[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Will Slower Population Growth Stop Global Warming?

[Bill Totten]

by Allen Schill, reply by Bill McKibben

In response to Can Anyone Stop It? (October 11 2007)

The New York Review of Books (December 20 2007)


To the Editors:

Once again a highly informative, well-written, and lively article by
Bill McKibben on books with an environmental theme ["Can Anyone Stop
It?", NYR, October 11]. Even enjoyable, notwithstanding the frightening
prospects in store for the planet, even in some of the better scenarios.
But it seems a crucial element has been largely overlooked in the review
(not the fault of McKibben, I am sure), as in most of the recent public
discussion of global warming and the growing scarcity of natural
resources: population.

In the early 1970s, toward the beginning of the modern environmentalist
movement, one often heard about ZPG, zero population growth, or (more
ambitious yet) NPG, negative population growth. At the time there were,
I think, barely four billion people on the planet, at a level of
resource consumption considerably lower than today's. I recall thinking
then, bad enough already the environmental impact of the developed
world; how much worse will it be when the average Indian or Chinese also
has an automobile, a refrigerator, and air-conditioning? (Nothing
against the Indians and the Chinese as such, of course.)

I don't know where the political will might ever be found, in any
country, to suppress unrestrained consumption. By themselves, higher
prices for energy (and water, and food) won't do it, I'm afraid. I see
little inclination, even on the part of environmentally enlightened
people, to make any lifestyle choices that would entail personal
sacrifice or any significant reduction in living standard (as measured
by resource consumption). We'll heat the house a bit less and wear
sweaters indoors in winter. We'll buy smaller cars. Seems we're all
betting on technology and public policy to save our planetary butt. But
is this such a good bet? Should we feel optimistic, given the worldwide
political climate today?

Prudent gamblers and investors all know about hedging. Any attempt to
curtail global warming or to provide renewable resources (and to make
the nonrenewable ones last a little longer) will be at a grave
disadvantage without a serious initiative to bring population growth
under control - or even reduce it over the decades to come. Population
acts (I suppose) pretty much as a simple multiplier in this massive and
otherwise complex calculation whose product may well be a multifaceted
global calamity (which would be a very unpleasant way to correct our
overpopulation). All other factors being whatever they will be, we can
only gain by having n billions of people instead of 1.2n or 1.5n or 2n.
Is this really a hotter potato than the one that would ask us to give up
our cars? Bill, why aren't we all talking more about this?

Allen Schill
Turin, Italy


Bill McKibben replies:

Many thanks to Mr Schill for his letter. It raises a common and
important point, and one I have tried to address in the past (see my
book Maybe One). In general terms, population is one of the few major
environmental trends heading in the right direction. Partly as a result
of the Earth Day–era alarms that Mr Schill describes, people in this
country and then, more importantly, in the developing world itself began
searching for ways to slow population growth, which was foreseen to
involve an almost infinite series of doublings. The best contraceptive
turned out to be education and, to one degree or another, giving women
more control of their lives (though a supply of actual contraceptives
was also necessary).

Despite, in recent times, ham-handed efforts by American administrations
to interfere, those efforts have met with measurable success. Worldwide,
the average woman in the early 1970s had close to six children, a number
that has now fallen below three. World population, now over six billion,
will continue to increase - to not much more than nine billion by many
estimates. Most of that increase is built into the age structure of the
population; that is, the growing number of couples now coming into their
childbearing years. Nine billion will be harder to support than six
billion, but the momentum of population increase has been broken.

No such break has yet occurred in the consumption curve, which is bad
news because, more than sheer numbers, that rising level of consumption
among an ever larger portion of the world's population is what drives
global warming. In fact, fossil fuel use is so low in the regions where
population growth remains high (parts of Africa, for instance) that,
with regard to climate change, Mr Schill's assumption that it serves as
a "simple multiplier" is happily mistaken. I must say that I've always
found the contrast between these two curves odd. Intuitively, I would
have expected human fertility to be hardwired in some Darwinian fashion,
and consumption to be much more pliable. So far that seems not to be
true - even in our country, where the effects of too much consumption
are almost comically visible in oversized houses, cars, and waistlines,
growth remains our credo.

Copyright (c) 1963-2008, NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing in
this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the
publisher. Please contact web at nybooks.com with any questions about this
site. The cover date of the next issue will be February 28, 2008.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20910


The Biggest Menace?

by Paul R Ehrlich and Anne H Ehrlich, reply by Bill McKibben

In response to Will Slower Population Growth Stop Global Warming?
(December 20 2007)

The New York Review of Books (February 14 2008)

To the Editors:

Bill McKibben's reply to Allen Schill [Letters, December 20 2007] is not
inaccurate, but it fails to get to the essence of the issue. The
projected 2.5 billion further increase in the human population will
almost certainly have a much greater environmental impact than the last
2.5 billion added since 1975. Our species has already plucked the
low-hanging resource fruit and converted the richest lands to human
uses. To support the newcomers, metals will have to be won from
ever-poorer ores, while oil, natural gas, and water will need to be
obtained from ever-deeper wells and transported further. So-called
"marginal" lands, often the last strongholds of the biodiversity on
which we all depend for essential ecosystem services, increasingly will
be converted into yet more crops to feed people, livestock, or (as
biofuels) SUVs. These changes, plus the alterations that will be needed
to cope with fossil fuel problems and new geographic patterns of drought
and precipitation, will require accelerating energy use with its
attendant destructive consequences for the global environment in general
and climate stability in particular.

Climate change is a major threat, even if it may not be the greatest
environmental problem. Land-use change, toxification of the planet,
increased probability of vast epidemics, or conflicts over scarce
resources, involving, possibly, use of nuclear weapons  - all
population-related - may prove more menacing. To ameliorate any of these
threats there are no panaceas; a portfolio approach is required. And any
truly effective portfolio must contain measures to slow and eventually
reverse human population growth. McKibben is certainly correct that
curbing overall consumption is critical. The world's poorest need more,
yet the world's most affluent should use considerably less. But
consumption too has a tight population connection, as McKibben himself
is certainly aware. No matter how you slice it, we're living beyond
Earth's long-term ability to support even the present population. It is
not enough to break the momentum of population increase, we've got to
move more rapidly toward population reduction.

Paul R Ehrlich
Bing Professor of Population Studies President, Center for Conservation
Biology
Stanford University

Anne H Ehrlich
Associate Director/Policy Coordinator, Center for Conservation Biology
Stanford University
Stanford, California


Bill McKibben replies:

Many thanks to the Ehrlichs, not only for their useful letter but for
their long work on this question.

The point I was trying to make in response to Allen Schill is that the
connection between population growth and fossil fuel use is actually
quite weak - that is, heavy population growth is expected to occur in
the areas where fossil fuel use is extremely low and likely to remain
so. Thus, in the fight against climate change, which was the question he
asked about, consumption is the first imperative. This does not change
the fact that a world that strains to supply six billion with everything
from water to food to school desks and hospital beds will have a harder
time with nine billion.

Copyright (c) 1963-2008, NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing in
this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the
publisher. Please contact web at nybooks.com with any questions about this
site. The cover date of the next issue will be February 28, 2008.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21043

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