty space in every city, where would you even get enough dirt? And it still wouldn't be nearly enough.
So, I disagree George. Overpopulation is the problem. And so is human greed.
We do agree on one thing. Eat the rich!
I agree with you and everyone else who realizes that overpopulation is the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to the worlds overall problems. Yes the rich do consume more energy as individuals so they have a bigger impact on the environment as far as CO2 goes. And yes they need to conserve more and use less no doubt about it. But when you talk about billions of poor people, even though they are living very energy efficient lives they still have to eat a LOT of food.
Until Oil and the industrial revolution our population remained less than a billion for thousands of years, so I think we can reasonably assume that 6 billion plus is not the natural order of things.
Resources like water, fish and farm land are all under stress. As glb said, fossil fuels have allowed us to use the stored energy of the Sun to perform more work than we ever could have with our own muscles. This has allowed our population to grow out of proportion with what we can support without the fossil fuel crutch. At some point those fossil fuels will no longer be able to meet the worlds demand and things are going to start return to a more natural balance of population to overall energy available. (Less than a billion?) It is not going to be pretty for large segments of the populations, especially those who are in large population areas who need to have their food trucked in.
"Yes the rich do consume more energy as individuals so they have a bigger impact on the environment as far as CO2 goes."
Not just as far as CO2 goes. Golf courses, to use one example, consume many more resources other than just CO2.
"It is not going to be pretty for large segments of the populations, especially those who are in large population areas who need to have their food trucked in."
Many of the countries that are at the top of the per capita CO2 emissions lists are NOT densely populated. They are wealthy, sparsely populated, in areas that are not conducive to human habitation. It is far more costly to truck in food to a sparsely populated area, than it is to truck it in to a densely populated one.
"Until Oil and the industrial revolution our population remained less than a billion for thousands of years, so I think we can reasonably assume that 6 billion plus is not the natural order of things."
Is it "natural" for humans to live in brick houses? Wear shoes? Cook food? Is agriculture natural?
"As glb said, fossil fuels have allowed us to use the stored energy of the Sun to perform more work than we ever could have with our own muscles"
And before there were fossil fuels, humans used the wind, humans used the muscles of other animals, etc, to perform more work than they ever could have with their own muscles. Is that "natural"?
"This has allowed our population to grow out of proportion with what we can support without the fossil fuel crutch. At some point those fossil fuels will no longer be able to meet the worlds demand and things are going to start return to a more natural balance of population to overall energy available. (Less than a billion?)"
This has allowed our standard of living, our wealth, our consumption to grow out of proportion with what we can support without the fossil fuel crutch. At some point those fossil fuels will no longer be able to meet the worlds demand and things are going to start return to a more natural balance of standard of living to overall energy available. (No cars. No flying. No golf courses in the middle of the desert, in places such as Arizona. No swimming pools in the middle of the desert.)
Overpopulation is one problem of many problems.
It is absolutely false that most of those who are "obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men." People fleeing incessant conflict and poverty, who have lost everything and who are not white are very concerned with population growth. People who have no jobs and are told that the job they just applied for had three hundred other applicants are very concerned about population growth.
This article is blatantly retrogressive.
Thomas,
I think you need to read some Marx. Unemployment has nothing to do with population growth.
Jim Shea
I have to disagree with Monbiot on this one.
In the long haul population is a big part of the problem. Fifty years ago India and China were contributing little to global warming. But the world's poor want what the rich have, and that's impossible with our present carbon-based economy. Now the Chinese and Indians are getting richer and they are contributing enormously to global warming. Eventually, the same will happen with other poor populations, and the problem will be enormously magnified.
We have to: 1. Cut carbon dioxide emission, 2. Cut consumption, and 3. Reverse population growth.
