© 2007 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.thebulletin.org/roundtable/population-climate-change/
Population and climate change - Roundtable
December 3, 2007 – February 29, 2008 statements (the debate is still in progress)
A larger global population means a larger demand for everything--most urgently, energy. And
although Earth's resources have apparently stretched further than Paul Ehrlich infamously
predicted four decades ago in his book The Population Bomb, the mounting climate problem
suggests that the consequences of overconsumption (namely of coal and other fossil fuels that
produce heat-trapping greenhouse gases) may still be inevitable. Joseph Chamie, former director
of the U.N. Population Division and now director of research at the Center for Migration Studies;
Martin Desvaux, a retired physicist and trustee of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT); John
Guillebaud, former OPT co-chairman and emeritus professor of Family Planning and
Reproductive Health at University College London; Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population
and Development Program and associate professor of Development Studies at Hampshire
College; and Frederick A. B. Meyerson, an ecologist at the University of Rhode Island and board
member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, discuss how population growth
relates to our spiraling energy needs and whether addressing it can help provide a solution to the
climate problem.
Rising carbon emissions call for a population policy
Response: 3 December 2007
Posted by: Frederick A. B. Meyerson
Human population continues to grow by more than 75 million people annually. Since the first
Earth Day in 1970, global population and annual carbon dioxide emissions have both increased
by about 70 percent. As a result, per capita emission rates remain steady at about 1.2 metric tons
(mt) of carbon per person per year.
Unfortunately, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has had little measurable effect on per capita emissions,
even in the countries that have agreed to national targets. Emissions in Western Europe reached 2
mt per person back in 1970 and have fluctuated just above that level ever since. The same
plateau phenomenon, which appears to be related to stages in development, happened in the early
1970s in "centrally planned Europe," which includes Russia and the former Soviet republics.
Per capita carbon emissions in the United States also leveled off around 1970 at a much higher
rate--above 5.5 mt per person--and have barely budged since, through recessions, economic
booms, and swings in energy markets. From 1970 to 2004, U.S. population and emissions both
rose by 43 percent.
More than any another factor, population growth drives rising carbon emissions, and the U.S.
Census Bureau and United Nations both project that global population, currently 6.6 billion, will
surpass 9 billion before 2050.
1
It is, of course, possible that per capita emissions could decrease in the future, but a number of
factors make this difficult. First, emission patterns are "sticky" due to slow turnover in our
energy-intensive infrastructure, including power plants, housing, and vehicle fleets. Established
consumption behavior is hard to change, by either individuals or nations.
Second, while global per capita emissions have been relatively flat for decades, there is now
more risk that they will rise, not fall, in the near future. Coal (which releases the most carbon per
unit of energy when burned) is more abundant and less constrained than petroleum and gas. As
oil becomes scarce and expensive, and population growth and development drive up energy
demand, coal use has grown dramatically in recent years, particularly in China, but also in the
United States and India.
Finally, many developing countries that are experiencing explosive economic growth have not
yet reached per capita emissions plateaus and also have rapidly rising populations. All these
factors more than wipe out the minor savings associated with my family (and others) switching
to compact fluorescent bulbs and efficient front-loading washers.
The implication is that one of the best strategies for reducing future greenhouse gas emissions is
population stabilization, as quickly as can be achieved by non-coercive means.
But is stabilization likely or possible? The United Nations projects that global population will
eventually peak well above 9 billion, based on the assumption that fertility rates in every country
on the planet will converge at 1.85 children per woman (below the 2.1 replacement fertility
level), and that most countries will achieve this target, or close to it, by 2050. This critical
assumption, adopted relatively recently by demographers, is based only on a mathematical
formula, and perhaps some wishful thinking. It is quite possible that global population could
surge well beyond even current projections.
Unfortunately, given our current trajectory, the disruptions, hardship, and conflict caused by
climate change and variability may well increase death rates (and decrease life expectancy)
before declining fertility stabilizes population.
So, I believe the best course of action for both human well-being and climate policy is to quickly
devote as many resources as possible to reducing unwanted pregnancy, so that we reach
stabilization. Almost half of all pregnancies in the United States, and one-third globally, are
unintended. We can do better than that, and several countries already have.
This will require rehabilitation of the population policy and family planning fields, which have
been attacked, shunned, and splintered in recent decades. Conservatives are often against sex
education, contraception, and abortion, and they like growth--both in population and the
economy. Liberals usually support individual human rights above all else and fear the "coercion"
label, and therefore avoid discussion of population policy and stabilization. The combination is a
tragic stalemate that leads to more population growth. We need to get over it.
And certainly population policy should be front and center at the U.N. Framework Convention
on Climate Change meeting, which begins today in Bali.
