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The Forum > Article Comments > Population growth, climate change and refugees > Comments

Population growth, climate change and refugees : Comments

By Guy Hallowes, published 21/1/2015

Our approach to developing countries in the face of population growth, climate change and corruption is entirely inadequate.

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I agree with you about Hans Rosling, Squeers. You need to look at how people actually behave and not how they might behave in some ideal world. He also seems to ignore problems with our planetary life support systems apart from climate change, such as with fresh water and the nitrogen cycle.

So far as the bottom two billion are concerned, I think that the transnational corporations are happy to take advantage of poor, desperate people, but that isn't the same thing as making them poor and desperate in the first place. If you look at the tables in the Global Footprint Network Atlas, you can work out that the top billion people in the richest countries are responsible for about 38% of the consumption. This is consumption within the various countries and does not include exports.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/Ecological_Footprint_Atlas_2010.pdf

It is certainly true that the poor consume a lot less on a per capita basis than the rich, but Nature doesn't do per capita.
Posted by Divergence, Sunday, 25 January 2015 1:36:52 PM
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Divergence,
nature doesn't do per capita, but my point is that much of the footprint attributed to the poorest two billion is about making products for wealthy countries; it's actually often a predominantly wealthy footprint by proxy. When assessing any country's footprint/emissions in the era of global capitalism we have to take account of offshore impacts. Much of the Amazon jungle has been cleared to graze cattle for Big Macs, I believe, for instance.
Posted by Squeers, Sunday, 25 January 2015 7:59:14 PM
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Squeers wrote: " Much of the Amazon jungle has been cleared to graze cattle for Big Macs, I believe, for instance."

The result has not been a happy one with deforestation being seen to be a cause for droughts in 2005,2010,2012 and currently in the Amazon Basin.
Posted by ant, Sunday, 25 January 2015 8:19:22 PM
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One thing not highlighted, and very important, is that Rosling has formal and real expertise in these areas, we don't.

Like media in Oz, many (lay) people with respect to science, statistics, human development etc. misinterpret data, make subjective opinions based on personal beliefs, think there is a correlation, which then logically leads to believe a causal link exists...... and many peope will or want to believe it, but it's not empirical science.

Not unlike politics of the hard right or neo cons for whom the Age of Reason, science, analysis and clear thinking are anathema, it is all about belief, passion, shouting, distorting data, by passing logic, dog whistling, gaining media access etc. and confusing people, but importantly linking any perceived negatives with poor brown people..... so white Australia can feel good about itself?

UN projections and forecasts are often challenged, and Deutsche Bank demographer Sanjeev Sanyal's population data analysis shows that the UN's are too high, (leftie NYT article here) http://tinyurl.com/mc6waxk

Former GG Bill Hayden shows how conservative and white nationalist Australian politics (both LNP/Labor) and media has become, when in the 80s he said the average Australian in coming generations will be a light cocoa colour, something to celebrate?

Nowadays such utterances would be viewed as 'anti-Australian'...... subsequently we have had Hanson, Howard, Labour & LNP, mainstream media, etc doing the work of the white nativists, or the 'skipocracy' as their WASPish world and influence slowly and inevitably slips away?

The population bombers are masquerading as caring environmentalists when in fact it is about maintaining the ageing middle class white male status quo through stereotyping and demonisation of less developed countries and people, who are catching up..... wonder what they think of Australia's own indigenous population aka academic Starr?
Posted by Andras Smith, Sunday, 25 January 2015 9:01:47 PM
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Squeers,
<<This is naive in the extreme in that cuts in emissions can only be made finally via cuts in consumption, which can only be modified/attenuated to a limited degree, and not so as to be both 'prosperous' (in any way we currently define the term) and 'renewable'.>>
Why do you spread that vicious lie? Is the coal industry paying you? Or have you simply failed to comprehend how enormous the amount of solar energy shining onto our planet is?

<<Much of the Amazon jungle has been cleared to graze cattle for Big Macs, I believe, for instance.>>
Not very much. I suggest you look at Google Earth some time.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 26 January 2015 2:08:06 AM
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Andras Smith,

I agree with your post 100% and deplore the nationalist/racist/elitist paranoia that generally lurks within the anti-population crowd.
I am sceptical of Hans Rosling's 'snapshot' of 2100 because for the first time it won't be an economically dynamic human system, at least not one based on economic growth, and so I'm concerned that his mostly prosperous 10 billion shall be left high and dry.
Even more of a concern to me is the state of our natural systems by then, having supported this upward mobility on a grand scale. Our systems are already ailing, our resources already depleted, and yet they are to facilitate a global rise in living standards that makes the West's progress since the industrial revolution look miniscule.
I hasten to add that I don't propose preventing this catch-up--preserving the exclusivity of the West--God know's the rest of the world is entitled (in human terms). I would argue that the onus is on wealthy countries to make their prosperity sustainable, to live sustainably, rather than the whole world aspiring to also living unsustainably.
My problem is I don't believe we can find the magic solutions (renewable energy etc.) whereby the planet can comfortably support ten billion in anything like the style to which we've become accustomed. Especially when you consider than Van Rosling's projections of overall wealth continue to be led in all countries by the conspicuous/obscene wealth of an unsustainable elite.
"Prosperity" has to take on more modest, equitable and sustainable proportions.

"With the fusion of the interests now opposed to each other [rich and poor] there disappears the contradiction between excess population here and excess wealth there; there disappears the miraculous fact (more miraculous than all the miracles of all the religions put together) that a nation has to starve from sheer wealth and plenty; and there disappears the crazy assertion that the earth lacks the power to feed men" (Engels).

What the Earth lacks is the power to support profligacy!

Of course we have to defer to the experts, and there are plenty to contradict Van Rosling.
Posted by Squeers, Monday, 26 January 2015 9:14:39 AM
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