What the world's poor want is irrelevant. All the stuff they (or we) want literally represent a hole in the ground somewhere. Consider the damage that we, the rich (comparatively, at least) have done so far. And consider the fact that to double the economic output of today requires the consumption of all the resources consumed throughout human history up to the point the doubling is measured from (i.e. up until today). There just isn't enough world in the world for any of us to get much farther in terms of economic output. Remember that 2% global growth means doubling in just 35 years. This lifestyle is just not going to continue very long regardless of the power source we use.
I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with your prescriptions, though.
Fifty years ago neither China nor India were the rich world manufacturers, they may consume more now but mainly they produce more for us to consume...
For those who are interested, wikipedia has a list of per capita carbon dioxide emissions here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
The US is 9th. Canada 10th. The top 3 are 3 gulf Arab countries: Qatar, UAE, Kuwait.
China, which is often cast as an environmental criminal is 96th. India, another country often cast as an environmental criminal is 139th.
Some other countries:
Norway, 40th. Denmark 31st. Germany 36th. Australia, 11th.
"So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich ...?"
That's what the heavily armed and armoured urban police forces are here to suppress.
To Serve and Protect...the wealthy.
Exactly. The super-wealthy have already made their plans for survival and they dont give a damn about anyone else! In their eyes, they are the "winners", the "fittest to survive" and they aint gonna change because they do not fear the people, they laugh at the people.
Karl Marx took on Thomas Malthus a long time ago and proved that the latter was wrong. Even after all these years there are still those that believe that Malthusian theory has any relevancy. Malthus was a defender of the capitalist system and chief apologist for it. It appears that Lovelock and other "greens", who reject the class analysis of historical development, continue to support the capitalist ideology of Malthus. From this wrong thinking come wrong "solutions", such as the idea that capitalism can apply capitalist "solutions" to the environmental crisis facing the world. Of course the capitalists love this stuff as it places the blame always on the victims of capitalism itself rather than on an unsustainable economic system - capitalism itself.
Monbiot points out the obvious to us though many don't want to accept it as true. More than the sheer number of people on the planet alone it is the way that our economic activity is organized that is destroying the planet's ecology. Those who do not accept this basic truth simply don't want to confront the real issue of CAPITALISM.
Capitalism simply is an extremely destructive economic method of organizing work. Most of what we as people do under the capitalist economic system is wasted energy, destructive misuse of energy, and depletes Mother Nature in totally unnecessary manner.
There are different forms of capitalism. Our current form, which maintains that positive growth only is normal, is extremely flawed. Systems that accept that negative or static growth is normal are sustainable.
George, of course you're right.
And, you've also made a powerful argument against the idea that public problems, issues can be solved by charities. Especially large foundations like the Gates Foundation.
Here we go again, with absolutists of many stripes insisting that "the problem" is "one thing" and that different absolutists who identify a different "one thing" as "the problem" are wrong wrong wrong. As the Beatles sang, "Yeah yeah yeah."
Agreed that hyper-consumption by the super-rich is vicious criminal behavior, and that for members of this tiny sliver of humanity to "address" human overpopulation as "the problem" without attacking hyper-consumption, and over-consumption in general, is ugly, self-interested, and in many ways mean-spirited behavior. That does not "prove" that 7,000,000,000, or 10,000,000,000, or any number of humans is "not over-population," or is "not a problem," or "is sustainable and healthy" for the living Earth.
Agreed that consumption and over-consumption by much greater numbers of poor and working-class and "middle-class" and rich people in industrialized colonizing capitalist countries is and has been a primary driver of ecological destabilization and devastation on Earth. That does not "prove" that 7,000,000,000, or 10,000,000,000, or any number of humans is "not over-population," or is "not a problem," or "is sustainable and healthy" for the living Earth.
Plainly the theories of Thomas Malthus have been "proven wrong" in specific numerical, arithmetical and ideological fashion. Running that up the flag pole every time someone asserts that there are "too many people" does not "prove" that there are NOT "too many people" or that there are no limits to human population on Earth, nor does it "prove" that 7,000,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 is healthy and sustainable if we would just smash capitalism and stop over-consumption, or stop consumption itself if we take the "I = CAT" formula at face value.