2
Protecting Earth's atmosphere requires more than limiting population growth
Response: 17 December 2007
Posted by: Joseph Chamie
Clearly, population growth is an important aspect of environmental stress, as every man, woman,
and child requires food, water, clothing, shelter, and energy. However, it isn't necessarily the root
cause of climate change.
In many places, population is growing slowly (much of Europe, for instance) and the population
of some countries is actually declining (Japan and Russia come to mind); yet those populations
continue to negatively impact Earth's climate. Industrialized countries are responsible for
approximately four-fifths of the world's carbon dioxide buildup despite representing less than
one-fifth of its population. On a per capita basis, the disparity is even more striking: For
example, the average American contributes roughly five times the amount of carbon dioxide to
the atmosphere as the average Mexican citizen, and nearly twenty times as much as the average
Indian citizen. Raising the living standards of populations in developing countries--certainly a
desirable goal--is also likely to worsen climate change.
Furthermore, halting population growth would help, but not resolve the climate problem alone.
Even if all countries instantly reached and remained at replacement fertility levels of two
children per woman, world population would continue to grow to more than 8 billion by 2050.
Avoiding unwanted pregnancies is laudable and would improve the lives of many couples and
families, but its impact on future population growth is small. Crying wolf about the population
bomb too often retards progress in finding sustainable climate solutions.
Yes, it's important to reduce population growth, but safeguarding Earth's atmosphere requires
much more. New technologies need to be developed--along with pursuing significant reductions
and reversals in damaging patterns of production and consumption. Both will no doubt prove
costly and difficult. But the alternative is a disastrous tragedy for the world's population.
----------Population fears distract from effectively responding to global warming
Response: 24 December 2007
Posted by: Betsy Hartmann
First, I want to make clear that I strongly support women's right to safe, voluntary, and accessible
birth-control services--as an end in itself, not as a means to drive down population growth rates.
When population control is the objective, the quality of family planning services suffers and
coercive methods often override freedom of choice.
Secondly, I don't think we're on the brink of demographic disaster. Yes, world population is still
growing and expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. However, demographers agree that the era of
rapid growth has concluded. Population growth rates peaked in the 1960s due to dramatic
reductions in death rates and increased life expectancy. Since then, with increasing education,
urbanization, and women’s work outside the home, birthrates have fallen in almost every part of
the world and will likely continue to do so, particularly as urbanization accelerates. The figure
given by the Population Reference Bureau in 2005 for the global average number of births per
3
woman was 2.7, and it may be lower now: It's widely accepted that there is a demographic
convergence toward smaller families across the globe. The United Nations projects that world
population will eventually stabilize, falling to 8.3 billion in 2175.
In terms of global warming, I agree with Joseph Chamie that the main task is to reverse
damaging patterns of production and consumption and developing new technologies. I believe
we should focus our efforts on the following:
Reducing carbon emissions. We need massive investments in the development of alternative
(non-nuclear) energy sources and new, greener technologies. (I am against further nuclear power
development because of its cost, dangerous waste, safety risks, and the links with atomic weapon
production and proliferation.) Given the industrialized nations' historical contribution to
greenhouse gas emissions, they have a responsibility to help countries such as India and China
leapfrog the heavy use of fossil fuels in the industrialization process. In the United States, we
need to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. One important first step would be investing in
energy efficient public transportation, which reduces dependence on the private automobile. (I've
often wondered why so many U.S. environmentalists are keener on a one-child policy than a
one-car policy, as if it is somehow easier and more ethically acceptable to force down birth rates
than to address overconsumption.)
Climate justice. Climate change adaptation and mitigation measures could provide an
opportunity to more equitably distribute resources and power. In industrialized countries, rather
than allowing the benefits of carbon tax, cap-and-trade, and sequestering schemes to flow to the
energy giants and other corporate interests, policies could instead be designed to help poor and
middle-class people offset higher energy costs and to support public investment in health,
education, and environmental improvements. In developing countries, attention should focus on
reducing poor people's vulnerability to environmental changes related to global warming, such as
sea-level rise in Bangladesh or increased rainfall variation in Africa.
A focus on population diverts us from the need to take action on these critical concerns.
Moreover, intentionally or not, images of overpopulation tend to reinforce racist stereotypes of
the world's poorest people, demonizing those who are the least responsible for global warming.
Recent rhetoric about the risk of "climate refugees" swarming toward Western borders similarly
reinforces rising anti-immigrant sentiment (see my November 2007 article, "War Talk and
Climate Change" for more.) Environmentalists need to steer clear of these stereotypes if they
want to build democratic alliances across borders to seriously address the urgent problem of
climate change.
