by Simon Butler
Green Left Weekly
Without doubt, climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. The scientific evidence of the scale of the threat is overwhelming, compelling and frightening. Climate tipping points – points which if crossed will lead to runaway global warming – are being crossed now.
We live in a time of consequences. So it’s crucial that the climate justice movement – made up of those determined to take a stand now to win a safe climate future – campaigns for the changes that can actually make a difference.
In Australia, a discussion has surfaced about whether population control measures should be a key plank in the climate action movement’s campaign arsenal. Below are 10 reasons why such a decision would hinder, rather than help, the necessary task of building a movement that can win.
1. Population does not cause climate change
Advocates of population control say that one of the most effective measures we can take to combat climate change is to sharply reduce the number of humans on the planet. This wrongly focuses on treating one symptom of an irrational, polluting system rather than dealing with the root causes.
People are not pollution. Blaming too many people for driving climate change is like blaming too many trees for causing bushfires.
The real cause of climate change is an economy locked into burning fossil fuels for energy and unsustainable agriculture. Unless we transform the economy and our society along sustainable lines as rapidly as possible, we have no hope of securing an inhabitable planet, regardless of population levels.
Population-based arguments fail to admit that population levels will impact on the environment in a very different way in a zero-emissions economy. Making the shift to renewable energy – not reduction in human population – is really the most urgent task we face.
2. The world is not ‘full up’
The world is not experiencing runaway population growth. While population is growing, the rate of this growth is actually slowing down. This is mostly due to rising urbanization and marginal improvements in women’s access to birth control technology. The rate of population growth peaked at 2% annually in the 1960s, and has fallen consistently since then.[1]
According to the UN the average number of children born per woman fell from 4.9 in the late 1960s to 2.7 in 1999.[2] A December 2008 assessment from the US Census Bureau predicts a steady decline to 0.5% annual population growth by 2050.[3]
Between 1950 and 2000 world population increased by 140%. Experts predict a rise of 50% between 2000 and 2050 and just 11% in the 50 years following that.
In contrast, the rate of greenhouse gas emissions is rising out of control. Polluting technology, rampant consumerism and corporate greed are driving this increase – not population.
Can we feed this many people? Studies by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation insist it is possible to feed well over 10 billion people sustainably – but only if we move to a very different food system. A diversified and organic farming system which produces a balanced mix of plant foods, along with small amounts of meat, could, according to British biologist Colin Tudge, sustain 10 billion people without farming any new areas.[4]
A shift to sustainable farming is also desperately needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Social justice and women’s equality is the best contraception
Larger population growth rates in the Third World are a consequence of dire poverty and restrictions on women’s ability to control their own fertility. The evidence for this can’t be challenged.
The latest UN population report released on March 12 predicts population will exceed 9 billion people by mid-century. Almost all of this growth will occur in the global South.
The 49 poorest countries in the world will have by far the biggest increases. In the richest countries, however, population will decline from 1.23 billion to 1.15 billion if projected net migration is left aside. (It will increase to only 1.28 billion including net migration).[5]
Raising living standards globally, eradicating hunger and poverty, improving health care, providing access to education and achieving greater equality for women are all necessary if we are to win a safe climate with global justice. They will also result in lower birth rates.
4. The climate emergency demands immediate, transformative action now
Even if they could work in the long term – a dubious proposition – population control schemes are plainly inadequate as a response to the climate emergency.
The well known Australian environmental writer Tim Flannery is also one of the patrons of Sustainable Population Australia – a group that argues population reduction should be the number one priority to avert climate change.
Yet in a recent survey of the latest climate science in Quarterly Essay even Flannery had to conclude: “The truth is that if we wish to act morally, we can influence population numbers only slowly. So, while it’s important to focus on population decrease as a long-term solution, we cannot look to it for answers to the immediate crisis.”[6]
5. Population arguments wrongly downplay the potential to win
Left unchecked, climate change threatens life on the planet. Recognition of this fact is the major impetus for the movement demanding governments take serious action on climate change without delay.
Populationists, however, try to turn this fact on its head. Climate change will lead to a world so harsh, uncertain and polluted, the argument goes, that it’s more “humane” to prevent future generations from being born at all.[7]
This “humane” population reduction argument is couched in terms of containing, or mitigating, the apparently inevitable effects of environmental destruction. Instead, the struggle for an alternative model of development, based on meeting the needs of people and planet, should be our main concern.
6. Population control is an old argument tacked onto a new issue
Climate change is just the latest in a long list of issues that has been seized on by advocates of population control.
