Overpopulation or Overconsumption - Handout
Introduction
“Certainly as a world we would be better off, if we had
say half as many people.” “It’s simplistic to say that X
number of people is too much for the planet. Historically
it's quite clear the axis that has changed overtime.” “We
see life-support systems breaking down even with five
billion people.” “There is no physical limit in the long
run on the number of people that this planet can
support.”
Paul Ehrlich Article (at 0.37 minute)
In a recent article published in Nature, Paul Ehrlich
brings back the issue of human population reduction, as
all individuals inevitably have an impact on Earth's lifesupport systems. Although in different ways and to
varying degrees it is in everybody's interest to reduce
ethically both the size of the population and our per
capita impacts, the question is whether societies can develop a widely supported vision of
the targets to rescaling in terms of population size, prosperity, equity and risk of reducing
Earth’s carrying capacity.
And this is the same Paul Ehrlich, who in 1968 with his controversial book “The Population
Bomb” argued that the human population was too high already and that while the level of
disaster could be mitigated, humanity could not prevent severe famines, the spread of
diseases, social unrest and other negative consequences of overpopulation. He argued that
societies must take strong action to curb population growth in order to mitigate future
disasters both ecological and social. The Population Bomb began with this statement: the
battle to feed all of humanity is over, in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve
to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can
prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate. There is no - I repeat no - conceivable
technological solution to the problems we face, experts are now predicting that India and
China should be written off, there's no hope of saving them. Even in America famine will kill
millions by the turn of the century, many metals and commodities will have a run-out.
The bet (at 2.21 minute)
In 1980 Julian L. Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a widely
followed scientific wager in 1980, betting on a mutually
agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade
leading up to 1990. Simon had Ehrlich choose five commodity
metals. Copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten were
chosen and Simon bet that their prices would decrease, while
Ehrlich bet they would increase. Ehrlich ultimately lost the bet and all five commodities that
were selected as the basis for the wage would continue to trend downward during the
waging period.
Limits to growth (at 02.56 minute)
In relation to all this a few years earlier “Limits to
growth” commissioned by the Club of Rome was
published. If the present growth trends in world
population, industrialisation, pollution, food production
and resource depletion continue unchanged the limits to
growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the
next 100 years. The first person to rigorously analyze the population issue was the 18th
century economist Thomas Malthus. He calculated that with our finite landmass, we face
catastrophe when the population grew too fast for food production to keep up, famine,
plague and war would then brutally bring on numbers back down in balance with nature.
The fundamental truth that Malthus proclaimed remains the truth that there cannot be
more people on this Earth than can be fed. Many people would like to deny that this is so,
that would like to believe in that oxymoron, sustainable growth. Kenneth Boulding, President
Kennedy’s environmental advisor forty five years ago, said something about this: anyone
who believes indefinite growth in anything physical on a physically finite planet he said is
either mad or an economist.
Population issues (at 4.25 minute)
There are a lot of terms that are used in the population
debate, such as populations spiralling out of control or
unfettered population growth or exponential population
growth which are basically terms designed to elicit alarm.
The sooner we stabilise on numbers, the sooner we stop
running up the down escalator; stop population increase
stop the escalator and we have some chance of reaching the top, that’s to say a decent life
for all.
It took very roughly 250,000 years to reach a billion in 1800, more than a century passed
before it reached 2 billion, the billion after that took less than a third of the time, the one
after that took only half as long and the following stages to 5 billion and 6 billion it took 13
and 12 years, and the population seems to be rising as fast as ever as the most recent billion
again took only a dozen years.
Exponential growth??? (at 5.27 minute)
But let's understand exponential growth by the
following example: A lily pad is placed in a pond.
Each day thereafter the pad and all its
descendants double. On the 30th day the pond is
covered completely by lily pads, which can grow
no more. Now tell me on which day was the
pond half full and half empty.
In the 29th day.
Too late to do something about it. Continuous
growth consumes all resources necessary for life
within the pond.
But… is population growth exponential (at 6.14
minute)
Is the planet's population growth really exponential?
Through the early decades of the industrial
revolution, life expectancies were low in Western
Europe and the United States. Thousands of people
died from infectious diseases such as typhoid and
cholera, which spread rapidly in the crowded filthy
conditions that were common in early factory towns and major cities or were weakened by
poor nutrition. But from about 1850 to 1950, a cascade of health and safety advances
radically improved living conditions in industrialised nations. Major milestones included:
 improving urban sanitation and waste removal
 improving the quality of the water supply and expanding access to it
 forming public health boards to detect illnesses and quarantine the sick
 researching causes and means of transmission of infectious diseases
 developing vaccines and antibiotics
 adopting workplace safety laws and limits on child labour
 promoting nutrition through steps such as fortifying milk, breads and cereal with
vitamins.