Monbiot doesn't define "consumption," and certainly street-sleepers and garbage-pickers "produce" almost zero greenhouse gases especially in comparison with yacht-riders and jet-travelers. But as things stand, even street-sleepers and garbage-pickers are living inside the industrial global economy, albeit dependent on crumbs and on the waste-stream generated by consumers, over-consumers and hyper-consumers. As another poster pointed out, it is still the plainly unsustainable system of industrialized agriculture that is "feeding" continued population growth among the desperate classes.
Agreed that we need to attack hyper-consumption, over-consumption, and consumption in general of industrial products. Agreed that we need to attack the colonizing capitalist economic system and ideology and the elite classes that dominate this system, society, and the Earth. Agreed that we need to have far more people with access to land doing community-based food production work, with Permaculture design of complex human-scale food systems and restored natural ecosystems replacing industrial agriculture. Etc etc etc.
But i also agree, based on fundamental principles of environmental science and ecosystem balance and the behavior and space and food requirements of large omnivores, that there are "too many people", and that no matter what ideological or analytical "proofs" anyone runs up the flag pole, 7,000,000,000 humans CANNOT live sustainably on this Earth.
So in my work and my life, i personally limit my consumption, and i work socially politically and economically to challenge existing social political and economic systems and to build more humane and sustainable systems.
AND, i personally limit my own REPRODUCTION, and i work to promote the understanding that the way the Earth works, 7,000,000,000 humans is BY ANY MEASURE "too many people" and that this number WILL be reduced either intentionally or naturally. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that i "support" specific theories or programs of hyper-consuming elites to focus on or "solve" human over-population. But bluntly insisting that "human over-population is a myth and is not a problem" is simply to promote a different myth.
As in so many areas of human thought and argument, the right approach is "both / and," NOT "either / or."
"But bluntly insisting that "human over-population is a myth and is not a problem" is simply to promote a different myth."
Right again.
Very nice comment, well done and reasoned.
Thanks Henry8, i think "virtual" communication is prone to misunderstanding and inhumanity, sometimes i think if we were all sitting in a room looking each other in the face we might not find ourselves at loggerheads so often...
Actually, Rich Old White Farts love population growth: it gives them a great supply of consumers as customers, wage slaves, and an army of unemployed young people to use in their violent military enterprises around the globe. (They also get golf caddies.)
Let us take a quintessential Rich Old White Fart, such as Richard Cheney: he never complains about overpopulation.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically and physically impossible, and yes, it does cause environmental deterioration. This is science, and not political posturing.
Sure, people on the left, right, and center reject the science; however, they will be very lucky if the do not live to see the end of the exponential curve.
This is brilliant. Got a good laugh or two out of it. Shout it from the rooftops!
from the article:
"It's time we had the guts to name the problem. It's not sex; it's money. It's not the poor; it's the rich."
naming the problem (money and the rich), we also name the solution (sex and the poor)...
more sex with more partners, more locally-grown food and marijuana, more social interaction involving participatory music, singing and dancing...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...acoustic, agrarian living...let's get those gardens growing!
Let us not forget water. The melting of the glaciers is going to mean the end of fresh water supplies for many millions of the earth's people. There is not enough fresh water to support the unlimited growth of either the rich or the poor.
Thank you.
The US Govt recognizes that fresh water will be the most desirable raw resource by 2050. They are already gearing the military to protect North American supplies (including Canada), and control EuroAsian sources.
Wars will be fought over water rights.
It has long been known that the industrial west consumes far more than the developing world, and that one individual in the US consumes more in a lifetime than a whole village in the developing countries. This is not a 'new concept'. I=PAT accounts for that, this trendy little 'oh, no, it must be I=CAT is no different. All those children being born to poor people in developing countries will want an automobile and a TV. Can't blame them for that, but 10 billion producing pollution is a lot worse than 6 billion doing it. Get a life. This article is silly. Funny, yes, but silly.
