BBC: Attenborough warns on population

[arenean]

The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become a patron of a group seeking to cut the growth in human population.

On joining the Optimum Population Trust, Sir David said growth in human numbers was "frightening".

Sir David has been increasingly vocal about the need to reduce the number of people on Earth to protect wildlife. The Trust, which accuses governments and green groups of observing a taboo on the topic, say they are delighted to have Sir David as a patron.

More here.....
Attenborough warns on population

[opihimoimoi]

1. Only NOW???? whad they gonna do?

[Kolesar]

2. Population growth in India is stunning

I don't understand what programs could be put into effect to limit their population growth. Couples want to have many boys as their only plan to survive once they are too weak and old to work. Girls are of no use to them.

[bananas]

3. Consumption Dwarfs Population As Main Environmental Threat

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2140

Consumption Dwarfs Population As Main Environmental Threat

It’s overconsumption, not population growth, that is the fundamental problem: By almost any measure, a small portion of the world’s people – those in the affluent, developed world – use up most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions.

by Fred Pearce

It’s the great taboo, I hear many environmentalists say. Population growth is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet, but we are afraid to discuss it.

It sounds like a no-brainer. More people must inevitably be bad for the environment, taking more resources and causing more pollution, driving the planet ever farther beyond its carrying capacity. But hold on. This is a terribly convenient argument — “over-consumers” in rich countries can blame “over-breeders” in distant lands for the state of the planet. But what are the facts?

<snip>

By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world’s people take the majority of the world’s resources and produce the majority of its pollution.

Take carbon dioxide emissions — a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world’s richest half-billion people — that’s about 7 percent of the global population — are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.

<snip>

[arenean]

4. In the 20th Century, yes....

Hmmm, that may have been true in the past, but it looks like India and China's current economic growth means their consumption is growing even more rapidly than their population, just like what happened in the developed world at the end of the 19th Century.

[earthside]

7. Pearce Avoids Another Taboo Issue

I really like Fred Pearce and encourage everyone to read his book "With Speed and Violence."

Fred tells us things like "The carbon emissions of one American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians" and "... an extra child in the United States today will, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra Chinese child, 46 times that of a Pakistan child, 55 times that of an Indian child, and 86 times that of a Nigerian child."

But Fred cannot bring himself to go to the next step on the issue of population increase in the United States -- which is caused primarily by illegal immigration. There are definitely taboo topics especially in liberal and progressive communities when it comes to debating population and the environment.

One of the main reasons that I am so much against immigration "reform" that allows the population to keep increasing in the U.S. is because the planet simply cannot survive more and more people living with the carbon footprint of the average American.

Indeed, we have to reduce our standard of living in the U.S. for the sake of the Earth ... additionally part of the solution is also to promote social and economic equality and democracy in Mexico and Guatamala, China and India, so on and so forth. We will all be better off if we can stay in our own countries and celebrate our own cultures and histories rather than being force to migrate because of the necessity of economic survival.

In the end, however, while Fred Pearce may try and deflect the taboo overpopulation issue onto "over-consumption" ... the obvious answer is still that fewer people will inevitably mean less impact and less human pressure to produce consumer products.

Good for Sir David in speaking out about the planet's human population problem -- we need someone like that here in our country to do the same.

[Kolesar]

9. There was quite a big kerfuffle in the Sierra Club about US immigration and overpopulation

There were several club ballot issues about it. The immigration activists tried to place some new members onto the club board of directors to get the club's policy changed. It was a pretty heated dispute.

[GliderGuider]

5. The one area of ecological impact that can be tied unequivocally to population

...is the impact of food production:

The Ecology of Overpopulation

Eating is as close to a constant activity across human cultures as we are likely to find. Regardless of where we live or how rich we are, an adult human needs to eat between 2,000 and 2,800 calories a day. Most of us do not need more (though some of us may consume somewhat more, to our long-term detriment) and we cannot survive for long on less. Compared to other human activities such as driving automobiles or working in factories, the amount we eat is influenced very little by either cultural or individual circumstances. What we eat may change from place to place, but the amount we eat always stays in that narrow range of 2,000 to 2,800 calories per day. An Australian or a Finn may consume 50 times more energy than a Bangladeshi, but they all eat about the same amount of food.