For centuries, simplistic population theories have been advanced to explain the existence of poverty, hunger, famine, disease, war, racism and unemployment.
In each case, the real social and economic causes of these social ills have been glossed over. Time is running out to avert global warming – we need to take serious action that tackles the problem at the root.
7. Arguing for tighter migration restrictions in Australia is a dangerous policy
Reducing immigration intake into Australia is the current policy on the anti-environmental Rudd government.[8] As the climate crisis deepens, we can expect the government and the big polluters will want to divert attention from their own inaction. Migrants could be a convenient scapegoat Migrants are already being falsely blamed for adding to unemployment. We can’t allow them to be blamed for corporate Australia’s addiction to fossil fuels.
Supporting cuts in migration to Australia avoids the real burning issue – Australia is the highest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita in the world. Migrants who come here should be welcomed and invited into our movement for a safe climate. They are not responsible for the policies of past governments or the greed of the big polluters.
8. Population control has a disturbing history
In practice, there has never been a population control scheme that has met with acceptable environmental or humanitarian outcomes. Columbia University professor Matthew Connelly has thoroughly documented this disturbing history in his 2008 book Fatal Misconception.
China’s one child policy has been hailed as an environmental measure by prominent population theorists such as Britain’s Jonathan Poritt.[9] But he and others ignore that China’s population control has hardly solved that country’s growing environmental problems.
The human costs of the policy, however, are shocking. Until 2002 Chinese women were denied any choice of contraceptive method – 37% of married women have been forcibly sterilized.[10] Female infanticide has reached epidemic proportions. The global ratio for male to female births is 106:100. In China today, male “births” outnumber females by 120:100.[11]
9. People in the global South are part of the solution, not the problem
At its worst, population control schemes put the blame for climate change on the poorest people in the global South – those least responsible for the problem in the first place.
It’s a major mistake to see the masses of the global South as passive victims of climate change. In truth, they are the pivotal agent in the campaign to avert global warming.
We need a strategy of building stronger links and collaboration with movements for climate justice in the global South – not draw up plans to reduce their numbers.
10. Who holds political power is the real “population” issue
There is one part of the world’s population that poses a genuine threat: the small group of powerful, vested interests who profit most from polluting the biosphere and are desperately resisting change.
The real “population change” we need to focus on is not artificially reducing human numbers. Rather, it is about winning real democratic change, i.e. dramatically increasing the numbers of ordinary people who can participate in making decisions about investment in green industries, agriculture, global trade and military spending.
Population control narrowly looks only at the quantity of human beings to find a solution to climate change. Ultimately, its narrow vision makes it a divisive policy.
The climate action movement, however, is really concerned with improving the quality of human life.
On that basis we can build a movement of hope and solidarity strong enough to penetrate national borders and restore a safe climate for future generations.
Notes
[1] US Census Bureau, International Data Base, December 2008 http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopchggraph.html. [2] The World at Six Billion, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopchggraph.html. [3] US Census Bureau, International Data Base, December 2008 http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldgrgraph.html. [4] Tudge, Colin. ‘Can organic farming feed the world?’ http://www.colintudge.com/articles/article06.php. [5] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. ‘World population to exceed 9 billion by 2050’, March 12 2009. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/pressrelease.pdf. [6] Flannery, Tim. Now or Never. Quarterly Essay Issue 31, p 9. [7] Sustainable Population Australia makes this deeply pessimistic argument explicitly. See http://www.population.org.au/images/stories/Documents/gpr_spa_2007.pdf. [8] ‘Kevin Rudd targets skilled workers to protect jobs http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,27574,25191742-2682,00.html. [9] See http://www.sd-commission.org.uk. [10] Quoted in Ward, Phil. ‘Population Control and Climate Change, Part One: Too Many People’, March 2, 2008 https://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=348. [11] Davidson, Shannon; Bunnell, Jennifer and Yan, Fei ‘Gender Imbalance in China’. October 27, 2008. http://aparc.stanford.edu/news/gender_imbalance_in_china_20081027/.
The people with the lowest population growth are the ones who are doing the greatest damage to the environment and consuming the greatest amount of the planet’s resources. I speak, of course, of the wealthiest 20 percent of humanity, who account for 86 percent of the consumption of planetary resources.
Eliminating the other 80 percent of the population would reduce planetary consumption by only 14 percent.
Clearly population per se is not the problem, but rather the destructive and wasteful ways of capitalist economy and culture that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
This article has generated some much needed discussion about population policy in the climate action movement in Australia.
Earlier this week I was interviewed by Radio Adelaide’s Julia Terreu on the topic.