MichaelC
from TIME: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1925718,00.html
The scientific name is the Holocene Age, but climatologists like to call our current climatic phase the Long Summer. The history of Earth's climate has rarely been smooth. From the moment life began on the planet billions of years ago, the climate has swung drastically and often abruptly from one state to another — from tropical swamp to frozen ice age. Over the past 10,000 years, however, the climate has remained remarkably stable by historical standards: not too warm and not too cold, or Goldilocks weather. That stability has allowed Homo sapiens, numbering perhaps just a few million at the dawn of the Holocene, to thrive; farming has taken hold and civilizations have arisen. Without the Long Summer, that never would have been possible.
But as human population has exploded over the past few thousand years, the delicate ecological balance that kept the Long Summer going has become threatened. The rise of industrialized agriculture has thrown off Earth's natural nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, leading to pollution on land and water, while our fossil-fuel addiction has moved billions of tons of carbon from the land into the atmosphere, heating the climate ever more. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2008.)
Now a new article in the Sept. 24 issue of Nature says the safe climatic limits in which humanity has blossomed are more vulnerable than ever and that unless we recognize our planetary boundaries and stay within them, we risk total catastrophe. "Human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that keep Earth in the desirable Holocene state," writes Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Environmental Institute and the author of the article. "The result could be irreversible and, in some cases, abrupt environmental change, leading to a state less conducive to human development." (See TIME's special report on the environment.)
(continued)
Regarding climate change, for instance, Rockstrom proposes an atmospheric-carbon-concentration limit of no more than 350 parts per million (p.p.m.) — meaning no more than 350 atoms of carbon for every million atoms of air. (Before the industrial age, levels were at 280 p.p.m.; currently they're at 387 p.p.m. and rising.) That, scientists believe, should be enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, which should be safely below a climatic tipping point that could lead to the wide-scale melting of polar ice sheets, swamping coastal cities. "Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change," writes Rockstrom.
That's the impact of breaching only one of nine planetary boundaries that Rockstrom identifies in the paper. Other boundaries involve freshwater overuse, the global agricultural cycle and ozone loss. In each case, he scans the state of science to find ecological limits that we can't violate, lest we risk passing a tipping point that could throw the planet out of whack for human beings. It's based on a theory that ecological change occurs not so much cumulatively, but suddenly, after invisible thresholds have been reached. Stay within the lines, and we might just be all right.
In three of the nine cases Rockstrom has pointed out, however — climate change, the nitrogen cycle and species loss — we've already passed his threshold limits. In the case of global warming, we haven't yet felt the full effects, Rockstrom says, because carbon acts gradually on the climate — but once warming starts, it may prove hard to stop unless we reduce emissions sharply. Ditto for the nitrogen cycle, where industrialized agriculture already has humanity pouring more chemicals into the land and oceans than the planet can process, and for wildlife loss, where we risk biological collapse. "We can say with some confidence that Earth cannot sustain the current rate of loss without significant erosion of ecosystem resilience," says Rockstrom.
The paper offers a useful way of looking at the environment, especially for global policymakers. As the world grapples with climate change this week at the U.N. and G-20 summit, some clearly posted speed limits from scientists could help politicians craft global deals on carbon and other shared environmental threats. It's tough for negotiators to hammer out a new climate-change treaty unless they know just how much carbon needs to be cut to keep people safe. Rockstrom's work delineates the limits to human growth — economically, demographically, ecologically — that we transgress at our peril.
