What if there were far too many people living on planet Earth, but no one had the courage to talk about it?
According to Global Population Speak Out, that is exactly our situation.
Consider that we repeatedly see news reports about scarce and dwindling resources (e.g., water, food, fish, fuel, topsoil), but these news reports rarely consider the exploding population on Earth as a major contributor to these problems. This refusal to consider the carrying capacity of Earth is truly staggering. As a thought experiment, consider how our “environmental” issues would be altered if each country had 25% fewer people than it currently does. Or 50%. Instead, we the human population of earth is at 6.5 billion, headed toward at least 9 billion by 2050.
When it comes to discussing sex, reproduction and birth control, we freeze up, even when out-of-control population growth threatens our way of life. Why don’t we discuss this important issue of overpopulation? We’re afraid that the conversation would get out of control and we’d insult each other. Therefore, we choose silence, thus continuing on our path to horrific environmental decay that is ruining our standard of living.
GPSO has a plan for dealing with our collective reluctance to discuss this critically important issue. The trick is that we all need to jump in at once to draw attention away from the vast number of trivial stories that currently swamping our “news.” Many prominent scientists and other people of prominence have already made their pledges. I sent in my pledge today and so can you. GPSO also offers templates for letters to the editor and blog content.
Here is the recent GPSO press release:
Scientists from around the world have pledged to speak out publicly in February, 2009 on the problem of the size and growth of the human population. Speaking out as well will be environmental and science writers, social activists, and representatives of environmental groups. The event, called the Global Population Speak Out (GPSO), aims to weaken a decades-long taboo against open discussion of population issues.
So far, GPSO has received pledges from scientists and others in 16 countries, all agreeing to speak out during February. Many will do so through the print media. Others are planning interviews, talks, and conferences.
Endorsers of the project include, Stanford University scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel, and co-author of The Limits to Growth Dennis Meadows.
Those pledging to speak out include botanist and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Peter Raven, Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, University of Delhi professor of community medicine Jugal Kishore, University of Tehran environmental scientist M. F. Makhdoum, and social activists Jerry Mander and Harvey Wasserman.
One of the project’s endorsers, Ohio State University anthropologist Jeffrey McKee, said, “If you look at the key issues and goals of our time — economic prosperity, clean water, sustainable energy, and biodiversity survival — they all have a common denominator. They all point to the need immediately and responsibly to stem the growth of the human population, and to return our population size to sustainable limits.”
But, said environmental writer and GPSO organizer John Feeney, “Despite its central role in nearly every environmental problem, many have for years viewed the population topic as politically unpopular. In fact, despite the urgent need for solutions, it’s become taboo to state publicly that population growth must be humanely stabilized and reversed.”
He added, “Environmental groups have been reluctant to talk about it because they know it will trigger criticism and may compromise funding. Scientists have hesitated too, knowing any mention of population is sure to stir controversy.”
GPSO is designed to make it easier for participants to raise the issue by bringing together a collection of voices so participants know they are not alone in speaking out.
The project grew out of a simple idea, said Feeney. “We wondered, what if a large number of qualified voices worldwide, many of whom might not have emphasized the topic previously, were to speak out on population all at once? With any luck it will nudge the subject closer to the center of public discourse.”
Another goal of the event, said Feeney, is to bring new voices to the population issue. “This is a matter of profound importance. There are experts, such as the Ehrlichs, who address it regularly. But we need many more voices. We hope GPSO might help bring a few to the world’s attention. Our hope is that after February it will be a little easier to talk about population and there will be more people doing just that.”
Consider, further, this link to Miniature Earth.
RFemmer: Thank you for your informative and terrifying comment. I will check out the Anson book.
RFemmer: I had a difficult time finding your book, but I a relevant PowerPoint:
http://mainland.cctt.org/biolab/Wecskaop/W4.ppt
RFemmer's "Open Space" fallacy is a good observation.
But that PowerPoint Erich found was wa-ay too tedious to wade all the way through, especially to make such a trivial point. I mean trivial to anyone who has actually learned math beyond arithmetic.
I know, let's have a bunch of rich white guys talk about population! That will totally work. No one will ever think they're trying to blame the world's ecological crisis on poor brown people without examining their own consumption habits. No one will ever think that they're trying to avoid the fact that their economic models are naked.