By the mid 20th century most industrialised nations had passed through the demographic
transition. As health technologies were transferred to developing nations, many of these
countries entered the mortality transition and their populations swelled. The world's
population growth rate peaked in the late 1960s at just over two percent. In fact world
population growth rates peaked in the late 1960s and have declined sharply in the past four
decades. The world's total population is still rising because of population momentum
stemming from large increases that occurred in developing countries in the 1950s and early
1960s. But fertility rates are falling as many developing countries pass through the
demographic transition. Thanks to factors that include lower infant mortality rates,
expanding rights, education, and labour market opportunities for women and increased
access to family planning services.
In September 2012 the world population was estimated by the United States Census Bureau
to be 7.036 billion. The US Census Bureau estimates this 7 billion number was surpassed on
12 March 2012. According to separate estimates by the United Nations, Earth's population
exceeded seven billion in October 2011, while the global population is projected - in this case
by the US Census Bureau - to reach nine billion by 2050. The rate of population growth will
have slowed to 0.6 percent by that year some studies particularly ones that seem more rapid
economic advances in third world in developing countries have an even steeper growth
decline with no net global population increased by the year 2045.
Population increase trends (at 9.47 minute)
Current projections show a continued increase in
population but a steady decline in the population
growth rate with the global population expected
to reach between 7.5 and 10.5 billion by 2050. A
thousand years ago there were only a third of a
billion people, but we were multiplied. Now there
are seven billion of us. How do we grow so
much? So fast. Let’s say this glass is North
America; the fuller the glass gets the more people there are. Water drips in as people are
born water drips out as people die. Here's the entire world, now let's go back a thousand
years: the Americas are nearly empty, Europe and Africa have less than a hundred million
people between them and just like today most people live in China, India and the rest of Asia.
For centuries things stay pretty much the same, births are cancelled out by deaths, women
are having lots of babies but most babies died before they grow up and have families of their
own. We don't reach one billion until 1804. But things are changing; better medicine and
better agriculture are starting to slow the leak from the bottom of the glass. People still die
of course but more babies grow up and have babies of their own, lots of babies. We have
grown from one billion to 7 billion and it only took two hundred years. Will we keep going
like this?
The era of acceleration is over and this is just as important to understand as the continued
rise in the population. The population has gone on rising because of what happened in the
fifties and sixties. This was the period of the baby boom in rich countries and very high birth
rates in poor ones. But momentum is shifting additional numbers added each year and the
total is now dropping. This is because the total fertility rate, that's the number of children a
woman, can expect to have during her lifetime has been falling for a long time. That means
families are getting smaller and the underlying impetus towards population growth has
dropped. In some countries the speed of change has been breathtaking. In Iran fertility fell
from seven to below two. Sometime in the next few years the world will reach another
milestone, half of mankind will be living in countries or regions, where fertility is at or below
2.1. That is the replacement rate which countries having only enough children to keep the
population stable birth rates drop in the course of social and economic development very
regularly. There's really no country which has not had a sharp falling fertility as a result of
wide-scale social and economic development.
Countries as bubbles (at 12.40 minute)
Each bubble is a country based and its size is
population; blue is Africa, red Asia, yellow Europe and
green the Americas, vertical is child mortality from 30
percent of children dying before the age of 5, down to
almost 0 children. Horizontally number of babies born
per woman from 8 to less than two. But most countries
were up here, women had six to seven children child deaths were frequent , almost every
family lost one or more children. In many people's mind the world still looks like this.
Developing and developed, but it’s a myth because the world has improved immensely in the
last 50 years, if we go year by year child mortality fell in almost all countries and as child
mortality fell women chose to have fewer and fewer babies and that enabled them to invest
more time and resources in each child.
By 1990 some of the so-called developing countries had already made it down here, some
were in between and a few remained up here with very high child mortality. Ethiopia had
hardly moved at all, it had passed through decades of famines and political turmoil. Many
people think that Ethiopia is still stuck up here, but look what happens after 1990, with
improved access to health services in rural areas, well spent aid, child mortality falls
dramatically in Ethiopia and with better access to family planning women chose to have
fewer and fewer babies. Ethiopia has come a long way and is moving quickly down to this
corner but Ethiopia still faces many challenges. I will split the Ethiopian bubble; the capital
Addis Ababa is already down here but the remote Somali region of Ethiopia still has high
child mortality, but most of the region's, 90% of the population, are centred around the
average. Most people think that the problems in Africa are unsolvable but if the poorest
countries can just follow that path of Ethiopia it’s possible that the world will look like this in
2030.
Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere
does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh a densely populated and
hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia where abundant food resources coexist
with hunger. Costa Rica with only half of Honduras cropped acres per person boasts a life
expectancy - one indicator of nutrition - 11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to
that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger, like
hunger itself it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women
of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to
societies where land ownership, jobs, education, healthcare and old age security are beyond
the reach of most people. The tiny country of Monaco has the world's highest population
density, it has a density almost 43,000 people per square mile.
About ninety percent of the Earth’s people live on 10% percent of the land; additionally
about ninety percent of the people live north of the equator. Despite its lack of a statistical
connection, population continues to get the blame; the outstanding example of this is the
curious case of the expanding Sahara Desert. Satellite images have shown that the Sahara
Desert has expanded in recent years, when people look at this they often blame the
expansion of the desert on pressure of grazing animals, which they say is brought about by
increases in population in the countries of the Salem and the need of these people to have
more cattle grazing more intensively on the edges of the desert. However satellite images
also show in some years the desert contracts. When people see these images they say that it
is the climate change. There is favourable climate in these two years and they say the desert
is contracted, however if you're going to use climate change to explain the contraction of the
desert then you must also allow for climate change to explain some of the expansion of the
desert that occurs in other years.
So is population the problem? (at 18.07 minute)
In blaming environmental problems on overpopulation
scapegoats the world's poorest people, who are least
responsible for carbon emissions. The richest fifth of the
world's people consume 66 times more resources than
the poorest fifth. The Malthusian motive, the will to
control the population of the poor rather than the
consumption of the rich, the desire to eliminate poverty
by reducing the numbers of the poor rather than the inequalities of society is wrong. If we
claim that their too many people on the Earth, then why are we so sure that we are not the
excess ones? We Westerners who individually consume and pollute as much as 50 or more
African or Indian peasants. In all my years in the field of population I have never one single
time heard a member of the population establishment say that there were too many upper
middle class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the world.
Population is only one among many factors and I don't think it's even the most important
factor and if you isolate population the only thing you're doing is sort of throwing a
smokescreen on what is the real problem now which is over consumption in developed
countries? 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. 80% of the current consumption of the Earth’s resources is accounted for by
the 20% of the world's population that resides in the North.
Consumerism (at 19.53 minute)
Moreover in many poor countries the impact of
overconsumption in the rich ones poses far greater direct
threat to the environment than local population growth.
For instance the Japanese economy devouring of
Southeast Asia's forest, while exporting its industrial
pollution to that area is a central factor in the ongoing ecological devastation of the region.
Japan is the world's largest consumer of tropical forest products and it is its insatiable
demand rather than local population growth that has been the main course of rapid
deforestation in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia and Laos.
To take one example the area of the Philippines covered by forests dropped from 50% in
1950 to less than 20% by 1990 and 70% of the timber logged in that country is said to have
found its way to Japan.
Developed countries are leading the way when it comes to food wastage. According to a UK
report the study claims up to half of the food produced worldwide isn't eaten for reasons
including poor harvesting, transport and storage. Consumer behaviour is particularly to
blame in the West, with best-before and use by dates confusing customers and leading to up
to 50% of what’s bought in the supermarket ending up in the bin.
Robert van Otterdijk on food waste (at 21.25
minute) The problem of food waste is dominant in
investment in industrialised countries, because in
developing countries where there is generally a
much higher level of poverty, people simply can't
afford to waste any food. In developing countries
problems with harvesting and storage still lead to
food being thrown away. Worldwide up to two
billion tonnes is not eaten every year says the London-based Institution for Mechanical
Engineers. Here in Britain we get rid of our own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks.
We throw out 1.5 million computers every year, 99% of them in perfect working order. On
average we buy a new mobile phone every 18 months, leaving 90 million working handsets
horded in cupboards up and down the country and three million fridges are discarded every
year. Every year we buy more products, more things we think we need, using more energy,
creating more waste. One statistic says that in the year 1900 330,000 tonnes of waste were
produced by urbanite every day compared with 3.3 million tonnes of waste created daily in
the year 2000. Experts estimate that by the end of the 21st century that number may triple to
11 million tonnes of waste being produced every day. Peak waste has already been reached
by some of the more developed countries in the world, where there's more awareness of
reducing energy consumption and refuse.
And the data is getting more frightening by the day. Across the world more and more
countries are following our polluted tracks. China's economy has grown at around 10% every
year for the last fifteen years; the result has been an explosion in consumption. Around 250
million people now enjoy a relatively affluent lifestyle roughly the same numbers the entire
population of the United States. Consumers in the Western world took two centuries to
develop, in China it's taking less than a decade. This may be great news for a country
emerging from centuries of poverty but it comes at a serious cost. China is planning to build
10 new airports and roughly 35 new coal-fired power stations every year for the next five
years. Car sales have also increased dramatically; there are now one thousand new cars on
Beijing’s roads every single day. By 2015 there will be more cars in China than in the whole of
the United States, so if China ever achieves the same level of car ownership as the United
States with its much bigger population, they would need to import more oil every day than is
produced in the entire world every year. 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 hiding from the truth. It is the worst kind
of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.
