The topic you bring up is actually very relevant. So far, when I’ve talked about growth here it’s been about physical urban growth or population growth as a root cause of it. But there’s a whole area of economic growth which relates to all of this which I haven’t touched on so far, only because I’m not yet very well informed on it.

In fact, just yesterday I received the book, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development

http://tinyurl.com/974qt

…which I think goes into it in some depth. More immediately accessible might be this site:

http://www.steadystate.org/

They seem to do a good job of tying together population growth, economic growth, and the environment. This statement from their FAQ gives a good glimpse into their thinking:

Why is it important to use the phrase “economic growth” in discussions on environmental protection and national security?

In recent decades, many publications have warned of the environmental perils of “human activities.” These warnings have been based on important scientific findings, but they have had little effect on public policy. Why? Imagine walking through the policy arena, searching for a policy table where “human activities” are handled. Your search will be fruitless, and so are the warnings.

To affect policy decisions, we will need to use language that points clearly to an established policy table. The biggest policy table in the domestic policy arena is devoted to economic growth.

When we use the phrase “economic growth” to describe the overall threat to the environment and national security, the relevant policy table is unmistakable. To the extent we are effective, policy reforms to stabilize the size of the economy will follow, with an inevitable stabilizing effect on population, per-capita consumption, and “human activities.”

So yeah, I think economic growth, and consumerism as a large part of it, is something I’ll have to explore further here. I suppose the fact is that you can’t separate a number of these factors as they work together.

Do past Presidential calls for Americans to spend more to keep Economy growing equate in any respect to the more ambiguous growth ethic that you are describing?

I can’t find good sources at the moment, but do you remember; it was just a few years ago that we were being told to “consume, consume” as Americans by D.C. politicians. Weren’t we?

Hoping this does not pollute your work… below is one reference that I found.
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http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2002/feb/05/speaker_encourages_americans_to/

Speaker encourages Americans to avoid confusing patriotism with consumerism

Tuesday, February 5, 2002

Americans should stop shopping till they drop. Never mind what George Bush says.

That was the message Monday from an Orthodox Christian theologian who drew a crowd of about 125 people to the Ecumenical Christian Ministries luncheon forum.

They came to hear Bishop Kallistos Ware, an internationally known scholar and lecturer on Eastern Christian spirituality, talk about Christian thought and the importance of protecting the environment.

Citing an-cient Scripture, he said nature is a gift from God. And to “misuse” God’s gift, he said, is a sin.

“Nature is sacred,” said Ware, a former chairman of the theology de-partment at Oxford University in England.

Christians, he said, should love the environment as they love their neighbors.

Ware bristled at recent calls for Americans to spend more money to offset the Sept. 11 attacks’ effect on the nation’s economy. Spending more, he said, creates wants that can only be satisfied by taking more from the environment.

It’s unfortunate, Ware said, that most Americans believe that “What I want, I need,” and that having enough money gives them the right to the fulfill those needs.

Ware said he was “appalled” by politicians connecting patriotism with consumerism. As the world’s richest nation, the United States, he said, should take less and share more.

He challenged the audience to consider how the call for Americans to spend more was viewed in the “less fortunate nations of Africa and India.”

Ware’s message struck a chord with Thomas Heilke, an associate professor of political science at Kansas University.

“Unfortunately, it’s a message — ‘Walk more lightly while on Earth’ — that most Americans aren’t very receptive to,” Heilke said. “But it’s one that needs to be heard.”

Ware spoke again Monday evening at Kansas University.

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.

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.]

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.

In any event, I’m glad we chatted and that Don read and considered the post. He commented positively, if not quite glowingly :|, about the site. I hope he’ll keep reading and might comment here, perhaps when finished with his role as moderator of the League of Women Voters’ February debate on the Comprehensive Plan. His input would be welcome and valued!