-----------------------Already, there aren't enough resources to go around
Response: 8 January 2008
Posted by: John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux
There's clear evidence that even now, the world's population is living beyond its collective
means. The World Wildlife Fund's "Living Planet Report 2006," which publishes biocapacity
(i.e., the potential productivity of cropland, forests, fisheries, and fresh water) and per-capita
4
ecological footprint data generated by the Global Footprinting Network provides the most
comprehensive existing data.
By their estimate, our total consumption of 13.685 billion global hectares (gha) represents a 22percent overshoot of Earth's total biocapacity, which is estimated as 11.22 billion gha. This
overshoot is possible only because we can (temporarily) substitute or supplement our biological
resources by exploiting our finite supply of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) provide concentrated energy derived from the sun over
millions of years. Renewable energy is essentially harvested in real time--directly through
photovoltaic technology or indirectly via wind and wave action. Because renewables are
intrinsically far less energy dense than fossil fuels, they cannot replace even the current world
power requirement, let alone the requirement that will result from a more overpopulated planet.
Furthermore, the more promising sources of renewable energy (wind and solar) can only be
harnessed intermittently. It'll be impossible for renewables to satisfy the energy needs of high- or
even medium-income countries after fossil fuel and uranium resources have been depleted. Even
if self-sustaining nuclear power becomes viable, a world without artificial fertilizers, air
transport, and other essential petroleum products will be incapable of sustaining even today's
population. It follows that a sustainable future is only possible through a combination of
reducing consumer numbers and per-capita consumption. Indeed, the situation is now so serious
that it makes little sense to talk about slowing population growth unless in the context of taking
the first step toward reversing it.
As global population increases, the maximum sustainable (by which we mean indefinitely
supportable) ecological footprint each person can have is proportionally reduced. For a
sustainable footprint of 6.4 gha per person, which is the mean ecological footprint for residents
of high-income countries, maximum world population is 1.8 billion. (To put that figure in
context, U.S. citizens consume 9.6 gha each on average; Europeans consume 4.8 gha.) Around 6
billion people (90 percent of today's population) could be supported at 1.9 gha per person, the
mean ecological footprint for middle-income countries, and around 14 billion people could
scrape by at a marginal existence of 0.8 gha per person, which is the average biocapacity
consumed by inhabitants of low-income countries. The latter implies utterly unacceptable
poverty and is less than each African consumed in 2003 (1.1 gha per person).
These figures signify maximum values; any drop in biocapacity through climate change (such as
desertification or flooding) will reduce them.
The proportionality [PDF] of these numbers demands that higher footprint lifestyles at one end
of the spectrum force lower footprint lifestyles at the other. If we want everyone on Earth to live
at the moderate mean consumption level represented by a footprint of 4 gha per person
(comparable to Portugal, South Korea, and Kazakhstan), then we must plan--through applying
our contraceptive technology wisely, democratically, and compassionately--for a maximum
world population of 2.8 billion. If we fail, then we must prepare for nature to do it through
viruses, violence, starvation, and climate-change-intensified disasters such as hurricanes,
droughts, and rising sea levels. It's sobering to think that it would take more than five planets to
support everyone on Earth at the average footprint level of U.S. residents. If we're ever to
achieve worldwide equity, we must look at reducing not only consumption, but also population,
5
which is often a taboo subject. The years ahead will reveal just how intelligent we are as a
species.
In her comments here, Betsy Hartmann perpetuates some infamous myths about people who
have a quantitative concern about human population. The first is that such concern diverts
attention from the need that she rightly highlights, to take action on climate justice and related
humanitarian issues. But why the dichotomy? Can't we be concerned about human needs as well
as human numbers?
The second myth is that being concerned about population leads intrinsically to coercion. Why
so? At the Optimum Population Trust, despite our well-justified anxiety about human numbers
on a finite planet, we reject coercion--for many good reasons that can be found in our paper,
"Youthquake" [PDF]. Countries as varied as Thailand, Tunisia, and Iran have cut their average
family size in half simply by removing a range of barriers to meeting women's family planning
needs--and they did so as quickly as China, where coercion played a role.
As Fred Meyerson rightly says, one-third of global pregnancies are unintended. Or as we put it,
"Too many accidents are caused by humans, and too many humans are caused by accidents."
These accidents are avoidable through making the choice of voluntary family planning available
and accessible to women in every bedroom in every society, so that every child might be a
wanted child.
----------------------Population growth is easier to manage than per-capita emissions
Response: 17 January 2008
Posted by: Frederick A. B. Meyerson
Betsy Hartmann believes that we are not "on the brink of demographic disaster." I disagree.
We're already in the middle of a demographic disaster at the global scale in environmental terms.
I concur with John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux that the world's population is living beyond
its collective environmental means. Because of the long lag times associated with human
demographic change, we need to act immediately to change that course.