This reveals an important chain of logic. If the production of an “average” calorie of food has a fairly constant ecological cost, then the aggregate, global impact of food production depends mainly on the number of calories produced. And if the number of calories consumed by an “average” person is likewise fairly constant, then the total number of calories to be produced depends mainly on the number of people to be fed.

That line of reasoning leads us to the following insight. Given that global levels of food production and consumption are balanced (so there is little overall shortage or surplus), the ecological impact of food production is directly proportional to the global population.

This whole argument would be moot, however, if the level of ecological damage from food production was insignificant. It’s obvious that this is not the case. Consider the following laundry list of ecological damage related to food production:

* The number of oceanic “dead zones” caused by eutrophication from fertilizer runoff has been doubling every ten years since the 1960s.
* Predatory fish species (the ones we eat) have declined by 90% in the last 50 years. This is due to our over-fishing the oceans for food.
* The estimated extinction rate of plants and animals is at least 75 species per day. This is mainly the result of habitat loss due to human encroachment and the expansion of agriculture.
* Over 75,000 square miles of arable land is lost each year to urbanization and desertification.
* A billion people in over 110 countries are affected by desertification. Agriculture was the main reason for the desertification that has reduced the cradle of civilization in the Middle East and North Africa from lush, fertile lands to the barren sands we see today.
* On the American Great Plains, half the topsoil has been lost in the last hundred years, and the Ogallala aquifer is being drained up to 100 times faster than it is being refilled.
* Indian farmers have drilled over 21 million water wells using oil-well technology. They take 200 billion tonnes of water out of the earth each year for irrigation.

Every one of these and similar impacts is directly proportional to the number of people we are trying to feed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. However, that ignores the efficiency of various food production methods

eg meat production v. vegetable production

[GliderGuider]

8. At first glance that's true. However,

Increasing the efficiency of production usually increases the food supply rather than keeping food supply stable and decreasing the ecological impact. Increasing the food supply increases the population, so the best you can hope for by shifting food production to more efficient modalities is to marginally flatten the slope of ecological damage. Given that we are already in ecological overshoot, that's not a solution.

[HamdenRice]

12. There is so much bad agricultural economics math in there, one doesn't know where to start!

While calorie consumption may be fairly stable, neither the kinds of foods eaten, nor the ecological impact per calorie are stable. In fact they vary wildly, and this entire essay doesn't take that into account.

As MV pointed out, the first problem is you are equating meat calories with vegetable calories. Do you really think that a McDonald's meat patty has the same ecological impact as a bowl of chickpeas and vegetables grown by a peasant farmer in India? Can we even talk about environmental damage per calorie in any meaningful way?

Moreover, even within the same type of food, ecological impact varies tremendously. You can produce a pound of meat by burning down rain forest, by raising a calf in Iowa and shipping it to a feed lot, or by grazing cattle with native wildlife on the African savannah.

Hence statements like this are flat out wrong: "This reveals an important chain of logic. If the production of an “average” calorie of food has a fairly constant ecological cost, then the aggregate, global impact of food production depends mainly on the number of calories produced."

The production of an average calorie of food DOES NOT have a fairly constant ecological cost.

You then go on the make a number of non sequitur observations. The observations about fishing are irrelevant because strictly speaking that's not food production, but harvesting of wild food.

You mention urbanization and habitat destruction, but it's not urban areas that produce food, and then go on to make a variety of apples/oranges comparisons.

Food production varies wildly across cultures and societies.

[GliderGuider]

13. You and I disagree fundamentally on this topic.

However, it's not worth my time to argue with everyone who disagrees with me. We've tried to debate in the past and it hasn't worked, our positions are simply too far apart.

I trust the readers of this board to make up their own minds on what we've presented.

[HamdenRice]

14. No we fundamentally disagree on broader topics. This is a discrete factual question.

And is not an issue of opinion, but of fact.

Either 1000 calories of hamburger at McDonalds (from a corn fed, feed lot fatted, combustion engine transported steer) causes the same carbon footprint and ecological impact as 1000 calories of chick peas and vegetables grown by an Indian farm family or it doesn't.

