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.
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Im one of those people who think population decline is a sensible concept in the situation we are in and should be encouraged. Not perhaps as China has tackled it, although I think it hypocritical not to mention that globally we all owe the country a huge debt for not allowing the massive population growth there that has happened in other far smaller (in terms of population size), countries such as Pakistan in the past 30 years.
ReplyDeleteI still think giving rewards and benefits for people who choose to have only one child would be a good idea. Spain and Italy have the lowest growth of population in Europe at the moment despite their predominantly catholic culture, so I think we could do better in Britain than we are. Achieving such a proposed reduction for 2 generations would quarter our population and that must have a significant impact on all the other challenges facing us with regard to water, food and energy.
I agree with you it is taboo, but, for the sake of the children, one child?