For every time someone mentions "population" I am going to mention the following 3 times:
1. status of women, status of women, status of women
2. sustainable development, sustainable development, sustainable development
3. appropriate technology/transport, appropriate technology/transport, appropriate technology transport
There I feel better now. Now please read George Monbiot:
Population growth is a threat. But it pales against the greed of the rich.
A much better intro to the concept of exponential growth is this illustrated Indian folktale:
One Grain of Rice
Vicki: For the record, GPSO directly ties the issue of overpopulation with the irresponsible and irreversible exploitation of Earth's resources. For that reason, yes, the issue of overpopulation should and must concern the effect of each new life born on the damage caused by that new life. Thus, a baby born in a western culture causes many multiples more damage to the ecosystem than a third-world baby. This realization must be a central part of any concern with overpopulation. With that in mind, overpopulation itself should remain a valid focus for the problem because exhaustion of resources is strained by ever-increasing numbers of people living on Earth.
Where in the world do you sense that I am pointing out or ignoring woman for blame or credit? The problem with NOT THINKING about adding new humans is a desperate social issue that should concern all of us. GPSO is an effort to TALK where there is currently an absence of discussion. It is not an effort to injure the "status of women." This problem is about ALL of us (men and women) and the solutions need to be sensitive to ALL of us. We must, above all, begin to talk. We can't fear talking just because we fear that we might come up with solutions that are bigoted against women or that impose unfair measures against the poor. We must TALK and we must work to find solutions that are fair and just. Why must we talk (even if it is scary to talk)?
I think that you are projecting a whole lot of baggage in your comments at this post. Further, you are expressing that you are concerned about bigotry and then you go and write about a "bunch of rich white guys," as though you can meaningfully categorize people's contributions based on A) how much money they have, B) whether they have penises and C) the color of their skin. Shame on you!
I have known rich people who are incredibly self-centered and others who have dedicated their entire lives to helping others. Dumping on rich people is thus a form of bigotry. I'm sure you know of some wealthy people who have used their wealth to make the world a better place.
The same goes for men. Are you suggesting that because I am a man (rather than a woman) that my opinions are to be disregarded? That's the kind of reasoning (in reverse) that constitutes a shameful part of our nation's history.
Let's see . . . skin color. Hmmm. Sounds like you are arguing that we should disparage people with lighter shades of skin (at least if they are also rich and men). That goes against everything I believe. I try hard to not judge people by the color of their skin. You are arguing as though people with darker shades of skin should be presumed to have better ideas on the current irresponsible exhaustion of the Earth's resources. Really? As though there aren't some non-whites (I don't like the term "whites," but you used it) who consume far more than their fair share of resources than many other people, including many whites.
Population control (necessarily coupled with resource exhaustion and social justice) is a serious issue that needs to be discussed and it should not be discussed in a divisive way.
No one mentioned resource use and social justice in the post or thread until I brought them up, except Lisa, and it was a bit oblique I thought.
Beginning the conversation about population without mentioning those issues IS divisive. There's no way around it. You can blame me for pointing it out, but there it is.
Sorry for breaking your taboo on mentioning skin color, but if you aren't aware of the baggage of white privilege you bring to these discussions, you should be.
Also, please read Monbiot.
Vicki: I see three separate references to exhaustion of resources in the post. Take a deep breath and reread the post.
I see nothing in the post about dumping the burden of resource preservation on the backs of the poor and powerless. That is not my intent and I would not support such an approach. As such, your comments are attacking something other than what this post is about. Do you really think that I am not aware of these issues of social justice? Do you think that I am advocating putting birth control in the water of poor societies where people don't have "white" skin? Shame on you.
I have long striven to be aware of the privileges I have. It's patronizing to be told by a "white" person that she better understands "whiteness," without explanation, without evidence. Or to be told that I don't understand it or that I haven't considered it.
Also, don't be disingenuous. My concern was not about "mentioning" skin color. Nor is discussing skin color "taboo" at this site. The problem is using skin color (and gender) in a divisive way. Based upon your follow-up comments, I'm not certain that you understand this difference.
I will read Monbiot.