(continued)
The problem is that identifying those limits is a fuzzy science — and even trickier to translate into policy. Rockstrom's atmospheric-carbon target of 350 p.p.m. has scientific support, but the truth is that scientists still aren't certain as to how sensitive the climate will be to warming over the long-term — it's possible that the atmosphere will be able to handle more carbon or that catastrophe could be triggered at lower levels. And by setting a boundary, it might make policymakers believe that we can pollute up to that limit and still be safe. That's not the case — pollution causes cumulative damage, even below the tipping point. By focusing too much on the upper limits, we still risk harming Earth. "Ongoing changes in global chemistry should alarm us about threats to the persistence of life on Earth, whether or not we cross a catastrophic threshold any time soon," writes William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in a commentary accompanying the Nature paper.
But as the world attempts to break the carbon addiction that already has it well on the way to climate catastrophe, more clearly defined limits will be useful. But climate diplomats should remember that while they can negotiate with one another, ultimately, they can't negotiate with the planet. Unless we manage our presence on Earth better, we may soon be in the last days of our Long Summer.
Thank you, Ezeflyer, for a fabulous and well-informed summary.
Most welcome.
And thanks for quoting working scientists published in esteemed and peer-reviewed Nature Magazine.
So then, there is a problem with over population, only it's at the top layers of civilization which consume the most.
Correction: Those rich old fat men produce a LOT of children out of wedlock.
They need to be knackered.
Excellent commentary.
Of course population growth is a problem, but it is obscenely hypocritical for those of us in the rich countries who consume far more than our share of world resources to focus on that issue without first addressing our far greater contribution to resource over-consumption.
The fact is, a sustainable lifestyle would entail both a 3rd world level of consumption and stable population. To my knowledge, there are only 2 substantial population units in the world that have come close to meeting those requirements: Cuba and the state of Kerala in India. As it happens they are also rare, if not unique, in achieving a near first world level of the basic quality of life indicators (infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy) on a third world level of income.
Circumstantial evidence would suggest that the unusually high degree of social equity in Kerala and Cuba has something to do with these achievements.
Here is a 1997 article about Kerala by William Alexander:
http://www.nacce.org/1997/Kerala.html
Yours, too, excellent commentary.
ezyflier and all the rest of you:
350 ppm is the magic number of carbon dioxide molecules per million that will be safe and we have 387 now and need to come down. It was about 280 before the industrial revolution unleashed the carbon dioxide from burning a fuel engine.
Now: go to the website 350.org and you will see that on Oct 24 which is 6 weeks before the International Conference on Climate in Copenhagen and on Oct 24 we want to demonstrate all over the world the number 350.
You can throw around 350 blades of grass or blow 350 soap bubbles or bake 350 pies and take photos of 350 people standing together etc etc and send the photos to the website 350.org The photos will be used to stimulate the talks in Copenhagen and remember a word is one language but the number 350 is universal and understood across languages.
Good luck -- it is an easy and fun and yet serious thing to do..
webwalker said it all. I'm getting more and more irritated with foolish comentaries that claim population is the whole peoblem and everything will be fine if we just bring it down--or no no, it's not the overpopulation by the poor that's the problem it's overconsumption by the rich, and if we can get THAT under control the population can keep rising forever without consequence. Both assertions are ridiculous. Clearly our population is already too high; clearly the worst damage is done way out of proportion by the richest, who happen to be slower contributers to population growth. Nonetheless, the present population is unsustainable even if we did bust the rich--speed the day! And equally needless to say, people living in the disgustingly piggish style described by the winter swimming pool story would overpopulate the Earth at a much lower level.
Since an improvement in standard of living of the poor, and education especially of females would be the fastest noncoercive way to reduce population, increasing equality would be all to the good. But bringing the poorest up to a decent minimum standards of living, say $5000/year, for justice and to slow population growth, unfortunately is not going to happenm, and neither is any control of the rich without a major disaster. Gortunately disaster is looming. Likely that disaster will also put a slashing stop to population growth. Too bad it has to happen that way, but man is not an intelligent species, contrary to what he claims.
