Over-Population,
Over-Consumption and
Environmental problems
Alan Rudy
ISS 310
Spring 2002
Thursday, February 21
The general argument goes a
little like this:
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“Too many people means too much
consumption, depletion and/or pollution
and this threatens the carrying capacity
of a naturally resource-limited collection
of global ecologies.”
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What did we learn from Cronon that
might modify this?
Classic Graph
World Population
18001 Billion
19302 Billion
19603 Billion
19754 Billion
19875 Billion
19996 Billion
20157.5 Billion
North -- Slow
W. Europe = 0.2
N. America = 0.7
E. Europe = 0.8
Austrlia/NZ = 0.8
China/Japan = 1.0
---------------------These days = 0.4%
South -- Fast
S.E. Asia = 2.2
C.Am’ca = 2.3
India/Pak. = 2.4
M.East = 2.8
Africa = 2.8
------------------These days = 1.9
Population: What’s the Problem?
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More people – no real problem
perspective – Julian Simon
People-versus-resources perspective –
Ehrlich, Hardin, Brown
The social perspective – social relations
and institutions are key
The power-structures perspective
A Power-Structures Perspective
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“Our thesis is that antidemocratic power structures
create and perpetuate conditions keeping fertility
high.” (Lappe and Schurmann 18)
Power becomes the crucial variable… [w]ithout it,
it is possible to describe conditions like poverty
associated with high fertility, but not to understand
them or to arrive at workable solutions.” (20)
Usual Approach, prev. Table, is
Usually Tied to Graph like this one:
Explanation of Graph
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The Industrial North has made the
demographic transition
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Population/Environment equilibrium +
modern Technology/Medicine 
Economic/Population growth  New
Population/Environment equilibrium.
The underdeveloped South is still dealing
with the early stages of the process… and,
if modernization works properly, they’ll get
were we are eventually
BUT…
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Consumption continues to rise in the North and
technological and economic growth in the south
lags far behind population growth rates.
This leads to, or so the claim goes,
 pollution in the north and
 depletion in the south.
Therefore:
 “we” are consuming too much and
 “they” are having too many children.
Solution to the problem is then…
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The North must consume less while
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transferring modern contraceptive
technologies to the South so as to slow
population growth and
develop/transfer to the South
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new, appropriate, and efficient technologies to
decrease energy use,
increase recycling,
increase agricultural productivity and
stimulate sustainable (sometimes laborintensive) development.
Let’s look at this model:
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We have a simple model wherein
population increase leads to increased
consumption, depletion, and pollution.
What do we now know?
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What do we not know?
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We know some “facts” and maybe
correlations.
Causation.
What remains unexplained?
We don’t know about:
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Southern womens’ means of population
control or the state of their ecological
relations
The social forces behind population
growth, or technological development
Why it is/how it came to be that Northern
consumers consume as much as they do
Why it is/how it came to be that Southern
folks reproduce so much
Summarizing the Power-Structures
Perspective – understanding is key
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If one’s financial security depends entirely or
largely on one’s surviving children
And many births are necessary to ensure that
even several children live to maturity
And health services, including birth control are
generally unavailable to the poor
And women have no choices other than marriage
and no power w/o children/sons
And few educational or employment
opportunities exist for women outside the home
Population and poverty will increase
With the Demographic Transition
model there is no need to study:

Comparative history:
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Are there Northern countries/regions w/ low
consumption?
Are there Southern countries/regions w/ low
pop growth?
Social relations:
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is population growth socially/ecologically
irrational? for whom?
what about distribution?
No Need to Study II:
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Political Economy:
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where does contemporary sci/tech/med come
from?
what interest does who have in
consumption/population growth?
Cultural History:
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whose normative interests are being served
by this debate?
what institutions foster these trajectories,
where’d they come from?
In this sort of scientific model:
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CRITICISM AND DEBATE ARE
FORECLOSED BY “THE HARSH
REALITY,” BY “THE FACTS”
These positions assume that population,
or technology, can be treated as an
independent/causal variable, as a
“thing” independent of its history and
particular social relations or context.
Lastly:
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The initial equilibrium state between
population and environment is assumed
when it, and its disruption (if it is real),
needs to be theoretically and historically
explained.
Lets compare El Salvador and
Indonesia.
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Both are poor and have high population
growth.
The expectation would then be that
environmental degradation would be about
equivalent in each country.
It hasn’t been.
El Salvador has serious
food/ecological problems.
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Integrated raw material supplier to
Northern industries.
Has major class polarization, land
concentration, and a highly monetized rural
and urban economy.
UK/US colony, import/export driven
economic development.
Indonesia has far fewer foodecological problems.
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Integrated raw material supplier to
Northern merchant/trade businesses.
Far less class/land polarization, and low
monetization of the rural economy
It was a Dutch colony that sought to keep
US/UK indsutrial goods out, and organized
internal development grounded around
subsistence.