Global per-capita carbon emissions from fossil fuel have remained nearly constant for almost 40
years (currently about 1.2 metric tons [mt] of carbon per person). Therefore, as global population
increases in 2008 by a projected 77 million people, we’ll see an increase of about 92 million mt
of emissions. In effect, in terms of emissions, we're adding the equivalent of another Brazil or
Australia to the planet every year.
Just stabilizing total emissions at current levels, while keeping pace with population growth,
would require reducing global per-capita emissions by 1.2 percent each year. We haven’t
managed to decrease per-capita emissions by 1 percent in the last 38 years combined. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, former Vice President Al Gore, and many wellintentioned scientific, media, and activist campaigns haven’t changed that fact. And because of
the rapid economic growth and increased coal use in China and elsewhere, we may now be
headed for higher per-capita emissions.
6
We've had much more success with managing population. The global population growth rate has
decreased from 2.1 percent in 1970 to 1.2 percent today, as a result of family planning programs
and improved education. If we could reduce global unintended pregnancy rates to the lower
levels that already exist in many European countries, population growth would slow further. As I
wrote in my December 3 opening statement, for both environmental and social reasons, we
should act quickly to address the fact that almost 50 percent of U.S. pregnancies are unintended,
through improved education and services.
However, there are large constituencies in favor of high birthrates and continuous population
growth, including religious and business groups. In a front-page story last month, USA Today
reported that the fertility rates in the United Stated rose above 2.1 children per woman for the
first time since 1971, partly as a result of unintended pregnancies in all age groups. The article
also states that a high fertility rate is important to industrialized nations for social and economic
reasons such as social security and job replacement. "Be fruitful and multiply" also plays well in
churches and corporate boardrooms.
In addition, many human rights groups, women's organizations, and individuals agree with
Betsy's position that any discussion of population policy in numerical terms necessarily leads to
coercion and racism. This creates an unintentional de facto alliance between those groups and
some of the aforementioned business and religious organizations: They all want to suppress
dialogue and policies that relate specifically to reducing population growth.
Meanwhile, there's insufficient evidence that population is likely to stabilize with current policies
and funding. Betsy states, "The United Nations projects that world population will eventually
stabilize, falling to 8.3 billion in 2175." She therefore feels that we don't need to worry about
population growth. This is an unwise assumption. Long-term population projections (some only
decades into the future) have been notoriously inaccurate. A projection 170 years into the future
is little more than a mathematical exercise, often involving simple assumptions that key variables
such as fertility and mortality rates will converge and remain constant. Constancy is a state that
is rarely, if ever, found in nature.
Joseph Chamie headed the U.N. Population Division for many years. I hope he will discuss the
assumptions behind the U.N. projections in his next posting, and whether or not it is wise to rely
on those projections to make climate policy decisions.
If human history or nature is any guide, I believe there's a very low probability that fertility rates
will stabilize at the replacement level. It's more likely that some regions will continue to
experience high fertility and growth. Therefore, if we want to stabilize population globally,
geographical areas with below replacement fertility will also need to exist.
I think it will be easier to reduce unintended pregnancies and births, which we know how to do
successfully through improved reproductive health services and education, than to reduce percapita emissions, where our track record is poor. We can achieve this without coercion and also
protect humankind and the planet from the interrelated challenges of population growth and
climate change.
7
The political will to solve population and environmental issues doesn't exist
Response: 23 January 2008
Posted by: Joseph Chamie
This debate is taking an unfortunate turn. In my view, it's not a matter of prioritizing a number of
different issues; it's pursuing all of those issues at once.
In a few years, the world's population will grow to 7 billion people. Around 2025, population
will likely reach 8 billion people. Nearly all of this growth will take place in developing regions,
particularly sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. What happens after 2025 depends a great deal
on what happens to fertility levels. If current fertility levels remain constant, world population
will reach nearly 12 billion people by 2050 and more than 40 billion people by the end of the
twenty-first century. Even if all countries instantly reached and remained at a replacement
fertility level of two children per woman, world population would continue to grow to more than
8 billion people by 2050.
Similarly, emissions rates seem certain to continue growing--with the potential to accelerate, as
developing countries industrialize their economies. Understandably, the populations of these
countries want to raise their living standards. And current trends unmistakably detail how even
small living-standard improvements in developing countries will increase global greenhouse gas
emissions.
The impending challenges of population growth and climate change are well known to policy
makers, development experts, and concerned citizens. Moreover, the solutions to these mounting
challenges aren't a secret. The international community has already identified and adopted scores
of recommendations at the numerous U.N. conferences and summits held on the topic during the
past two decades. For example, the following recommendation comes from the 1994
International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo:
"Recognizing that the ultimate goal is the improvement of the quality of life of present and future
generations, the objective is to facilitate the demographic transition as soon as possible in
countries where there is an imbalance between demographic rates and social, economic, and
environmental goals, while fully respecting human rights. This process will contribute to the
stabilization of the world population, and, together with changes in unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption, to sustainable development and economic growth."
