Today’s report is from the UK:
It’s always shocking to see population growth issues in the news, let alone in the headlines. A reader sent me a link that piqued my interest and a Google News search found seven articles about a briefing from the Optimum Population Trust (OPT).
Two treat the subject more or less dispassionately:
And five are hyperbolic:
- Supreme Global Warming Derangement: Having Large Families ‘Is an Eco-crime’
- The Misanthropes
- Environmental lunancy reaches a new high
- British Think Tank: We Should Save The Planet By Killing Ourselves
- Children ‘bad for planet’
what’s it all about?
The OPT merely pointed out the simple and obvious fact that more people means more use of energy and other resources, thus more carbon emissions, thus more dramatic climate change. Reduce population growth or — to break the taboo and state the unthinkable — reduce the size of the world population and addressing climate change becomes more manageable.
Look at the reaction:
…this proposal totally ignores the financial realities of countries like Britain, France, Japan, and many others that are facing economic crises if their populations don’t start expanding soon. [source].
Eco-Radicals: They’ve long been with us, those who would rid Earth of humans. [emphasis in original, source]
This is the kind of extremist lunacy that calls into question the motives of some in the green movement. Rather than save the planet, there are environmentalists who seem bent on destroying Western civilization. [source]
You know where this is heading, right? The same place all of this global warming nonsense is heading. Government controls on all aspects of your up to and including what type of light bulbs you can use and how often you can procreate during your lifetime. [source]
the OPT briefing
Excerpts from A Population-Based Climate Strategy (PDF) released yesterday by the OPT:
In 2007 the world finally woke up to climate change. It has not, however, woken up to one of its fundamental causes — human population growth.
In scientific circles, the key role of population in climate change is widely acknowledged. The UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research says: “The main factors which have caused the rise in CO2 emission .. are twofold: (a) growth in population…and (b) growth in energy use per person.”
Policies to tackle climate change, by contrast, almost universally ignore population: it is seen as too sensitive and controversial.
The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has. The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of the population.
A population-based strategy also involves fewer of the taxes, regulations and other limits on personal freedom and mobility now being canvassed in response to climate change — travel taxes, congestion charging, water restrictions, carbon rationing. And because technological adaptation would be less urgent if population was stable or reducing, the economic costs of transition to a stable climate would be less and the transition itself would be smoother. To sum up, a population-based climate strategy would be easier, quicker, cheaper, freer and greener.
The current approach to mitigation emphasises one half of the equation (supply) while virtually ignoring the other (demand). It is based on two approaches which were once anathema to the environmental lobby: technical fix and predict and provide. OPT argues that while greener technologies and reduced consumption both have a vital role to play, treating population growth as a “given” — something over which we have no control — is a failure of courage and leadership in the face of a planetary emergency. It will do nothing to increase people’s awareness of how their own decisions about family size could have potentially devastating consequences for the environment in which their children grow up.
other posts in this series
See also the Trinifar index.
var addthis_pub = ‘97FGHZRQKIKWCE4H’;
Wow, some of those articles are almost caricatures of the most misinformed, far right, hyper-capitalist, hyper-growth opinions on the subject of population. The spirit of Julian Simon (who said we could keep growing the population for 7 billion years
) lives.
I wonder what the grandchildren of these people will think of them if they’re told of the views they pushed in the early part of this century.
It’s amazing how some of these blog posts have made the OPT out to be crazy, when they’re just publicizing something that ought to be fairly obvious in the first place.
thanks for presenting such a smart, sensible piece. i agree with you!
phonelesscord,
That looks like a good article you wrote. I’ll make a point of reading it soon.
Re: “…this proposal totally ignores the financial realities of countries like Britain, France, Japan, and many others that are facing economic crises if their populations don’t start expanding soon. ”
If the economic system can only carry on whilst there is growth then it is the economic system that is crazy, not those who point to the dangers of growth.
There are two conversations going on in society right now. One is based on ecologic realities. These are true and real. The other is from those who talk about economic realities – when in fact, our economic relationships are far easier to change than the physical and biological limits we are rubbing up against. One trouble is the view that there is either communism or our current particular form of capitalism and no other possible models or variations.
For example, is there something holy about the money supply being generated by private banks creating money from nothing and loaning it at interest. Perhaps there are other types of money creation that don’t demand the growth imperative.
Ecologists and economists usually carry on with parallel lines of thought. When they occasionally collide in public discourse, there is often fireworks. But the unstated givens of the economists (such as eternally growing consumption) usually prevail. We need to keep demanding they explain their “givens” and their assumptions.
At some point, population increase likely will lead to not enough resources to go around — a situation that humans traditionally have solved by creating an elite that has ample access to the available resources and an underclass that doesn’t.
“At some point, population increase likely will lead to not enough resources to go around — a situation that humans traditionally have solved by creating an elite that has ample access to the available resources and an underclass that doesn’t.”
You mean this hasn’t happened yet? I thought that the labels of First World and Third World were clear indicators of this.
Cenobite,
I suspect Paul would agree with you. But, as a matter of degree, it’s bound to get even worse.
Trin,
Are you in favor of imposed sterilization of 99% of all humans at birth?
Culling the herd?
Mankind will continue to multiply for time eternal.
Yours as well as my own short span make no difference at all and I have no want to be buried in a fancy funeral plot that will be paved over in the future. Why we even give care to what takes place in another millennium is merely exercises in philosophy. Those that we will ever love or care for will long be gone.
That is a rather cynical take on the whole topic but, world population will continue to explode nonetheless. It may make sense to children in school at present but mindsets change as one grows older.
There are areas of the world that are as open as the Midwest of the USA and can sustain life, however, your main point is always the quality of the air and water, correct?
Again, I will no longer have any knowledge of what the future holds for this planet, environmentally. I can only hope that the future population learns to live in what was once considered idyllic communes by the hippies of the 1960s as that will be what will be left of what goes around.
Cooperation between all will be what keeps mankind alive.
Humans also have a spiritual need that should play a large part of survival in the year 2525. None of us should ever abandon that.