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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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Squeers,

Engels was writing at a time when global population was less than 2 billion. (It was never as high as 1 billion before 1800.) The Industrial Revolution had just unlocked enormous natural capital. The 19th and early 20th century economists probably understood that population and consumption couldn't go on growing forever, but saw no immediate need to worry about it, any more than we worry about the sun turning into a red giant.

Demographers and economists, unless they make a special effort to educate themselves, don't have the background to understand what we are doing to our life support systems. If you read the top science journals in the relevant fields, or general ones such as Science or Nature, you can get some understanding of what we are doing to our planet. See

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

Open version

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/human-activity-has-pushed-earth-beyond-four-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-scientists-warn-20150116-12rjh9.html

I am certainly not an expert in all the relevant fields, but I do have degrees in physics. You might take a look at the thermodynamic limits to growth, although less immediate than these other threats.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

Andras Smith works in the immigration industry as an "education consultant", bringing foreign students to Australia with the lure of permanent residence or at least several years on a visa with the right to work. He therefore has a strong financial interest in smearing as a racist anyone who wants to cut back on immigration or even present global population growth as a problem.
Posted by Divergence, Monday, 26 January 2015 7:03:48 PM
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Divergence,
I'm well aware of the prevailing conditions when Engels wrote his piece and I've suggested as much above. The quote was apt since he was addressing Malthusianism directly. More importantly, Engel's was unwittingly suggesting the direction of Marx's breakthrough economics (and transcendence of left-Hegelianism). I agree that Marx and Engels had little conception that humanity could exhaust the planet's resources, yet I'm prepared to accept the possibility that ten billion could be sustained "modestly". The important point Engels makes is just as pertinent now: that a system predicated on minority capital is necessarily exorbitant, besides being unjust.

I'm not sure what your other patronising material is all about:

"If you read the top science journals in the relevant fields, or general ones such as Science or Nature, you can get some understanding of what we are doing to our planet".

I can assure you I'm very well read and my posting history demonstrates a good understanding of what we're doing to our planet--which we're doing bugger all to address.
My argument has consistently been that we cannot address the problem with market-based solutions; effectively "via" consumption. Even the top science outlets are failing to come to terms with this; that capitalist economics is the cause and cannot be the cure. Instead, they slavishly and futilely work within existing institutional parameters.

Regardless of Andras Smith's interests, he makes a valid point, that the anti-pops are too often driven by mean-minded nationalism, supremicism etc., though I don't accuse you of that.

Why should we cut back on immigration as things are? We can't protect Australia as a small or homogenous enclave when we draw our wealth from around the world? When we're part of a global economic machine that must be relentlessly stoked to maintain a grossly disproportionate ration between rich and poor.
Posted by Squeers, Monday, 26 January 2015 7:56:00 PM
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A simple fact can demolish almost everything in the article and many
comments made.

The world population started increasing with the use of cheap energy.
The world population tracked exactly the consumption first of coal
then oil as the industrial revolution took off.

As coal was used to produce steam powered machinery, less farm workers
were need as the new industries needed workers.
The production of oil in the latter part of the 19th century, with its
high energy content accelerated industry and further reduced the need
of farm workers, until we reached our current food production with
very small numbers of farmers.
As production of cheap energy declines so more farmers will be
needed, but not in the numbers now available.
Starvation will reduce the overpopulation, perhaps in a gradual way
with the loss of fertility due to malnutrition.

The effect of energy will act much more swiftly than global warming.
The next fifteen years starting later this year, as oil fields close
in the US will put the writing on the wall.
Anyone who disputes this has to explain why the rise in population
followed the energy curve so accurately.

As the production of cheap energy falls the population will fall with it.
Perhaps when looking at the boats crossing the Med. we are already there !
Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 27 January 2015 12:29:52 PM
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Bazz,

You are right about population growth tracking the availability of energy, and you may well be right about this threat being the most immediate one that will do us in, although there are plenty of others.

Squeers,

Sorry, if I appeared patronising. I was responding to the patronising tone of Andras' last post, as if "laymen" who are not demographers or statisticians have nothing intelligent to say on this issue. I also object to his insinuations of racism and believe that they should be credibly answered by insinuations of greed. I don't like racism, but I am more concerned about people who are doing the wrong thing than about people who want to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Yes, we could manage our affairs better and more equitably, but people being what they are, I don't expect miracles. From what I have read, the Earth can sustainably support perhaps 1-2 billion people in what you or I would consider modest comfort. See this graph of environmental footprint (consumption) versus rank on the UN Human Development Index.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/blog/human_development_and_the_ecological_footprint

We are only getting by now because so many people are living in appalling poverty and because we are in environmental overshoot, using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. What do you think will happen when those aquifers under the grain-growing regions of the American Midwest, Northern China, and Northern India are finally pumped out?

To date, countries have had far more success in bringing down fertility rates than in curbing consumption, although due to the long-term effects of demographic momentum, we definitely have to address both.

So far as Australia is concerned, many other countries in Europe and East Asia are stabilising their populations without incident. We could do the same. Australia is mostly desert, with only ~6% arable. "Boundless plains" is guff.
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 27 January 2015 1:53:40 PM
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