Further note to Vicki: Look up the career accomplishments of those many dedicated people who have pledged to support GPSO. I suspect that most of them are male and white, some of them are probably "rich." Perhaps you should, without any investigation into their accomplishments, write them each a letter telling them that they are not qualified to participate because they are white, male and maybe rich.
Erich: I should have said "no one explicitly made the link between resource exhaustion and social justice."
You did mention resource exhaustion, but without making the connection.
Take a deep breath yourself. I don't think you are unaware of issues of social justice, I said you failed to mention them in your post on population. And that omission is inherently divisive.
Read the Monbiot article.:
I do think population is important and we do need to talk about it. I think having yet another discussion where the problem is framed as "other people having too many children" is the wrong way to go about it. As Monbiot points out, we should still support things like universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women, even if population isn't the biggest problem.
Why didn't you lead with that? Why not reassure the skeptical that this conversation about population isn't going to be modelled on the previous problematic ones that Monbiot mentions? Why is every one huffing and puffing when I suggest a shrug is an inappropriate response to wasteful driving, and that rich white males need to have some sensitivity in starting a conversation on this issue? Why do said parties get tied up in knots when their shit get disturbed, instead of responding to the proposal I made in my first comment?
Obviously, I need to be more sensitive to the feelings of rich white males and rein in the sarcasm.
Vicki wrote: "We should still support things like universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women."
I write about these topics regularly at this site. This site is a mosaic, not a collection of dissertations. Your concern seems to be that this post (it is ONLY a post) wasn't comprehensive in that it didn't concern every possible abuse or ramification. I agree. Please note, though, that I did link to the GPSO site, where the readers can find this information (and much more):
There are many links at the GPSO site, many of which make the problem OUR problem, not "their" problem. The links include this one, most concerned with overpopulation, not in the 3rd world, but in Portland Oregon.
I expect that the many curious and smart readers at this site will follow links if they find a post interesting. And if they scour the GPSO site, they won't find people advocating to reenact the terrible abuses that have been implemented in the past, all in the name of population control.
Erich:
I did go to the GPSO when you linked to it. A lot has been added since then. Note that much of the material you cited above is marked as having been added recently and is not included in the version Google cached on Dec. 11.
What this suggests to me is a kind of magical thinking: breaking the taboo on talking about population, without thinking about what you're going to say, and who you are going to recruit to say it, is going to result in some kind of breakthrough.
Good for them that they added this material, but a good idea might have been to recruit environmental justice advocates and feminists earlier on in the conversation, to give these perspectives from the get-go.
Also note that you are not the only rich white person involved in this conversation. I myself am a rich white person(relative to the rest of the world) I don't claim any special insight into whiteness. I'm willing to listen when people tell me I'm being a clueless white person however.
This is not my concern. My concern is that social/economic/environmental justice is considered by the initiators of this conversation to be an afterthought rather than integral to starting the discussion. The two comments that immediately followed the post are an example of how the discussion plays out when these concerns are not part of the starting point, though at least Lisa tried to put some perspective on it. These comments questioned the idea of reproductive choice as a fundamental right. Maybe the commenters are not people who would actually limit reproductive freedom, but to go THERE as a first response, in the light of history is fundamentally clueless. That's how I see it, if that's not nicey-nicey enough for you, tough.
Perhaps the problem isn't just how many are reproducing, but who is reproducing the fastest. In the U.S., it seems as though the high school dropouts start their families quite a few years sooner than do the graduate and professional school attendees. In the absence of natural selection pressures to thin the herd, people who reproduce relatively fast will eventually outnumber those who reproduce more slowly. Will problem-makers eventually drive problem-solvers toward extinction? Perhaps tax incentives should favor a reverse situation.
Vicki: I assume that if you were in charge of the world (assume that you had dictatorial powers), the topic of discouraging or limiting the number of new humans would never be broached by government because it's a topic that's too fraught with potential abuse. In your world, it would forever be up to individuals to decide how many children to have, even if the Earth has 100 billion people, 99% of whom are starving and no one has access to clean water.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that you would not take any government action to discourage or limiting citizens from adding further to the total population.
Vicki wrote (quite some time back):—"I just don’t see how the question of population can be addressed without addressing the larger issue of social justice and resource use."
