On a couple of occasions during the sustainable consumption course ‘population’ has come up, generally the response was a sharp intake of breath and the feeling that this was a taboo.
Of course it’s too simplistic to just consider the degradation of (finite) natural capital interms of numbers of humans. But is it just a distributional problem? Is it simply that too few take too much and too many have access to not enough?
Consider this: 85 million additional humans every year!
I listened to the NEF An economy fit for a low carbon world: A pre COP Earthcast (http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=101760) – interesting to note that both Robert Constanza and Peer Victor both explicitly state that population limits are part of the solution, Tim Jackson didnt’ mention population growth or limits.
If there are limits to growth why should this not also apply to human numbers? If the context is sustainability, both consumption and population growth need to be addressed together.
Population limits do not automatically mean Chinese style population control, maybe it’s better to frame it as fertility decline. This is one of the issues explored in a couple of very interesting radio programs that consider the issue from a climate change perspective.
World service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0053hl4/The_Climate_Connection_The_Climate_Connection_Are_There_Too_Many_People_On_The_Planet/
Radio 4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p2bnf/Frontiers_30_11_2009/
In the World Service programme Grace Okumu makes the pertinent point that, interms of climate change, it is western consumption that is the cause of climate change and to talk of population growth in developing countries in this context without serious reduction in consumption in the western countries is diversionary and just another stick to beat the poor with. She has a point.
Wednesday 2 December 2009
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