Unfortunately, governments in both developed and developing regions lack the political will to
implement agreed upon recommendations and commitments. For instance, preventing unwanted
pregnancies is neither difficult nor costly. Achieving this goal would benefit individual families,
society as a whole, and development efforts. Likewise, we can reduce carbon emissions by
improving the efficiency of motor vehicles and expanding mass transit. Stagnation on these steps
is due to cultural resistance as well as the absence of strong and enlightened political leadership
to counter powerful social and economic interests.
The steps needed to address the consequences of rapid population growth and increasing carbon
emissions will differ among regions because of varying demographic, economic, and social
8
conditions. Namely, most industrialized countries will need to do more with respect to carbon
emissions, while most developing countries will need to do more with respect to fertility rates.
In brief, let's stop debating either-or scenarios: Either we focus our efforts on population growth
or greenhouse gas emissions. The same holds true when deciding how to address the other vital
issues facing humanity--poverty, education, housing, aging, health, food, water. The right
approach is focusing on all of the above.
------------------------------Sustainable lifestyles, not population control, will solve the climate crisis
Response: 29 January 2008
Posted by: Betsy Hartmann
I'm glad we agree that universal access to noncoercive family planning and reproductive health
services should be an important goal of international development policy. However, this doesn't
necessarily mean we've reached a consensus. I'd like to clarify several points of difference.
First, although the distinction may seem subtle, there's a big difference between family planning
services designed primarily to reduce birthrates and those premised on the belief that quality
reproductive health care is a fundamental right, regardless of its impact on population growth. At
the clinical level, services crafted mainly to reduce birthrates--even if they're not directly
coercive--often treat women more as targets than as clients. Namely, they neglect medical
screening and follow-up and promote riskier contraceptives such as Depo Provera and Norplant
because they're ostensibly more effective in reducing birthrates. In the drive for demographic
results, quality of care and freedom of choice end up taking a backseat. Two recent books,
Population Politics and Development and Reproducing Inequities, do an excellent job of
exploring this dynamic in Tanzania and Haiti respectively.
A second point is that there is a profound difference in the worldviews of those who see the roots
of poverty and environmental degradation in overpopulation, and those who locate them in
structural economic, political, and social (including gender) inequalities. In Bangladesh, where I
lived in the 1970s, villagers were poor not because they had too many children, but because
centuries of colonial rule and corrupt governance concentrated land, resources, and power in the
hands of a few. Meanwhile, high rates of infant and child mortality meant that parents had to
have many children in order to ensure that a few would survive to take care of them in old age.
After witnessing such inequalities, I could never again accept the simplistic--and often elitist-assumptions of Malthusian thought. In addition to scapegoating the poor, Malthusianism, trapped
as it is in a rigid man-versus-nature dichotomy, tells us little about the complex causes of
environmental degradation from a social or natural science perspective. (Today birthrates have
declined in Bangladesh because of improvements in child health care and social and economic
changes that encourage smaller families.)
I've spent much of my career trying to understand why Malthusianism is such a persistent and
popular belief system, especially in the United States. Ironically, one of the current reasons is the
strength of the anti-abortion movement and its success in reducing U.S. international family
planning assistance. In order to mobilize support and appeal to conservatives in Congress, some
9
population/family planning agencies strategically resort to fear-based appeals (e.g.
overpopulation as a threat to national security) even if they don't actually believe their own
rhetoric. And so women's rights activists often find themselves caught between a virulent antiabortion movement on the one hand and advocates of population control on the other. (There's a
parallel here with the rhetoric about how climate change will cause wars and mass migration, as
some environmental lobbyists in Washington deploy these alarmist arguments in order to get
conservatives to support legislation on reducing carbon emissions.)
We must start thinking outside the box--and off the grid--in terms of solutions to the climate
crisis. I disagree with Fred Meyerson that population growth is easier to manage than per-capita
emissions and also with John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux's pessimism about renewables. (I
also don't see how we could possibly get to a population of 2.8 billion any time soon without
coercion and/or mass death--not a prospect I would look forward to.)
If possible, I'd like to see this debate take a different turn: Let's seriously consider how we might
fundamentally transform our capitalist, consumerist culture to live in more socially and
environmentally sustainable ways. In the United States, we've lived for so long now under the
depressing shadow of a right-wing militarist and anti-environmental regime that we're losing our
capacity for creative political imagination. We need to revive that capacity--now.
A recent New York Times piece, "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler," examined the health,
environmental, and climate consequences of industrial meat production and provided the basic
message that we could have a big impact on the environment simply by changing the way we eat.