Deforestation both releases more greenhouse gases and removes oxygen producing life from the Earth. Overpopulation in 2nd world and 3rd world nations is producing a huge amount of deforestation. Just look at the massive amount of deforestation under “center”-left President Lulu of Brazil. Sure per capita rates of CO2 are less in China and India but the shear massive number of people along with a rising middle class has China now releasing the most CO2 in the world. The Islamic countries in particular want to outbreed everyone else. Farm land is going to drastically shrink in the world because of global warming and that’s another reason we need to stop the population growth. We will not be able to feed all these extra mouths. Crowded cities are not a psychologically or spiritually healthy way for humans to live. I remember when Austin Texas was a smaller mellower friendlier city and now its like Houston, another city full of frustrated stressed out people with less and less green space.
For once in my life I don't agree with George Monbiot. It's true most population growth is in developing countries but that doesn't make population growth irrelevant. On the contrary, it makes ethical population control (by education and example) ever more important. Otherwise the rich countries are ever better placed to exercise Malthusian control over the world's poor .... and that's economic genocide or as someone wrote to me today, something even worse, omnicide ... that condemns the environment and the other creatures of the world to destruction as well.
Actually Monbiot's tongue is ever-so-slightly in his cheek. Of course the truth is that we are all, to one degree or another, responsible for the climate crisis. Monbiot is less interested in apportioning blame than in making sure that all are included. With some of the same deliciously twisted logic of the elites, he lassos them into the corral of responsibility.
Poet
We secretively adore the rich, or at least the lifestyles of the rich and famous--People say that if they were suddenly bestowed with a fortune that they would be different. Sadly, this is not true; if/when it happens, some become even more brutal toward the class they once lived among. Ironic indeed.
pjd412 you are right. when people who temporarily have
no job will what other people who have no job do
stay home and have sex! it doesn't cost anything. the
same reason that kids in urban areas have high pregnancy
rates. bored and no money. perhaps we should start to
pimp out hybrid cars as a alternative to limos and
such that the rich drive.
Kids in urban areas don't have nearly as many kids as adults in most of the rural world - not that those kids consume what even poor Americans or Europeans do.
Are the rich less bored? Having lived with rich and poor of various levels, I have seen no such pattern.
Could facile access to education, contraceptives, and abortion make a difference? Could reduced exposure to public ridicule mean anything?
Pimping out hybrids sounds like a good half-measure -- and half-measures are not bad, only inadequate by themselves. Free public transport sounds better: not only the self-styled hip (or whatever they call themselves now) consume, especially in the supposedly affluent US of A, where people spin those little hamster-wheels around pretty fast and burn through a lot of toys without being able to pay for details like housing, education, or medical care.
- Free public transportation!
- Green housing with earthen construction! (Earthen houses are cheap, easy-to-build, safe, comfortable, and can be very attractive.)
- Non-cooperation with consumer culture insofar as this can be managed.
You go, George! Now I have a ready link to respond to the everpresent "population is the problem population is the problem population is the problem" people on internet sites and in conversations. Maybe I'll have the link printed on the back of my business cards.
But I beg to differ about one thing--the simple living movement, the organic permaculturing back-to-the-land movement, and the environmental movement, (especially that part that pays attention to environmental racism) are all strongly focused on the problem of the rich. And of course, there are the Yes Men, and Billionaires for Bush in whatever incarnation they manifest now. Just to name a few.
But just in case that's not enough, let's start a new (old) movement that's a twist on Swift: EAT THE RICH (young, while they're tender and haven't done much damage.)
"Someone I know who hangs out with the very rich tells me that in the banker belt of the lower Thames valley there are people who heat their outdoor swimming pools to bath temperature, all round the year. They ..."
This bloke I know, he hangs out with a lot of 'them', and he tells me that "They ..."
But, to cite such anecdotal evidence in a seriously-argued article would be too anti-intellectual, too reliant on facile stereotyping for Common Dreams, or George Monbiot, surely?
This is what I've been saying for many years.
We need a carbon footprint maximum BY LAW.