That's a factual question. Does it or doesn't it?

[GliderGuider]

16. That only makes a difference if you can shift the food preferences of the population.

So long as the consumption patterns remain relatively constant my analysis holds. I believe that food preferences are largely cultural, and are resistant to significant change over periods much shorter than decades.

Right now global food preferences are indeed slowly shifting, but in all the wrong directions. That actually makes the problem worse than my analysis indicates.

[HamdenRice]

17. One factual point at a time. Can we now agree to the following:

1. The statement,

"If the production of an “average” calorie of food has a fairly constant ecological cost, then the aggregate, global impact of food production depends mainly on the number of calories produced."

is false, because calories of food DO NOT have a fairly constant ecological cost.

2. The statement,

"1000 calories of hamburger at McDonalds (from a corn fed, feed lot fatted, combustion engine transported steer) HAS A HIGHER carbon footprint and ecological impact than 1000 calories of chick peas and vegetables grown by an peasant Indian farm family."

is true.

Can you stop trying to change the subject with an irrelevant digression about trends and confirm the truth values of the above two true/false statements.

[GliderGuider]

18. You're one for two.

I agree that statement 2 is true. I believe that in the global picture it's also irrelevant.

Statement 1, however, is true because of my use of the word "average". Here's a more complete explanation of what I mean by "average" calorie when used in the context of ecological damage:

The total number of calories the human population of the planet needs today is somewhere around 1.4*10e13 kcal/day. Producing that many calories entails the ecological damage that is being caused today. There is no common unit to measure for that damage, but we know it's a constant (because we're measuring it at a single point in time), so call the amount of global ecological damage from food production Y. Producing one average kcal of food entails an average of Y/(1.4*10e13) units of ecological damage.

We can of course reduce the aggregate ecological damage in any region by changes in production technology or food preferences, but unless those factors change enough to reduce the global aggregate damage significantly, their effects will be outweighed by aggregate population growth.

For example, if the population grows by one third by the year 2050 (as projected by the UN's Medium Fertility case), we would need to reduce the average ecological damage of producing a calorie of food by 25% just to stay even with the aggregate amount of ecological damage we're causing today. To go further and reduce the damage significantly, we would need to reduce the average per-calorie damage by 50% or so. That means that some regions would need to reduce it even more than that, to make up for other regions that can't.

It may be possible to reduce the impact in some regions, but the fact remains that the number of calories required by an expanding population will continue to grow, and unless other factors change significantly so will the overall amount of ecological damage. The question then becomes whether we can alter food preferences and/or production technology enough to offset the rise in population.

I believe that the growth in global population (combined with ecologically negative changes in food preference) will continue to outpace our ability to reduce the global ecological impact of food production, and that as a result the ecological impact attributed to food production will continue to rise.

[HamdenRice]

19. So by that logic, there is no malnutrition in Africa

because when you look at total food production and divide by the number of people -- the average amount of food consumed is sufficient for a healthy life.

Using averages is preposterous. The most ecologically damaging agriculture is in the United States (most energy intensive, most fossil fuels, most pesticides) and in Brazil and other parts of Latin America (most encroachment on previously pristine eco-systems.

But most population growth is going to be in Asia and Africa.

Also, once again, I question whether you've ever actually seen a farm in the third world, because your analysis once again seems oblivious to basic economic conditions like factor utilization.

Africa in particular has been undergoing a fallow revolution. Because, compared to other continents, it has a relatively low population density, much of the agriculture continues to be based on long fallows, and farmers in many countries are increasing production by increasing land factor use, not be extending farming into new areas. Changing fallow systems in already disturbed eco-systems creates less damage than extending agriculture to new areas. You're entitled to your opinions -- just as creationists are entitled to theirs -- but if you purport to be fact based, I can't understand why you would disseminate your views without having read a basic text like Boserup's "Conditions of Agricultural Growth."

I'm also puzzled why, if you think that only average ecological damage per calorie matters, you were a proponent of terra preta. If you are a propoent of any farming system as being a good thing because it is less damaging than some other farming system, then your entire "average" analysis collapses on itself.