Meanwhile, in Germany and Scandinavia, homebuilding is being revolutionized and energy
efficiency is being fine-tuned to an unprecedented degree. So let's break loose from the
population debate and get on with the real tasks at hand.
-------------------Curbing population must contribute to solving the climate crisis
Response: 7 February 2008
Posted by: John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux
With due respect to Betsy Hartmann, we will not "break loose from the population debate." The
data demonstrate clearly that removing the many barriers to family planning worldwide-including simply making contraceptives realistically accessible and providing correct birthcontrol information within female education--is among what Betsy terms "the real tasks at hand."
Although it's not the only remedy needed to blunt climate change, it's an utterly crucial and
tragically underfunded one.
As numerous surveys and 80 million unwanted conceptions annually demonstrate, the good news
is that this is an unmet need, and meeting it worldwide is possible with relatively little extra
funding--a few billion dollars as opposed to the trillions of dollars needed to combat climate
change. Can anyone show us consumer survey data of a deep unmet need perceived among
people to reduce their consumption?
It's not helpful to polarize the debate between those for whom the roots of poverty and
environmental degradation are, to quote Betsy, "located in structural economic, political, and
10
social (including gender) inequalities" and those who "see [the roots] in overpopulation." The
two viewpoints are complementary. Having fewer people on the planet doesn't produce or
reinforce those inequalities. In fact, we would argue the opposite: Consumers generate growth
and profits; therefore, economic growth strategy involves encouraging more consumers, which
produces more waste and emissions. Costs must be kept down to stimulate sales growth, so
manufacturing goes to poorer countries where unemployed people will work for low wages.
That's why we still effectively have widespread slave labor 200 years after it was abolished! Of
course, these inequalities are wrong.
History shows that while world population increased from 2.5 billion people to 6 billion people
in the second half of the twentieth century, it is likely that those in a constant state of hunger
more than doubled from 500 million to 1.2 billion during the same period. (See "The Fatal
Inheritance," p. 77 for more.) Trying to eliminate these inequalities without addressing further
population growth (properly resourced, and, as Betsy would rightly emphasize, in a genderempowering and totally non-coercive way) is simply pouring gasoline on the flames of poverty.
Betsy, can you not see that climate change--just one example of humanity's environmental
impact-- is caused in large measure by the sheer number of climate changERS contributing (i.e.
us humans)? We've been able to multiply sevenfold in the last 200 years only because of the
transient availability of fossil fuels, which are non-renewable, and humankind has appropriated
in the process major portions of all the planet's resources for our selfish use. We lost sight of the
fact that Earth has limits. When species multiply beyond the capacity of their environment,
nature provides no alternative to a die off. Unprecedented global disasters loom and all of us are
the problem: The rich, because of how they wastefully over consume (that must change), and the
poor, because of their reasonable aspirations to leave poverty, which means increased
consumption and hence inevitably more greenhouse gas production per person. And the number
of persons in both subsets of the population is steadily increasing.
Unremitting population growth can only end in tears. As we argued in our previous post, we
need an urgent plan to curb overpopulation. We challenge readers to refute the global ecological
footprint data that show how Earth cannot feasibly accommodate, at least without a continuation
of unacceptable poverty, the 9 billion humans that current demographic momentum (PDF) makes
certain.
Even now, there are too many people for the average resources per capita that we're consuming.
Footprint analysis clearly demonstrates this. We need a paradigm shift in political and cultural
thinking to accept the need for population reduction, in almost every country, down to
environmentally sustainable levels.
--------------------------------Reducing unintended fertility should be a top international climate priority
Response: 15 February 2008
Posted by: Frederick A. B. Meyerson
There is agreement in our discussion about the need to provide family planning, reproductive
health services, and related education to everyone on the planet in a noncoercive way. There's
also general agreement that doing so would reduce unintended births, slow population growth,
11
and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby helping with climate change mitigation and
adaptation. One difference is that several of us, myself included, feel that stopping emissions
growth and climate change will be unattainable without universal, effective family planning
programs and population stabilization.
The international community should restore the goal of universal access to family planning as a
top-tier priority, to protect both the climate and human wellbeing. How can we satisfy current
unmet need for contraception and reproductive health services? It is a matter of both political
will and money.
About 200 million women in developing countries would like to prevent or delay pregnancy but
can't because they lack access to effective contraception. Reaching and helping these women and
their partners is critical for climate and human development policy. A consensus of population
and health care scientists and organizations estimates that developed nations would need to
donate $5 billion per year (almost ten times the current levels) to reach these women with family
planning services. (See " Family Planning and Reproductive Health: The Link to Environmental
Preservation" [PDF] for more). While this is a significant amount, it's small in comparison to
other expenditures. For instance, the United States spends more than $5 billion on the Iraq war
every two weeks, and the same amount on Medicare programs every few days.
