Stop saying we have a population problem.
When trying to understand the different ways humans have to halt climate change evolution, some studies have highlighted the fact that the world population growth is a multiplicative coefficient of our global CO2 emissions. But from that fact, some readers seem to have understood that caping population growth would be a quick fix for climate change, and that is desperately wrong.
Here are the fact : in a 2010 article, researchers from the United States, Germany and Austria state that “slowing population growth could provide 16–29% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change”. They conducted their research using an energy–economic growth model that accounts for a range of urbanization, economic and demographic dynamics, in order to evaluate the effect of projections based on the IPCC 4th Assessment Report A2 & B2 scenarios.
In other words, as Eduardo Porter from the NYTimes puts it,
“if the world’s population reached only 7.5 billion people by midcentury, rather than more than nine billion, in 2050 we would be spewing five billion to nine billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide into the air. This alone would deliver 16 to 29 percent of the emission reductions needed over the next 4 decades to keep the global temperature from rising more than 2°C above that of the late 19th century, the threshold scientists predict could lead to severe disruptions to the climate.”
Ok, population growth (and population urbanization rate) happens to work as a multiplicative coefficient of our global CO2 emission. Such a point has for instance led a NYTimes blogger like Andrew C. Revkin to consider that “family planning should absolutely be seen as a climate resilience strategy in poor regions”. That statement is a way to underline the important role of education and social structure in the way to drastically change our habits, but may unfortunately be misunderstood as “Earth’s real problem, too many babies … but we can’t admit the truth” or even further “Population’s out of control. And that’s the world’s No. 1 problem. But we’re all in denial”.
Earth’s real problem, too many babies. Really ?
And even if nowadays Malthusian ideas don’t have good press, this way to understand the climate issue is not new. Already in 1971, Paul Ehrlich stated that “there are 3.6 billion human beings on the face of the Earth. According to our best estimates, there are somewhere between 3 and 7 times more people than this planet can possibly maintain over a long period of time”. Recently, listening to Alain Finkelkraut quoting Didier Éribon’s transcript of hie visit to Claude Levi-Strauss in 1988, I had a similar uneasy feeling.
“When I was born, Earth was populated by one and a half billion inhabitant. After my studies, when I started my professional life, 2 billions. There are 6 today, 8 or 9 tomorrow. This is not the world I knew, the world I loved or the world I could appreciate. It is for me an unconceivable world. We are told that there will be a pick, followed by a decrease, around 2050. Maybe. But the disasters caused in that interval will never be rectified.”
“Even if a Papoo tribe consumes thousand times less ressources than a UAE wealthy family, do we all want to live like Papoos ?!” A. Finkelkraut
The XXe century curve of the human population growth is indeed quite spectacular, from 1 to 7 billion people. During the same period of time, we started to acknowledge the major environmental issues our planet is facing, due to greenhouse gaz concentration increase in the atmosphere. These 2 curves seems to match, thus leading to a statement close to “if population growth continues = environmental issues will be on the rise”.
But do 7 billion people consume 7 times more energy and ressources than a single billion people? While moving into the Western style urban centers, they do optimize their land use, collective energy use and mobility, but at the same time they boost their heavy consumption habits. The earlier mentioned article from the American, German and Austrian researchers did assess that particular point, knowing that population isn’t only a number, but demographic behaviors that translate into consumption habits.
“Nine billion vegan monks would have a far different greenhouse-gas imprint than a similar number of people living high on the hog”. A. Revkin
Replying to Alain Finkelkraut’s anxiety, Olivier Rey explained that we shall first “uncouple the population numbers and a certain level of technical comfort”. To illustrate his words, he said that for instance a Papoo tribe consumes thousand times less ressources than a United Arab Emirates rich family. And Alain Finkelkraut to reply “but do we all want to live like Papoos ?!” According to his tone of voice, and even if he profoundly respects cultural differences, that perspective sounded like a nightmare to him. And so it is to most of us.
As Andrew C. Revkin explains it too, “rates of consumption of fossil energy and forests per person matter more than the rise in human numbers”. Or put in an other way, he wisely phrased it “9 billion vegan monks would have a far different greenhouse-gas imprint than a similar number of people living high on the hog”. No Papoo anymore, just Vegan Monks.
Checking different data on GapMinder, here is a graph of CO2 total emission / Population total. It shows that population number is not equivalent to CO2 emission numbers : some countries grow population faster than emission (ex: China, India), et vice versa (ex: USA).
Along with the population boom and the demographic transition in the XXe century in the developed countries, happened what we now see as an economical boom, a major industrial change, and a true remarkable consumption boom.
Here is an other graph of CO2 emission per person / Income per person. It reveals that the higher income you get, the larger emission you produce.
