More Gorillas and Fewer Humans, Please
Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage. — Jacques Cousteau
Image source: The Sustainable Scale ProjectPopulation growth is a big problem. Billions big. The U.N. projects about a 40% increase in world population, from 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion, in the next 45 years. (Figures as of February, ‘05) This, when by most authoritative accounts we’ve already exceeded the population size our planet can sustain for the long term (The U.S. shot past its own carrying capacity some time ago), and are struggling with the most serious environmental problems in human history. (Think loss of the Amazon rain forest, climate change, the Three Gorges Dam of the Yangtze River in China, the rupturing of the ozone layer, huge “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico, and a thousand times the normal level of species loss to name just a few.)
A local community connects to and interacts reciprocally with the larger region, country, and the world in which it exists. While our local population growth is in some measure a result of simple shifts of population from one area or town to another, it is also in part a reflection of national growth. And like the environmental degradation caused by national population growth, our own growth carries with it inevitable environmental consequences. To understand the effects of population growth on one level, we must examine them on other levels as well.
Our actions locally can accommodate population growth, both here and more broadly — or not. In light of the current state of our natural environment and its link with population growth, we should choose not to.
With that in mind I recommend an article on BBC News by Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey. The topic of overpopulation, Rapley tells us, is “So controversial… that it has become the ‘Cinderella’ of the great sustainability debate - rarely visible in public, or even in private.”
Indeed, though the topic of overpopulation received a great deal of press in the ’70s, many groups, concerned about the thorny moral and political questions it raises, shied away from it in subsequent decades. Now, my impression is that its undeniable environmental impact is forcing it back into the open, and groups such as the Sierra Club are again taking the plunge and talking about it.
And discuss it we must. Rapley makes clear that any efforts to solve our environmental problems will have at best limited success if we do not also take decisive action to deal with the problem of population growth.
January 17th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Focusing on population growth as a cure all for the problems that are currently facing society is only focusing on one small aspect of the problem. Especially outside of developing nations. According to Daniel Chiras, environmental advocate and author, the United States has entered a postindustrial state of growth. In the year 2000, the total fertility rate here in the United States was 2.1. This number is acceptable in terms of population growth theories that advocate zero population growth, i.e. replacement of the man and the spouse.
The issue at hand in this country is consumerism. We live in a country that contains only 4.6% of the world’s population but consumes 25% of its primary energy. Population growth has slowed in this county but this measure alone will do no good unless Americans begin to make environmentally conscious purchasing choices. As long as Wal-mart and Target continue to peddle their cheap plastic crap and Americans as a whole are uneducated and unconcerned about environmental issues, you will effect little change.
The area we live in is no stranger to the concept of consumerism. It runs rampant here in Mount Vernon; it is a lesson we allow our children to be spoon fed by the public school system. In the entire time, I have lived in this community I have met very few people who are honestly committed to developing a more sustainable society. I would match my family of six’s consumption against that of most of the smaller families in this area without hesitation. Yet in an era when conspicuous consumption should be despised, people look down on those of us who have the foresight to live simple, frugal lives. My family and I are constantly on the receiving end of discriminatory treatment because of our lifestyle choices.
I cannot honestly say that I am a proponent of large families. I have not seen it do the children much good from an emotional standpoint. Older children are generally parentified at an age when they should be focusing on self-development. In my situation, I re-married and my current husband wanted to have children. I placate my guilty conscience with the fact that my ex-husband and his new spouse have no children. The fact remains that I am aware of the impact my choice makes on this planet and I have taken many steps to reduce our ecological footprint.
On the other hand, I do not agree with population control as a panacea for all environmental problems. Many people in this community have small families, two gas guzzling vehicles and consumer purchasing habits that honestly make me feel physically ill when I think of all the people in this world who are starving or truly needy. As long as people are obsessed with keeping up appearances, our environmental issues will never be solved.
January 17th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Hi Stephany,
You raise an extremely important point: that consumerism and our per-capita consumption of resources (our individual ecological footprint) is a huge part of the problem. As you mention, the U.S represents only something less than 5% of the world’s population, but produces about 25% of all CO2 emissions. Our ecological footprint is way out of proportion with our population as we use far more than our fair share of the earth’s resources. (including per-capita land consumption)
And I completely agree with your assessment of consumerism and consumption here and in the U.S. as a whole. (I’m certainly not innocent there, BTW. My family could stand to reduce its consumption of energy considerably, and we’re gradually taking steps to do so.)
In my view, you definitely shouldn’t feel guilty about the number of kids you’ve had. Population issues have been largely invisible in the media since their period of prominence in the ’70s, and there was long a general assumption that overpopulation, at least in the U.S., just wasn’t the problem some had previously believed it to be. Who can really blame anyone for having had more than, say, two kids during recent decades? And with your focus on reducing your family’s ecological footprint, I think you can safely replace any guilt with pride!
It may just be my perception since I’ve been researching this so much recently, but it seems it’s only recently that there’s been a small resurgence in concern over population growth. Now here is where I’ll diverge from your view a little, but I aim to win you over!
While consumption is indeed a huge issue, it’s precisely because of our level of consumption in the U.S. that population growth is also right up there as one of the most important, if not the most important factor involved in environmental degradation in the U.S. today. Because we consume so much per-capita in the U.S., it greatly magnifies the negative effects of our population growth relative to that of third world countries.
The U.S. population is around 300 million today and is projected to top 400 million (the middle of three hypothetical scenarios) by 2050, doubling by the end of the century. (We are, btw, the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India.) Yes, our fertility rate is only around 2.1, but Edwin Stennett calculates that due to immigration we would need to drop the fertility rate to 1.8 to achieve a stable population. That is his recommended solution. (That 2.1 is, btw, the highest of any industrialized nation today, I think.) Some of the overpopulation information and activism groups opt instead to call for immigration reform - a thorny issue, and one on which I take no stand at this point. (I need to examine closely Stennett’s calculations versus those of other groups.) I do, however, feel that while population growth is a difficult issue to deal with, we urgently need to do so.
Sprawlcity.org has some good discussion of this consumption versus population growth question, but their site is currently down. Stennett covers it well though. Note that he makes a good case, in the page he links to at the bottom, that even if we all reduced our consumption levels by rather large amounts, our population growth would more than overwhelm the benefits.
So in my view (and I’ll admit it’s evolving) we in the U.S. urgently need reductions in both consumption and population growth.
Thanks, Stephany for contributing, and I hope to see you here again. Your website is inspiring!
[Edit: Note that I’ve updated the link above (repeated here) concerning some overpopulation groups’ stances on immigration. In so doing I’ve refined my position on it, though I still feel unqualified to offer an opinion on the matter.]
January 18th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
I’d like to add a brief point:
I may not have been clear enough so far on this site about why I touch sometimes on the issue of population growth. While I believe it’s a terribly important global issue in its own right, more germane to this site is that, looking at the U.S. as a whole, it’s the chief root cause of sprawl.
I’ll write an essay on that before long, pointing to references that show how population growth interacts with per-capita land use (overconsumption) to create sprawl. The latter can create sprawl all by itself, and must be adressed as well, but the evidence suggests that the former is the more potent factor.