[GliderGuider]

20. You deeply misunderstand my position.

Of course there is malnutrition in Africa. That's a regional problem. There is also over-feeding in the United States. That's also a regional problem. My analysis simply states that if you step back a pace or two, it's possible to see that the entire world is affected by ecological problems caused by food production. It's a tragedy of the commons, and the main driver of that portion of the world's ecological damage is the irreducible caloric requirement of the human body.

I've never said that only the average damage per calorie matters. Regionally and locally many other factors come into play. However, the focus of this particular article was the global, aggregated picture. My intention was to draw attention to the hard limit of human caloric needs, and to relate that to ecology.

BTW, I've backed away from terra preta as well, at least as far as it being a global warming "solution". It turns out to suffer from the same problems of scalability as every other approach I've run across. It may or may not turn out be a useful regional approach to increasing soil fertility, but I doubt that it's going to be a big player on the world stage.

[HamdenRice]

21. No, the problem is I deeply understand your position, and it's just plain wrong

And it's wrong in so many ways, it's hard to disaggregate all of them.

1. "It's a tragedy of the commons,..." No that's exactly wrong. That phrase was first used in relation to ecology by Garret Hardin in his essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." He was referring to commons, not agriculture which is almost never carried out on the commons. His argument was that if no one owns a resource, everyone has an incentive to overuse it. There is a tragedy of the commons in fishing. There is a tragedy of the commons in grazing public land. There is a tragedy of the commons in air and water pollution. But whatever problems are created by agriculture, no one who understands environmental issues would call it a tragedy of the commons.

2. "the main driver of that portion of the world's ecological damage is the irreducible caloric requirement of the human body..." Again, that's just wrong. The main driver has been the extension of agriculture into previously natural areas and destructive farming techniques. Your main error is to see a linear relationship between food production and ecological damage. That linear relationship simply doesn't exist. Quiz question: how did the Philippines increase rice production in the 70s? Did the expand acreage or were there some other factors? The main flaw in Malthusian thinking is an absolute inability to comprehend two of the most basic concepts in economics -- (1) factors of production and (2) elasticity of supply and demand. Human economic activity employs land, labor and capital (factors). Farmers don't increase production only by increasing acreage; they usually increase production by increasing the application of labor and capital. In fact, in this country, production increases have occurred simultaneously with a drastic decrease in acreage used -- hence the proposals for recreating the buffalo commons on abandoned prairie.

When farmers do decide to pioneer new land, as in Brazil and Indonesia, it is not because of an absolute absence of land; it's because of cost incentives and governance structures. Those structures can just as easily be manipulated to encourage intensification as extensification of land use.

[GliderGuider]

22. Well, there we are.

As I said back at the beginning,

You and I disagree fundamentally on this topic.

However, it's not worth my time to argue with everyone who disagrees with me. We've tried to debate in the past and it hasn't worked, our positions are simply too far apart.

I trust the readers of this board to make up their own minds on what we've presented.

[HamdenRice]

23. You are confusing philosophical differences and factual differences

A common philosophical difference is how much environmental destruction one is willing to tolerate for human well being. Or the value of losing a species compared to feeding the desperately poor. Those are value questions over which people will disagree.

Whether farmers can only increase yields by increasing acreage is a factual question that has a factual answer.

Whether there is a simple, unchangeable linear relationship between calories consumed by humans and environmental damage is a factual question that has a factual answer.

So, sure you can say we will agree to disagree, but in the context of this issue, it's like saying, we'll agree to disagree, and I will continue to believe that the rocks on the moon are made mostly of Anorthosite, and you will continue to believe that the moon is made of green cheese.

Agreeing to disagree over easily verifiable and falsifiable facts is hardly the way to advance knowledge on these issues.

[wuvuj]

10. And now...a message from our sponsors....

[arenean]

11. Guardian opinion piece

There's an opinion piece in "The Guardian" on the story.....

To breed or not to breed

[Gregorian]

15. Recommended

A beautiful voice. Thank god I'm not alone. Because it feels like it. I guess most people just don't see very well. Or perhaps they don't care about being in beauty.