The case for dealing with population growth and climate change separately

The size and the growth of the global population has been a major issue of concern long before the Climate Change debate moved into the mainstream. There were 1bn people around in 1800, 5bn in 1990 and today, less than thirty years later, there are 7.7bn alive. One doesn’t need a degree in economics to wonder how a planet with finite resources would be able to support an exponentially growing population. We know it simply won’t. Population growth must stop or significantly slow down at some point in the near future.

Is this a crucial issue for climate change?

When debating climate change, population and its growth is often cited as one of the most pressing issues. CO2 emissions are essentially “emissions per capita x population” so you would be right to wonder whether an ever increasing population could doom us in our struggle against climate change. The good news is that it isn’t necessarily the case. There are a number of reasons why we should worry less about our population and instead focus on reducing emissions per capita:

• Population has a good chance to peak naturally around 11bn by 2100 according to current UN estimates. Additionally, there are a number of voices insisting these estimates do not take into account a number of crucial factors that will further slow down growth. Even the UN projects that the top emitter in the world, China, is set to experience a 25% population decrease in the same period. On top of that, more than 95% of the growth is set to occur in Africa, which has the lowest rate of emissions per capita (currently around 1/20th that of North America).

• People who will be responsible for the overwhelming amount of emissions before 2050 are already alive. A good chunk of the global population growth in this period will occur not through more babies being born but because of people living longer. Even if we adopt some draconian population control policy, there is little to be gained. We have thirty years to bring emissions down to zero in order to stay under the 2C threshold and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Simply we don’t have a chance to influence the size of the population in such a short period of time.
• Lower fertility rates go hand in hand with higher GDP per capita. There seems to be a link — a negative correlation — between the number of children born to women and the GDP per capita in a country. Now, the cause and causation is a matter of discussion, but the link is there. This means that even if we succeed in reducing the population growth, more consumption would most likely result, and therefore we would experience more emissions per capita.

Let’s separate the debates

Don’t get me wrong, we do need to stabilise our population, especially before nature does it for us. It is already causing a host of other undesirable problems, such as the hindered progress in the eradication of poverty, leading to the loss of our biodiversity, as well as the depletion of global resources. However, population growth is not THE key issue we need to confront in our fight against climate change. We need to separate the two challenges, as one is difficult enough to address. If we focus on both problems at the same time — since the population issue is a very touchy topic — we will impede our ability to confront climate change effectively.

Instead we need to work on the reduction of emissions per capita, reducing it to zero by 2050, irrespective of how the population changes over this period. Think of population growth as nothing more than a little headwind while driving an (electric) car: yes, it will slow you down slightly, but you will still get to your destination.

About the author

I am a tech CEO and person who realised that climate change is the utmost threat to us. I write about climate change to help people understand the problem better and inspire them to do more about this crisis. The opinions expressed are my own.