It occurs to me that every potentially catastrophic issue we solve, including global warming, will increase the dominion of the human species over the earth. Absent a coordinated and successful concomitant initiative to drastically diminish the human population, do we not simply make our species even more successful than before by ameiliorating threats? And by making it successful, increase its impact? It is simply not possible to serve simultaneous goals of protecting the environment and protecting ourselves forever. At some (fairly proximate?) point we’ll have a human in every ecological corner, so to speak.
The cause of AGW is not too many CO2 molecules, but too many people consuming. We have been trying to solve disease and world hunger in the hope of creating a better world. We have now turned to solving anthropogenic threats which have been precipitated by our success in the first two arenas. Should we succeed in doing so, we sentence future generations to the much more delicate task of winnowing down the population.
Bob Malthus may have been a titchy bit early, and most definitely politically incorrect, but I think he was on to something after all. Every major problem we solve simply increases the upper limit at which the population will level out, and the higher that limit is, the more squeeze there will be on every other living living thing–including gaia herself.
On the other hand, if we let a big problem just run amok, there is some short-term pain but surely there is a reasonable argument to be had that it’s better in the long run. While I realize the cynics among you may feel this is CP’s last-gasp effort to cling to his stuff and avoid sacrifice (or perhaps just the Saturday-night likker talking) I’d like to know if there is an equal passion for population control among the anti-AGW crowd.
The answer “We should do both” is unsatisfying to me. I see no effort to do both; no sign that the problem of too many people is considered anywhere near as critical as too much CO2 production; no calls for population control nearly as widespread or strident as those against AGW.
I shall go consume now in the hope of killing your children. They will thank me for it later…
True, but all evidence shows that as the standard of living rises (as in post-industrial societies), birth-rates fall. The best bet might be to make everybody comfortable through cheap energy and clean water and all the other technological advances made during the “solving” of AGW (whether or not AGW is actually happening) and the human population will stabilize and perhaps slowly decline to a manageable 6 billion or so, or lower.
A “rise in the standard of living” is another way of saying “increased consumption.” It is for that reason that these most-successful societies are the chief AGW sinners. It will be some time before this increased consumption can be made to be truly carbon-neutral. In our existing scenario there is a lot of population hoping to consume a lot more–carbon-neutral or not–and we are doing nothing to control the population side of the equation.
But the absolute worst-case scenario is clean, cheap energy. That will drive a population explosion unparalleled in history. When energy is cheap, existence is less expensive. When there is less financial cost associated with having children, the narcissistically-driven self-imposed birth control will vanish from the industrialized societies. Cheap, clean energy will also enable larger populations in developing countries.
In short, if you make them comfortable, they will reproduce like there is no tomorrow.
As Bryan Ekers noted, there is zero evidence for this. Much of the developed world, certainly the U.S., has had cheap energy…albeit not very clean but I hardly doubt that was holding us back…and our birth rate had dropped. (The population of the U.S. is still growing, but primarily through immigration.
Is the idea of putting any sort of tax or restrictions on the production of CO2 really that scary to people that the conclusion is that we might as well just give up and accept our fate?!?! How pathetic!
The best way to reduce population is to make sure that folks can be reasonably confident their kids will survive their 5th birthday. And to ensure that no-one needs to have kids simply in order to guarantee that they won’t spend their old age in crushing poverty. These ideas, such as health plans and social security, have been tried in the west. And they appear to have been successful, especially if the main goal was a reduction in birthrate.
Bryan Ekers and others are correct when they note that once nations reach first world status they will eventually come to enjoy a flat or declining birth rate. This is a well known fact. However, the OP is also (mostly) correct when he states:
I say mostly because there are ways of raising the standard of living which do not cause an unmanageable increase in the rate of consumption of resources. For example, a better education, the liberalization of sexual politics, and better health care would all do the trick. Those are all good things from any angle you choose to examine them.
However, the idea that 7 billion (or 9 billion people circa 2050) can enjoy the same type of lifestyle as the average United States or even Western European citizen circa 2007 is a suicidal fantasy. We would need to find several more Earths to burn through in quick order. Of course, that doesn’t even matter since it’s just a hypothetical. The equation is always balancing itself. We just watch the results on the news.
I am saying that ensuring the world is a suitable place for us to live may be good for our species in the short term but have long-term consequnces that are bad for all other species. Such a focus has already been bad for us. As I pointed out, our success to date in “ensuring the world is a suitable place” without consideration of the population excess such an approach generates has already caused us to over-run the planet and is the fundamental driver behind the large-scale problems we see now. In the longer term we will crowd out even ourselves.
The AGW concerns are all couched around how serious climate change will be for human survival. I am suggesting that we should concentrate on population control and that worrying about AGW focuses on the symptom but not the disease. We are putting our emphasis and our resources in the wrong place, however well-intentioned we are.