If you want to be a pig, fine. Buy some credits from the poor.
The rich are killing us. Killing them may be ruled self defense.
Now back to earth. The rich own the laws and the lawyers and the police. Forget about killing them or reining in their pig, giant carbon footprint behavior. They are planning to kill us with "benign capitalist neglect". They will price us out of life. They will then turn on each other. They just don't get it.
At any rate, when this part of our life phase is over the important part begins. I wouldn't call the next plane of existence Heaven or Hell but I would not want to enter it after a life of predatory behavior towards my fellow men. This means YOU, rich folks. I disagree with the reincarnation folks about karma making evil rich folks come back as lowly bugs or whatever. It would never end. No, I think we go on to something beyond this limited cucoon existence of this universe.
Remember you elite pigs, You can't take it with you so enjoy it while it lasts because it will soon be over. You will die believing in all those lies the molecular biologists have been whispering in your ear lately about immortality. LOL
Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class is a chilling read. It is cited in numerous other works on economics and culture since its publication in 1899. The term, "conspicuous consumption," came from Veblen and others have expounded his same theories:
Irving Kristol
Daniel Bell
Christopher Lasch
David C. Korten
Karl Marx / Fredrich Engels
The article is not a new perspective: it is one that has been ignored for the greater part of the 20th century.
I don't think most of the country really understands what money can buy...
I don't think the public really understands what the rich consume...
If the average income in the United States is $30,000 a year, then that is how much the average person will consume in energy, natural resources, and the labor that goes into producing or providing them in a year.
If one person's income can be $300,000,000 a year, $3,000,000 a year, $30,000,000 a year, or $300,000,000 a year, then that is how much that one person can consume in energy, natural resources, and the labor that goes into producing or providing them in a year.
If you have 1,000,000 persons with an disposable income of $300,000 annually;
If you have 100,000 persons with a disposable income of $3,000,000 annually;
If you have 10,000 persons with a disposable income of $3,000,000 annually;
If you have 1,000 persons with a disposable income of $30,000,000 annually;
and so on...
You add up the average income of 1,111,000 people and their consumption in a year against the averages of the rich and begin to understand the point of the article...
Some one posted on the weakness of anecdotes, like the heated swimming pools...but that is just one of countless examples of "conspicuous consumption" that has depleted our rainforests for custom-made furniture; usurped millions of acres and water for private property, to build homes, retreats, resorts, golf courses, and personal safari parks; animals killed for their fur? try the tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, belts, suitcases, briefcases, handbags, luxury cars and boats, all made with animal skins of every kind; try the materials that go into closets of clothing, home interior design, that changes every season; the electricity, gas, food, water are consumed at lesiure, around the world, by th rich who have ostentatious and private hotels, spas, parking lots, roadways, airports, docks, and shops filled with merchandise made with materials which are consumed AT LEISURE, meaning needlessly. In a year. Every year. After year. After year...
The weakness of anecdotes? I worked for an international law firm representing the wealthy and powerful corporations and private persons. Where $1,000,000 puts you among the "working class."
Even the attorneys who represented the private companies and persons knew there was something catastrophic to the consumption of the rich and the wealthy the difference is under/over $100M)they worked for, as they made the contracts to rope off land, bodies of water, resources and materials, energy and food to accomodate the wants of one over the the needs of many.
People need to really understand...they need to dream bigger...they need to imagine greater...what can money buy...what can money get...what can money have...what can money take...what can money...how much...how much more...and ,000,000,000,000, and so on.
Understand there are people in this world that have known the answers for tens, for hundreds, for thousands of years,and find new ones every day...
I suggest we take all the energy resources available daily and divide it exactly by the number of people there are and we all get an equal share. You can pass on your share to one child. If you and your partner have four children, they each only get 1/2 a share. If you as a couple have only one child, she or he gets a double share. If you have no children, you can sell your share but you have to get spayed or neutered (a "proud cut" of course, just a vasectomy!)