My take is this: the capacity for social justice is outstripped by population growth. There is an inverse Malthusian relationship between them. Where the resources of a given area might handily support a population of X, once X is exceeded tolerance dwindles with resource stress. When X is exceeded enough, social justice systems break down. This is partly what happened in Rwanda (which few people wanted to talk about at the time—it was a water issue; it is often a water issue).
IMHO social justice is not the larger issue once population pressure exceeds resource capacity. Social justice becomes the victim of excess population.
Grumpy: I suggest you rethink your parameters. That's social darwinism of the worst sort. Problem solving is not a birth trait.
Grumpy: I think that you have presented yourself as Vicki's worst nightmare, categorizing high school dropouts as less worthy to have offspring than those people who have graduate degrees and professional degrees.
With that logic, wouldn't we be filling the world with the kinds of Wall Street high-earners who caused the mortgage crisis? And we'd discourage the births of some incredible people who, though they didn't get formal degrees, accomplished much in their lives. Maybe they "only" worked on the factory line for 30 years and brought up wonderful children. Is that not a model citizen? Would it be better that that person were never born? I don't think so.
I understand your concern (that we need to fill the Earth with "smart" people). I don't agree that you can so easily write off high school drop-outs as not being "smart." Further, I don't think, in the short term, that most smart people are born. I think that the great majority of them are made.
Worse than limiting children, we have a government that rewards larger families via tax deductions and welfare rules.
We have churches that push the "fruitful and multiply" line written in the spacious bronze age to already overcrowded parishes, in order to try to out-produce their rivals.
Governments support these organizations through tax relief. My cynical self thinks that they (Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex) want the extra foot soldiers.
Here's another organization concerned with overpopulation with an up-front emphasis on social justice: Population Media Center. http://www.populationmedia.org/who/mission/ It's mission statement is:
For those interested, here is a link to an article by Monbiot, "It’s an important issue, but nowhere near the top of the list."
This sentence especially attracted my attention: "While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent."
Nonetheless, Monbiot makes responsible populating of the planet a concern:
Further to Vicki's comment: I don't really care whether overpopulation is the "number one" problem regarding the exhaustion of resources, as Monbiot (and Vicki) might put it. My concern is whether overpopulation is a substantial contributor. If it is a substantial contributor, we need to put the issue on the table and discuss it like responsible adults.
BTW, at a blog called "Growth is Madness," John Feeney (who writes that he admires much of Monbiot's work) wrote a post called "Watch for this error." The "error" is, according to Feeney, to prioritize in such a way as to ignore a substantial contributor to the problem. Here's an excerpt:
Let me get at my point another way. Look at these statements:
I'd be totally outraged at those statements, just like every other person who is pro-choice.
But, you say, an abortion does not have the same environmental impact that a child does. Now it's a conversation about environmental impact. So, let's talk about environmental impact. Does choosing to drive a personal weapon of mass extinction have environmental impact? Yes. Does choosing to eat meat have an environmental impact? Yes. Now we've extended the conversation from human population to car population and cow population. Now we're getting somewhere.
So, let's see. Who actually gestates and gives birth to babies? Oh yeah, that's right, women. So, maybe we could try to recruit some women to be spokespeople in our effort, maybe even some women of color. Maybe they could speak to how women, when faced with the right combination of incentives and empowerment, do choose to limit their families. They could talk about success stories like Thailand, where as I mentioned before, the birth rate fell from 6 children per women to 2 in one decade.
That would be a good starting point for talking about population control as if the health and well-being of all the world's population mattered.
Erich: I think you assume too much. First of all, dictatorial powers are not the solution to everything. Assuming I had them though, I just outlined how I would broach the topic of population and the ecological crisis.
Here's the way I see it: a poor woman in Chad is trapped in a situation where her economic security and well-being depends on her being able to raise at least a few children to adulthood. She has no access to family planning or health care for her children. Then we have Mark, equally trapped in a situation where he is so afraid of his neighbors that he has to spend a good chunk of his income on a huge weapon of mass extinction rather than the 2-wheeled vehicle he admits is more appropriate for his commute. He's stuck with a dysfunctional local government whose approach to land use and transportation totally sucks.
If I were dictator of the world, I'd like to get both of them out of their traps.