You can listen to it here: http://backstory.org.au/wordpress/
This is a much needed and SPOT ON article. It’s absurd to say the author is trying “kill the conversation” on population when in fact he has devoted the entire article to responding to misconceptions about the function of population control and proposing alternative views and measures.
A focus on population control completely distracts from the political and economic systems that reinforce the way greenhouse gases are emitted. neglecting those aspects of the conversation or looking at ecological problems as anything but a social problem is a dangerous illusion that leads to more injustice and poverty. this author is looking critically at what “sustainability” is actually looking to sustain.
global warming is an ecological and social crisis with powerful culprits that are concealed with the ambiguity provided by pointing to population growth as a main driver of global warming.
its important to look at WHO is actually doing the damage more specifically than just “humans” in general. just because the issue at hand is an environmental one doesn’t mean that blaming “population” or “humans” (as opposed to oil companies, coal giants, powerful countries with neo-liberal agendas, input-intensive agriculturalists, etc) makes anymore sense than blaming “population” or “humans” for the War in Iraq, human rights violations in China or genocide in Darfur. There ARE responsible parties with significant agency in all these situations, including global warming, and they SHOULD be held accountable- not guarded by some discourse about over population. looking critically at social organization and its patterns in light of global warming is also important as long as the focus is constructive and doesn’t distract from parallel issues such as poverty, hunger, famine, disease, war, racism and unemployment, as the author points out. however, that is exactly what singling out population growth does.
i guess if you’re invested in inequality, poverty, racism and gender inequality, population is a pretty great way to frame global warming. might also want to look into bio-fuels. And if so you’re probably are a little lost if you’ve found yourself at a blog called “Climate and Capitalism”. might want to check out “Climate and Stuff that Doesn’t Really Bear Much Weight on, or is Merely a Secondary or Tertiary Symptom of, Overriding Social Structure.”
While Simon Butler is a smart man and has written some brilliant things, this is not one of them. He is simply wrong here. One tell-tale sign is he is grasping at straws to kill the conversation about population, attempting to disparage the motiviations behind advocacy for sustainable population (both present and historic). It’s pretty transparent.
He fails to mention the loss of biodiversity we are experiencing.
And he needs to read some of Al Bartlett’s writing about arithmetic. How can one be comfortable with population growth settling in at .5% annually? Let’s use round numbers here. That means if global population is 10 billion in 2050, it will be 20 billion in 2190, and 40 billion in 2330. Not a good plan!
His aversion to addressing population’s role in climate disruption reveals a narrow, short-term focus and is yet another example of the strong societal biases we must leave behind if we are to become a truly sustainable civiization. I’m studying these hurdles in my film, Hooked on Growth. It saddens me to read this kind of stuff, but I will gladly collect it, put it in a jar with a little chloroform, and then pin it up in my collection of attitudes which do not serve our children and grandchildren.
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
Join the cause at http://www.growthbusters.com
See the trailer
What is worth discussing is identifying the root of the problem of population growth.
You can’t change human nature.
It’s no surprise that the poorest countries in the world are where populations are expected to increase. This comes from a natural progression and response to the economic situation which poor and underdeveloped countries undergo, and its effect on population levels. Simply put this happens in three phases;
Firstly, in a state of poverty infant mortality rates are high in countries where family is more than just an emotional, blood bond, but a survival mechanism. Family members are expected to work to contribute to the well being of the group, therefore more family members increases the chances of survival for that family. Of course this is exacerbated by a lack of education for contraceptive measures.
Secondly, throughout history, when economic circumstances improve, infant mortality rates fall. But family values take time to adjust to the new economic situation which leads to population booms which Australia, America, UK and pretty much every developed country has undergone.
The third phase is what developed countries are currently experiencing with declining and ageing populations. Economic comfort increases education for a start and also brings with it a radical focus on individuality, rather than social/family values which become less important. Social problems and diseases increase in crowded populations however, at the same time opportunity for economic comfort increases, reducing the need for a dependency on a network of family members for survival. Birth rates are therefore reduced as a consequence.
Human nature is such and it’s development as per above is a story that repeats itself throughout history. Try to inject population control and you go against human nature, you bring with it a whole basket of other problems such as war and social unrest.
Combating climate change does require a change in human nature, but this is more prudently directed in other aspects such as reducing wastefulness and encouraging “green” consumerism, technology and recycling. The debate is rightly directed at the powers that be, as they do have the power to “influence” these behaviours through incentives and policies. But as in other attempts of direct populace control throughout history, it will only breed unwanted and unnecessary negative side-effects.
This is a vacuous argument, not worth responding to.