My point:
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The key to determining the likelihood of
environmental degradation/starvation, as
we saw with Cronon, is the organization of
society as much as it is the relatively high
or low population in a certain area.
Clearly, this is what makes it possible for
New Jersey to be so densely settled w/
comparatively little hunger and
ecodestruction (unless you’ve been there).
Lets look at the equilibrium
assumption:
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In the context of the slave-mercantileindustrial triangle between Africa-The
Americas-Europe
The population of Africa was decimated (90
to 9 million 1500-1650)
As was that of the Americas (50 to 0.5
million 1500-1999)
That’s a loss of 126 million people in Africa
and the Americas from disease and war
alone.
Equilibrium assumption II
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At the same time that the European
peasantries, just then recovering their
population numbers after The Plague, or
Black Death, were kicked off the land and
turned into the European working class.
Where’s the nature, population equilibrium
of that past now? What of 1 Billion in 1800?
“Recovering” Europe decimated everyone
else and now population scholars start after
the recovery-decimation
Reproduction insecurity 
Population Growth
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Early Capitalist Growth + Enclosure of the
Commons + Landlessness 
inability of peasants to reproduce
themselves and their family w/o wages to
buy commodities they used to make 
population growth to bring in more wagesmoney – esp. when business preferentially
hires more pliable/cheaper women and
children
Urbanization
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Urbanization coincides with the displacement
of rural people and the displacement of rural
people coincides with population growth.
So, as people are no longer able to produce to
satisfy their own needs, they congregate in
cities (where the jobs are).
What does this seem to indicate about Third
World urbanization recently?
But what about consumption?
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How many folks in the North determine their
needs, much less the available means of need
satisfaction…
Or even the range of options within one’s
available means?
Would you prefer more efficient appliances,
homes, better food, entertainment, longer lasting
goods?
What about the urban or rural poor, what are
their options?
Overconsumption II
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If we overconsume, what is it that we
overconsume and why?
If our cars/homes/lifestyles are less
efficient/pollute more than we’d like, why?
Because we are wastrels?
Could poverty be inefficient?
If poverty is inefficient is it economically
so? fiscally so? ecologically so?
If these things are different, how so?
Lets consume less –
Julia Butterfly Hill
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What would the first thing that would
happen were there to be a radical decrease
in consumption in the U.S?
What does business do under conditions of
declining consumption?
What happens to the coffers of the state
under conditions of declining economy?
What happens then?
Remedies
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Note that ALL the traditional responses to
over-population/consumption fail to
address North-South, rich-poor, malefemale hierarchies.
In fact they usually blame those with less
power and less power to productively affect
change.
Historical Remedies
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U.S. and International Population Policy
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Population concerns w/in broader
development policies – 40s-50s
Security/cold war, development, famine and
population – 60s-70s
Development, anti-abortion, domestic
politics and population – 80s
Population, development and women’s
empowerment – 90s/21st C?
But aren’t people hungry?
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If it isn’t over-population or overconsumption that cause hunger and/or
environmental degradation, what is the
problem?
Let’s look at hunger…
Myth One: There is not enough
food and not enough land.
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Untrue: Measured globally, there is enough
to feed everyone. For example there is
enough grain being produced today to
provide everybody in the world with
enough protein and about 3000 calories a
day, which is what the average American
consumes. But the world's food supply is
not evenly distributed.
Myth Two: There are too many
people to feed.
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It's usually the other way around: hunger is one of
the real causes of overpopulation. The more
children a poor family has the more likely some
will survive to work in the fields or in the city to
add to the family's small income and, later, to
care for the parents in their old age.
All this points to the disease that is at the root of
both hunger and overpopulation: High birth rates
are symptoms of the failures of a social system inadequate family income, inadequate nutrition
and health care and old-age security.
Myth Three: Growing more food
will mean less hunger.
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But it doesn't seem to work that way. "More food" is
what the last 30 years' War on Hunger has been
about. Farming methods have been "modernized",
ambitious irrigation plans carried out, "miracle"
seeds, new pesticides, fertilizers and machinery have
become available.
But who has come out better off? Farmers who
already have land. money and the ability to buy on
credit - not the desperately poor and hungry.
Myth Four: Hunger is contest
between rich and poor countries.
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Rich or poor we are all part of the same global
food system which is gradually coming under
the control of a few huge corporations.
Poor people in the Third World market pay
food prices that are determined by what people
in rich countries are willing to pay. This is
direct cause of hunger in many poor countries.
Myth Five: Hunger can be solved by
redistributing food to the hungry.
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Neither "one less hamburger a week“ nor
massive food aid programs will eventually
solve widespread starvation and poverty in
the poorest nation.
People will only cease to be poor when
they control the means of providing and /or
producing food for themselves.
Myth Six: A strong military defense
helps provides food security.
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The security of countries both great and
small, depends first of all in a population
that has enough food, enough jobs,
adequate energy and safe, comfortable
housing. When a society cannot provide
these basics, all the guns and bombs in the
world cannot maintain peace.