The United States should take the lead. The largest and most effective international family
planning program in history was pioneered by the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) in the 1960s. The United States continues to be the largest donor globally
to international family planning efforts. However, since the 1980's, decay in funding levels,
quality of programs, and political support--along with inflation--has caused the U.S. international
family planning programs to fall behind in constant dollar terms and in relation to the needs of a
global population growing by more than 75 million people per year.
If the United States were to increase its assistance for population programs by $1 billion
annually, and other donor countries contributed their share, it should be possible to satisfy the
global unmet need for family planning within five years. As a result, the population growth rate
could be reduced by about 30 percent, with a similar decrease in the growth of greenhouse gas
emissions.
Much of the technical knowledge about family planning resides in U.S. institutions
(nongovernmental organizations, foundations, and universities), and U.S. political and technical
leaders could quickly revitalize this field. The United States could work closely with the U.N.
Population Fund; the World Bank; European organizations, and other donor countries; as well as
NGOs such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, Pathfinder, and the Population Council to quickly and strongly push
forward on international family planning. Past efforts have shown how effective noncoercive
programs can be, even in extremely poor countries such as Bangladesh and Kenya; and these
programs have many other social and developmental benefits.
Developed countries, beginning with the United States, also need to improve their reproductive
health services and education. For instance, the United States should be able to lower its
unintended pregnancy rate from nearly 50 percent to around 20 percent, the current rate in
12
several European countries, as discussed in my earlier comments. If the Netherlands can do it,
the United States can, too. Decreasing unintended pregnancy rates in America would slow
population growth and greenhouse gas emissions.
Universal access to family planning is no panacea, nor is it sufficient on its own to achieve
population stabilization. We should discuss population education and media programs that affect
the demand for services and their effectiveness in subsequent rounds of this debate. But lowering
unintended fertility is the necessary first step toward population stability--and the climate
mitigation and adaptation benefits that come with it.
----------------------------------------------------Reducing unintended fertility will have little impact on emissions
Response: 22 February 2008
Posted by: Joseph Chamie
Few would disagree that helping women and men who want to avoid or delay pregnancy is a
laudable goal that contributes to the well-being of individuals, families, communities, and
nations. The international community acknowledged this as a fundamental principle of
population policy in the Report of the International Conference on Population and Development
(PDF) (also known as "The Cairo Consensus") which states, "All couples and individuals have
the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, and to
have the information, education, and means to do so." However, fulfilling this ideal is unlikely to
significantly impact overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Fred Meyerson uses the cautious term "unintended fertility" to reference the unintended half of
all U.S. pregnancies and the 200 million women in developing countries who would like to avoid
or delay pregnancy. But he erroneously conflates the idea of contraception, which is largely a
matter of timing, with the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a function of absolute
human numbers-- and the distribution of those numbers among more- and less-developed
nations.
Fertility surveys have found that most couples worldwide want at least two children. In many
less-developed countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, people tend to want at least three
children (often with a preference for sons). This is to say that even with family planning
resources in place, reducing "unintended fertility"--i.e. unplanned pregnancies--will not
necessarily lead to replacement level fertility in less-developed regions, nor reduce average
family size in more developed regions.
The average global birthrate is 2.6 children per woman, equaling approximately 136 million
births per year. Minus annual deaths, that's a net growth of about 78 million people per year. If
all nations instantly reached replacement-level fertility, thereby eventually stabilizing the
population as Fred and others advocate, the total global number of births would fall to about 120
million annually, about a 12-percent reduction.
But the Devil is in the details: The net reduction in births matters less than the distribution of
regional demographic shifts. Nearly all of the more-developed nations have below replacement
fertility levels. Many of these countries, such as Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, are actively
13
seeking to raise fertility levels for reasons of economics and social welfare. In fact, if all moredeveloped, industrialized countries reach replacement-level fertility, their total number of annual
births would increase by 30 percent, or about 4 million births.
Other dynamics are at work, as well. In the United States, where fertility is already at the
replacement level, and in Europe, where fertility is well below replacement, immigration is the
primary driving force behind most of the projected population growth. While immigration does
not contribute to an increase in the absolute number of humans on Earth, it does shift people into
relatively higher consumption brackets. In the unlikely event that immigration were to cease,
U.S. population by mid-century would be 80 percent smaller than projected, a much greater
demographic impact than reducing unintended fertility.
The vast majority of the 200 million women Fred cites are in Africa and Asia. The greatest
demand for reducing unintended fertility is in Africa, where per-capita emissions are already so
low that lower birth rates would not make a noticeable dent in total global emissions. This tactic
could work better in China and India. China, the largest country in the world, is expected to soon
overtake the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses--if it hasn't already.