The astonishing technical comfort development now makes us born to live 120 years old, travel millions of miles per year, use MWatts of energy, get an iPhone, an iPad and a laptop per person every 3 years, get personal cars, TV, private housing space, etc. That technical boom actually better match the CO2 emission curve.
More than a population issue, we have a ressource per habitant issue. If the 7 billion humans were to live by the North American standard of living, or by the UAE’s one, reports projected that the world population would need 5 to 7 planets Earth to comply with the need of ressource and energy. But if we were to live by the Papoo’s standard or the Vegan Monk’s one, would one planet comply ? And this is eventually the only to put it, because there is no other planet Earth.
Population’s out of control. And that’s the world’s No. 1 problem. Really ?
Population number in itself is not the main problem we are facing. While there is today on Earth more food produced than the world population need, a billion people are still starving while other trash eatable items. You may estimate the average soil needed per human to grow the food he yearly needs, or estimate the global arable land available and divide it by the world population number, you will always end up on an average number. But average only exist in statistic. In real life, there is rather a distribution problem : distribution of land, of access to land, access to knowledge and seeds, to markets.
What Malthus in his time didn’t accurately estimate was the ‘production capacities’ development. Better land management, farming technics, seed selection, nutritional knowledge, etc. proved Malthus wrong ; population did multiply by 7 and hasn’t yet been checked by famine and disease, that Malthusian catastrophe. From what we may learn from Malthus statement, perhaps the Malthus of our days may include in their thought the potential development of ‘distribution capacities’.
“At the end, the answer to the question ‘is growth essential to stability’ appears to be: in an economy based on growth, growth is essential to stability.” T. Jackson
Moreover, while economical ideal growth projections never show any plateau, demographic growth projections show that a continuous increase in the coming decades will lead to a plateau. This pattern actually matches the demographic transition Western countries went through first. No demographic projection show a steady continuous rise of human population up to 100 billions. Unlike economic mechanics, demographic mechanics are modeled to reach a maximum. Not forever growth.
Here is maybe the main point of the way we look at this issue. Former Tony Blair advisor Tim Jackson explains that we tend to associate ‘growth’ and ‘wealth’, but actually, we would benefit from uncoupling both. Following his point, wealth is not based on money but rather on stability. In our economies based on the idea of growth, degrowth goals are not bad for wealth because they would create less money but because they create instability. So “at the end, the answer to the question is growth essential to stability appears to be: in an economy based on growth, growth is essential to stability.”
If we were to seak for prosperity without growth , our population growth would definitly not be a major issue on the world ressources. Tim Jackson even goes further when writing that :
“in a limited world, certain types of freedom are either impossible either moral. The freedom to indefinitly accumulate goods is one of them. The freedom of get a social recognition at the expense of child labor in the supply chain, of finding an interesting job at the cost of biodiversity collapse, or of contributing to the community life at the expense of future generation could be some of them too.”
Behind all this, there is a major philosophical question
Beyond this talk, there is eventually one major philosophical question I would like to argue : coming from the mouth of developed countries who already went through their demographic transition, who have produced so far the most of excess CO2 emissions, asking to stop — other — human population growth is not really ethical.
First it sounds unfair, as if the self-development we went through in the West should remain the model, and the family planning be applied to others, not letting them the freedom to go through the process by themselves. What if an other way to deal with the situation would emerge from them ?
Second, family planning effects will be tangible in decades, while not buying a new iPhone or not flying on that plane would have impact right now. Such a posture implies that the climate issue lays upon those future generation’s shoulders and not in our hands. Quite an easy and irresponsible way to buy time, while the clock is running.
“It seems easier to think of birth control rather than comfort control.”
In other words, putting the population growth issue in the first place before the high carbon demanding Western life style equals to say “my multi-MWatt comfort standard is more important than human lives”. And more than unfair, such a statement underlines the stupidity of such posture, because human lives carries along with them potential, ideas, creativity, solution finding, while comfort doesn’t bring much solution to the climate change issue. It seems easier to think of birth control, family planning and education, rather than comfort control, energy planning and education.
Moreover, I may add that this whole issue triggers our way to think about the climate issue. How come it seems politically easier to say “we have to stop population growth” rather than to say “we have to stop voracious comfort growth”? How come the second sometimes happens to be ‘un-sayable’ ? Population growth may be caped, but not technical comfort growth ? Are we that selfish and unable to estimate what brings value to our lives ? How come population growth rate (1 to 10) is taken as a more multiplicative coefficient of our global CO2 emission than our economical energy needs growth (1 to 1000)?
For Paris COP21, governments are setting their CO2 emission reduction engagements, heading for a ‘low carbon economies’. But how come they say nothing about a ‘less ressource demanding lifestyle economy’ ?