Today’s economy is still scandalously inefficient in its use of energy, water and raw
materials. Yet the technologies we need already exist with massive new investment they will
become both more efficient and cheaper and that’s where we come to the world
government. There are roughly twenty two and a half million washing machines in the UK
between them performing about 6 billion washes every year, now an inefficient washing
machine uses around 200 litres per wash whereas an efficient one around 45 litres, so simply
moving over from inefficient washing machines to efficient washing machines would save
more than half of the 5,185 billion litres of water that we use in the UK every year just to
wash our clothes. So shouldn’t EU governments get this sorted out instead of relying on a
few green consumers. Why don’t they impose minimum efficiency standards that all
manufactures would have to meet?
The richest 1% of Americans make more than a fifth of the country's income and command
forty percent of its wealth. In 2007, The richest 10% of households captured half of the
country's earnings leaving the other ninety percent of the country to divvy the rest. The
marketing wizards here on New York's Madison Avenue have taken note, they used to aim
their ads at middle-class American consumers, now if you're not earning at least two
hundred thousand dollars a year, you are not worth their effort.
Principally we identify a country that has resources our corporations cut it like oil, range a
huge loan for their countries from the World Bank or one of its sisters. The money never
actually goes to the country, it goes to our own corporations to build the infrastructure
projects in that country that help a few very wealthy people but don't benefit the majority of
people who are too poor to buy electricity or have cars to drive on the highways. And yet
they are left holding a huge debt that they can't repay, so we go back at some point and say
you can’t pay your debts give us a pound of flesh, sell the oil real cheap to our oil companies,
vote with us on the next critically UN vote, allow us to build a military base in your backyard,
something along these lines and then when we fail the Jackals going in either overthrow or
assassinate these leaders and if the Jackals fail as they did in Iraq, then we send in the
military. I don't think the failure is capitalism, I think is a specific kind of capitalism that we
developed, we created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism and this mutant
form of capitalism which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism has created an
extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very dangerous world.
What is the real problem? (at 28.30 minute)
Are the world’s environmental ills really a result of the
burgeoning number of humans on the planet predicted
to reach at least nine billion people by 2050 or is it more
due to the fact that although the human population has
doubled in the past 50 years we have increased our use
of resources fourfold?
Malthus and Social Engineering (at 29.50
minute)
Malthus advocated actively contributing to the
deaths of more of the poor from social
engineering.
Instead
of
recommending
cleanliness of the poor, we should encourage
contrary habits in our towns we should make the
streets narrower, crowd more people into the
houses and court the return of the plague. In the
country we should build our villages near stagnant pools and particularly encourage
settlement in all marshy and unwholesome situations but above all we should reprobate
scientific remedies for ravaging diseases and restrain those benevolent but much mistaken
men, who have thought that they are doing a service to mankind by protecting schemes for
the total extirpation of particular disorders.
The horrific nature of this idea is made all the more preposterous by the fact that Malthus
was encouraging the spread of disease and plague in order to save humanity from the
diseases and plagues that overpopulation fosters. The myth of overpopulation is great, I
think in the west because it's so simple; just tell them to have less children and all the
problems will be solved.
It’s not at all like that.The world's problems won't be solved until we eradicate poverty, until
we allow third world countries to trade fairly and unless we channel more resources to the
poor countries and till those countries have you know the environmentally sound
technologies they need to develop, unless this much fairer distribution is worldwide.
Overview (at 31.26 minute)
Population has reached more than 7 billion; the world
strongly varies with respect to density. Population
growth in the timing of demographic transition, we can
assume that population increase has to reach some
stability, we can't double forever. Population control is
fraught with social justice issues. Demographic
transition naturally happens as people shift their livelihoods from rural agriculture to urban
jobs. The UN now thinks population may stabilise at less than 10 billion; the world remains
dominated by young people.
Conclusion (at 32.02 minute)
The current economic crisis in the North has,
unfortunately, made the public there more disposed
toward simplistic anachronistic views on the impact of
population growth in the South on the environment. From
the global standpoint, population growth in the developed
world is far more environmentally destructive than
population growth in the developed world owing to very high levels of per capita
consumption. How people perceive the issue of population is critical. It is by these
perceptions that international and national legislative policies are formulated and local
medical plans and sex education classes are designed. Thus, it is equally critical that people
ensure that their perceptions are grounded, not in rhetoric and emotions, but in established
scientific and empirical data. So what is the real problem? It's not sex, it’s money, it's not the
poor, it's 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?