If current trends continue, some experts believe that China's greenhouse gas emissions will likely
exceed that of all industrialized countries combined during the next 25 years. This is due to both
increasing local consumption and massive exports of commodities like steel and concrete.
But again, the fertility level in China is already 1.7. Reducing unintended fertility in China would
have little effect on the country's production of greenhouse gasses. Moreover, if China were to
relax its one-child policy and fertility increased to replacement level, the country's annual
number of births would increase by nearly 30 percent, or approximately 5 million additional
births.
To be fair, annual births in India would drop by about 4 million if it were to reach replacementlevel fertility, and the birth rates in the populous nations of Brazil and Indonesia would also drop
by 5 and 2 percent, respectively, as their fertility levels are already near replacement level. But as
is widely acknowledged, these and the other less-developed countries are only responsible for
one-fifth of the global carbon dioxide buildup that has accumulated in the atmosphere during the
last century.
Given these circumstances, focusing on reducing unintended fertility to address climate change-in particular to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions-- strikes me as a delay tactic. Instead,
the focus should be on significantly and immediately reducing damaging patterns of production
and consumption. That's where we can make the real difference.
---------------------------------------------------------------------Peaking fuel sources can't keep up with population growth
Response: 29 February 2008
Posted by: John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux
Joe Chamie calls targeting unintended fertility a "delay tactic" that hinders the immediate pursuit
of reducing resource consumption. Again, we want to reiterate that we don't view this as an
14
either-or proposition. Instead, to avoid catastrophic climate change, we believe that the
international community should pursue the methods that Fred Meyerson describes below to
reverse population growth and ways in which to reduce resource consumption.
The time we have available to achieve both of these goals is key. As stated previously, the
United Nations currently projects [PDF] that world population will reach about 9 billion by
2050. Meanwhile, David Rutledge at the California Institute of Technology recently looked at
projections for the depletion of conventional oil, gas, and coal reserves based on the application
of M. King Hubbert's technique for determining peak oil and estimated that, by 2076, 90 percent
of these reserves will be gone.
This is a much shorter timescale than previously believed--especially for coal, where mainstream
predictions had indicated up to a 250-year supply. Rutledge's projections for coal production take
into account new assessments of the recoverability of coal reserves, which may not be as
accessible as once thought, and it's possible that earlier coal forecasts were based on current
usage rates and didn't factor in acceleration from population growth and increased affluence.
Several countries have already severely downgraded their reserves: In 2004, Germany, the
largest coal producer in the European Union, reduced its estimated black coal reserves by 99
percent and its brown coal reserves by 80 percent.
Aside from the devastating climate effects of burning all our fossil fuel, if demographers and
Rutledge are correct, in less than 70 years, humankind will number 9 billion and energy will be
scarce and expensive. Assuming that current growth in renewables and nuclear energy could
provide 60 percent of the current world energy needs by 2075, Rutledge lays out the stark
challenge facing humankind: Cut energy demand to 40 percent less than it is today and reduce
global population to around 5 billion. We think this population target is still too high, given that
Routledge doesn't take into account attrition in agriculture and land availability by that time.
Because nearly one-half of the world's population is under the age of 25, placing them in the
midst or still ahead of their childbearing years, reversing population growth cannot be achieved
before 2050. Only a catastrophic die-off could make it happen sooner. The alternative is Fred's
top-tier prioritization of voluntary family planning, plus education and media outreach now.
Further delay means that we must contend with nearly a billion extra humans to feed and clothe
every decade.
It's all very well and good to say, as Joe does, that in Africa, "per-capita emissions are already so
low that lower birthrates would not make a noticeable dent in total global emissions." But this
implies tolerating an appalling status quo: Who among us doesn't passionately want to see the
poorest people of the world escape their unacceptable poverty? It's not difficult to understand
that one less person born into poverty is one less person who needs to be helped out of poverty--a
development process that cannot occur without increased energy consumption and (in the
medium term) more carbon-dioxide emissions per person.
The data we gave in our first post showed that in 2003, Africa had a per-capita ecological
footprint of 1.1 global hectares (gha) against an available biocapacity of 1.3 gha per person. In
other words, more than a 17.6-percent increase in Africa's population will make it impossible for
even underdeveloped states to sustain their current populations due to space, energy, and
15
(especially) water constraints. As Africa doesn't have the same buffer of wealth as the developed
countries possessed when they crossed the line of unsustainability, that process will have a much
harsher impact on Africans. One of us (John Guillebaud) was born and brought up in Burundi
and Rwanda, and from recent visits, he knows firsthand how many sub-Saharan African
countries are already on the verge of demographic entrapment. Once the environmental carrying
capacity is grossly exceeded, the only likely outcomes are starvation, disease, interethnic
violence and genocide, migration (and to where?), and/or dependence on aid from the
international community.
16