Were it not for my love for the human race, I wouldn’t care. Why would you infer a general misanthropy from a post about getting our priorities straight so that the human race has a chance of surviving in the first place?
Funny, much of what I read about Global Climate Change emphasizes the serious consequences on biodiversity. And the many of populations likely reached by the publicity for birth control that are being promoted are already suffering from consequences of negative birth rates.
We all need to go back to being hunters and gatherers so we can be happy again…and so the world can be happy too.
If only those nasty little buggers during the Archean period had thought of the good of the planet instead of releasing all of that oxygen stuff everywhere. Look at how THAT worked out, ehe? Selfish bastards…
I don’t think it even makes sense what you’re saying.
We should let things get worse so as to prevent things getting worse?
I agree that overpopulation is the ultimate problem for the human race right now, not AGW. However, we already know that key parts of any solution are education and, yes, the spread of economic wealth.
Not some sort of human “cull”, which some people seem to actually desire, so that mankind can get its “comeuppance”.
Really? Even after a few decades of aggressive anti-AGW policies that lead to most energy being nuclear, most vehicles being electric or hybrid and most agriculture aware of and seeking to minimize environmental damage? You don’t really have any idea what’ll be possible and commonplace by 2050. No-one does. The future could easily have more people, living at a higher standard, yet be clean and efficient to a degree no-one can currently expect.
I figure I have a decent chance of living that long, so I’m looking forward to it.
But there two possibilities if we fail to focus on population, are there not?
1: We do solve the energy and agricultural problems. There is no upper limit to comfortable human population until we are standing shoulder to shoulder on all the land plus a lot of artificial islands. This scenario does not seem to bode well for the ecology of the earth’s other lifeforms. Hoping the population levels off on its own is not a strategy.
2: We don’t solve energy and food. While we are not solving them, the population continues to rise and the developing world continues to increase consumption with non-clean energy, worsening whatever pickle we are in now.
Among the criticisms directed against Malthus was that it was inappropriate to consider a scenario in which mankind suffered a consequence of its overpopulation. Since his time, we have instead focused on solving energy and agriculture to make sure the world continues to be a suitable place for even more people. I contend that this delay in addressing the core problem of too many people has vastly worsened the problem. I contend that solving AGW (and similar potential catastrophes) without addressing overpopulation as the first–or at least equal–priority is shortsighted and dangerous.
I am not seriously suggesting culling people. Well…maybe the political extremists on both sides of the US political aisle, but that’s about it. C’mon. I am suggesting that solving AGW, or any other feedback loop that limits human population–disease; famine; catstrophic climate change–has a feel-good short-term effect and an increasingly catastrophic long-term one unless we fix the population excess concomitantly.
xtisme, if your model of the right approach is Archean oxidation, then of course we should leave both AGW and population growth alone and just see what shakes out, right?
I think you’re making this an either/or propositiion, when the two are really linked. One reason we’re careless with resources (and therefore population size)is because we’re leaving the true cost to be paid for in the future, at compound rates no less.
The sooner we find ways to pay the cost now instead of putting it off, the more we’ll start being realistic about what kinds of populations we can really support globally.
I (and, I suspect, you) don’t know what you’re talking about. Overpopulation gets “addressed” everywhere eduction and economic opportunities are available, in that people decide on their own to have fewer (or no) children. If your premise was correct and economic comfort led to unrestrained baby-making, birthrates in Japan, the U.S., Canada and western Europe would be far higher than everywhere else. Since your premise is not correct, everything that flows from it is suspect.
Anyway, if AGW is “solved”, I assume this means cleaner energy, applied more efficiently and the corresponding rise in per-capita wealth this implies. Do wealthier people have more children than poor people? Cite, please.
Human beings won’t be destroyed by AGW unless we accelerate to a point that would pretty much obliterate all life as we know it–which is doubtful, to put it mildly. It’s some of the other megafauna who face extinction from this.
I am a Malthusian, I believe very seriously in culling the human race back below 4 000 000 000, & believe me when I say letting AGW go on does nothing helpful about human over-population.
If you’re going to let something go & let nature take its course, a risky proposition at best, I suggest defunding agencies that do vaccine research &/or treat fatal diseases that strike large population clusters (tb, cholera, etc). It’s bloody messy, but it might cut the population without anyone’s armed forces having to dirty their hands with direct homicide in the name of sustainability.
Or, & I find this more plausible, let war do it. Human societies, facing contracting opportunity-per-person & resources-per-person, will retreat to tribalism & mass slaughter. It’s going to happen anyway, we may as well stop fighting it. It’s going to suck to be interracial in the next century.