Mark: I realize now that you really don't get what I mean about social justice and population. You really don't see some small fraction of the world using some large fraction of the world's resources as a social justice issue. You don't see how redistributing some of your wealth could possibly be part of the plan for addressing population growth.
My take on social justice is much simpler: Mark drives less and uses the money he saves on gas to pay for family planning and women's empowerment in the developing world.
The point is – we can hit the wall of ecological limits at full speed, or we can start slowing down while we still have some time. Given that car ownership and meat eating growth rates are exceeding population growth rates at the moment, and that even a drastic decrease in the population growth rate will not result in a decrease in actual population for some time, it would seem to me that Mark's sense of entitlement to his car is as much of a problem as our Chadian woman's sense of entitlement to children.
And of course "Mark" here is a composite of most of the U.S. population.
Grumpy:…. oh, never mind.
Vicki writes:—"Then we have Mark, equally trapped in a situation where he is so afraid of his neighbors that he has to spend a good chunk of his income on a huge weapon of mass extinction rather than the 2-wheeled vehicle he admits is more appropriate for his commute. He’s stuck with a dysfunctional local government whose approach to land use and transportation totally sucks."
We've left the arena of reasonable conversation. Let's get pragmatic for a moment. I don't spend that money because I'm afraid of my neighbors, I do so because I don't really want to pedal my butt six miles to work and spend half an hour catching my breath and waiting for the sweat to evaporate before I can even clock in. I do it because it is convenient. When the technology becomes available for me to buy and drive a non-fossil-fuel burning vehicle for the same purpose, I will do so. Meantime, in spite of what may be going on in Chad, my life is here and I must live the best way I know how within this community. I did not admit a bicycle is "more appropriate", only possible, and I did that when I was younger. I'm not that young anymore, so climb down off your high moral horse.
My challenge to that particular young woman was within the context of a debate over social responsibility, not a personal assault on her rights. It was a matter of making her see things according to some other set of conditions besides the one in which she lived.
For the record, we have no children. None. Made that decision before the jury was in on global warming and its several related problems. So while our contribution to certain problems may be real, it is definitely finite. When we leave this life, we've left no one behind to continue the "abuse". You've reproduced, so one assumes your occupancy of 7.2 hectares of land will be handed down to said offspring and whatever processes you've engendered will continue at least another generation.
At some point you have to stop the raging and ask what *kind* of a life you're working to preserve. Throwing everything out in order to meet some presumed global standard of sustainability risks limiting or removing choices on several other levels. You can redistribute wealth along those lines until everyone is squatting in a mud hut cooking their food over a burning cow patty. Sorry, I don't care to live in that world
You also seem—I doubt this is really the case, but so far it seems—to be unaware that the choices you're bent on giving Third World Women, while commendable, come up against another problem—the fact that if they were allowed to make those choices in the first place, they would not be permitted. That fact is not something we in the West can easily or quickly do anything about. Hell, we still can't stamp out female circumcision because it would require intervention of a sort that would be considered illegal in the world courts.
The draconian governmental policies that keep these women in a condition no one here would tolerate for a New York minute, while initially based on traditional cultural models, get massively reinforced by resource scarcity that is primarily the case due to POPULATION SIZE. Certainly there are ways to deal with it of a practical nature, but that's not really the point. (I suspect Dan is quite right about the desire for foot soldiers.)
It gets wearying to listen to the harangue about evil we are, with our greed and consumption. These are problems, yes, but the flip side is that what we have built here has also created the conditions for a level of science and technological capacity and excess resource with which these problems we discuss so ardently can not only be recognized and understood, but dealt with in meaningful ways. The fact that so much has not yet been dealt with is political in nature.
I've used this as an example before, but I'll repeat it. Several years ago when the tsunami swept through Sri Lanka and the surrounding islands, killing many thousands of people, displacing many thousands more, within a couple of days a U.S. carrier group sailed into port and within another day they were making tens of thousands of gallons of clean water. As you know, under such disaster conditions, clean water is of the utmost importance, to stem the rise of disease, which would kill thousands more.
You can't do that without the level of technology and resource we have. So if we were all being the good global citizens in the way you seem to suggest, the degree of suffering there would have multiplied because those ships wouldn't exist.
There are many things of a questionable nature about our civilization that I question, but overall I rather like what we've built. I am not a vegetarian, nor do I consider it a moral issue. Nature doesn't recognize morality and meat is part of the cycle. But Nature certainly does recognize population pressure and has many varied and nasty remedies for excess population growth. We've taken ourselves temporarily out of that process, but that only means we need to do something about ourselves.
As far as my sense of entitlement to my car being in any way equivalent to someone's sense of entitlement to children, they aren't equivalent. When push comes to shove, if having a car becomes too much of a problem, I don't have to murder it to get rid of it. And my purchase of a gallon of gasoline isn't taking anything away from the woman in Chad—the money for it is going into the coffers of her own government which seems determined to keep her in her hovel.
Finally, and on that point, who is this "We" to which you refer? It has been a fact for decades now that population growth in the West has been slowing down. In the United States, population increase is entirely based on immigration. So while we may bitch about teen pregnancy and abortion here, it is nevertheless a qualitatively different issue than population issues in, say, Bangladesh or Egypt, places where the whole notion of "choice" is an alien one. "We" can't tell them how to change their laws or ways of thinking without verging on open conflict and violating our own standards of what constitutes legitimacy in international relations. It must be done through channels that are by definition slow and often frustrating. The tangles of how to achieve positive changes predate the moral vacuity of the Bush years and will continue tangled under more enlightened administration. My giving up my car won't positively impact that woman in Chad's life, because as it stands any "redistribution of wealth" that might result won't go to her, but to her leaders, who, judging by the evidence, are basically thugs. So while indeed you are very right about the need for social justice, achieving that is a longterm, difficult battle that shows no signs of short term solution. Population growth just makes these tasks more difficult, because instead of building schools and draining swamps and distributing birth control, larger population eats up resource in more immediate ways—food and water—leaving less for the rather more esoteric tasks of intellectual enlightenment, which is what justice requires.
One very last point. Just as a for instance. Say I change jobs in order to get rid of my car. The way things are, I am likely not to get nearly as well paying a job that I can walk to (or comfortably ride a bike to). So the cut in salary equates directly to a cut in any charitable contributions I might be making to anything. Less money going out in the mail to support family planning clinics in Nepal or Chad. Less money, in fact, for me to live the kind of life I choose. How does that help anyone? (I'm sure you have an answer, but you in fact know nothing about my life, and it would therefore be presumptive for you to prescribe to me what my choices ought to be. The question is rhetorical.)
"Finally, and on that point, who is this “We” to which you refer? It has been a fact for decades now that population growth in the West has been slowing down."
I'd like to expand on that briefly. In my opinion, decline of birth rate in the West is directly tied to our level of technology and the kind of civilization we've built, that by giving individuals life aspirations outside and beyond those of just "family" we make the choice of fewer or no children not only viable but desirable. (There also seem to be certain environmental factors involved in the lower birth rate, but let's just stick to this aspect for now.)
So it would appear that building the kind of civilization we have has a direct impact on the procreative decisions people make, for good or bad. If one of the primary factors of environmental stress is population growth, it would seem that—and I admit in some ways quite perversely—exactly the kind of world we've built has a salubrious effect on that growth. Paradox?
I don't think so. Alternatives—deciding to lead a life other than as a manufacturer of the next generation—is tied to systems that support education, comfort, and the leisure time for contemplation of non-immediate issues. When, in other words, people actually have viable options for things to do with their lives other than be exclusively parents, birth rate declines. All those options are the consequence of high productive, technologically innovative—in short "expensive"—civilizations.
Just on a more frivolous note, though, Vicki—do you like books? Me, too. I write them. But for each book published, a tree is endangered. Should we stop printing them until we can find another, economically viable way to make them? (The components of computers and the manufacturing tech involved are resource-heavy and for now very much petroleum based.) We all choose which parts of the problem to embrace or avoid.
Mark, yes we have left the realm of reasonable conversation if you think appropriate technology is a slippery slope to squatting in a mud hut cooking over a wood fire. Go ahead and cling to your 20th century mindset, I'm sure you'll find that living in a car-centric city is just dandy when you get too old to drive.
I think you've made your response to "humanity's greatest crisis" quite clear, thanks.
And I think we've also made clear what the real taboo subject is here.