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The Forum > Article Comments > Consumption dwarfs population as main environmental threat > Comments

Consumption dwarfs population as main environmental threat : Comments

By Fred Pearce, published 22/4/2009

A small portion of the world's people - those in the affluent, developed world - use up most of the Earth's resources.

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“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.”

With respect Fred, your article is a no-brainer. It is not population OR overconsumption. Is it of course both.

What about this famous Paul Ehrlich equation?

I = PAT

I is the impact on environment, resource base and future wellbeing

P is population

A is affluence or per-capita consumption

T is technology or the efficiency with which resources are used

The primary point that is being put forward by true environmentalists, that is, those concerned about population growth, is that the population factor gets LEFT OUT or superficially addressed in all sorts of decision-making and strategic planning processes.

Hwaaaw. How basic!!
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 9:12:35 AM
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Wise words.
As I understand this article and before anyone beats the deflated drum “potentially too many people*is* a problem” but the crux of this argument is my constant cry is that over consumption is the immediate and base problem. (apologies to Ludwig)

There are credible calculations that demonstrate that poverty is caused by disproportionate access/consumption of resources. As this article states 7% of the worlds population is over fed (obese) and lives in a self indulgent lifestyle while the rest are living with barely subsistence. As it stands today there is enough food in the world to feed every person more than adequately. if evenly spread of resources and consumption the world could both support the projected population in a reasonable life style. And reduce the environmental boot print on the world. One key area would the ridiculous self fulfilling practice of paranoiac overt “defence”. Clearly another key factor is the difference between need and want. However that would mean a total rethink of the *extent*of our magic pudding profit mentality and economy etc.
Just because human nature isn't always what it should be is no excuse not to try to control our lesser instincts but that requires cool thinking and effort something the average person is loathed to do except in selfish contexts.
Given the rump of this site's commenters I doubt that this article will get the consideration it deserves. Much is the pity.
Posted by examinator, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 9:37:19 AM
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The problem with the "consumption in the developed world is the main problem argument" is twofold. (1) It implies that all we have to do to solve the environmental problems is to make westerners greatly reduce their consumption. But that is equivalent to saying that we must all become poor. It is based on the deception that you can have a lifestyle-as-usual-only-greener existence if you use energy more efficiently. But the levels of energy reduction required are so massive (over 90%) that there is no possible way that energy efficiency can compensate for this. To maintain western lifestyles (which we cannot do anyway because energy is in decline) the better way to go is to stabilize and then reduce population AND make the greatest reductions in energy use that we can. (2) However, if we continue to grow our populations (in the USA and Australia) as a method of making our GDP growth figures look good, then we will never be able to reduce out polution (CO2) output. Just ask Kevin Rudd - he knows we can't reduce gross CO2 output sufficently because out population is expanding (faster than Asia)!
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:38:31 AM
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“Population growth is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet, but we are afraid to discuss it.”

It is THE problem, and it is continually discussed. There’s nothing “convenient” about the argument; it is plain fact, except to the ‘deniers’ who try to waffle out of what is as plain as the nose on their faces.

“… rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population.”

Hallo! Rich countries like Australia, which is madly increasing its population with record immigration? The increased demand in Australia has definitely come from increased population; so has the declining state of our water supplies and the strain on our inadequate infrastructure.

Increasing population = increasing consumption = increasing damage.

This article would have to be one of the strangest and most useless seen on OLO for some time.
Posted by Leigh, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:40:46 AM
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Those people now forced to be frugal seem to want to join the ranks of the overconsumers. Therefore indulgence seems to be a natural human trait. That makes it unlikely the affluent will voluntarily consume less so the poor can have more. In terms of the lifeboat analogy that is like having all occupants stand rather than sit so more can be taken on board.

The problem can be approached from another angle by asking how many can enjoy a good standard of living on a long term sustainable basis. Some suggest world wide it is only a billion people or fewer. If we are heading towards nine billion by mid century and resources continue to degrade then there is clearly going to be a lot of conflict. Low energy light bulbs and dual flush toilets are not going to be enough.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:45:09 AM
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Einstein is often quoted as saying that “god does not play dice.”

In the game of chance called life some of us are born into affluent societies and some are not.
Some of us get to be fed, housed, educated and employed - some do not.
Some of us have our worlds brutally destroyed either by others or through self-destruction.

Reduce discretionary consumption? Reduce energy use? Plant a few fruit trees?

I think that the only countries that have a long term chance of surviving are those that have the technology to change the way they are fed, housed, educated and employed.

This makes us in Australia very fortunate indeed. If god does play dice then the die he is rolling is biased in our favour.
Posted by The Observer, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 12:45:51 PM
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I love all this Western guilt trip stuff!

So if I live in Mauritius, strip farm the forest until there is none
left and have 11 kids, that is not a problem. But if I live frugally
in the West, even peddle to work, I should be on a guilt trip.

If I live in Africa and shoot the wildlife in the forests, as it
is far easier then having to farm livestock to produce meat, that
is clearly not a problem.

If I live in Ethiopia and have 10 kids, and burn every tree in sight
for firewood, I should rejoice, for I am not part of the problem.
If I get hungry, I will simply dangle another starving baby in
front of the Western tv cameras and hey presto, across the horizon
come boatloads of food! Sheesh, I might as well throw the old
leg over and get her pregnant once again, all guilt free and cost
free. Those Western suckers will sort it out.
Posted by Yabby, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 2:09:49 PM
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As with most of this well meaning stuff the views in the article are the exact opposite of what is actually happening - at least on a local level. Who remembers the Aral Sea in what was the Soviet Union? The Soviets managed to virtually destroy it along with its eco system and large fishing industry through gigantic cotton growing projects that wasted most of the water. Western economies have done strange things but the Soviets still take the prize for the biggest piece of local, environmental destruction.
The list goes on. Most of the deforestation of the Amazon basin is in fact due to indigenous slash and burn type agriculture, and nothing to do with giant western corporations. The Burmese government sells off as much of its teak forests as it can, without giving a rap about the environment, and I need hardly detail China's pollution record.
Once countries get to a certain stage in per-capita income, its citizens start to worry about the environment and start to clean it up. The best thing we can do for environment, before its too late, is to get the developing world up to Western income standards.
But what about the carbon footprint? Those who believe that stuff are in for a shock in a couple of years when scientists seeriously start to abandon it, as they will have to if current temperature trends continue.. look up Hadley if you don't believe me.
Posted by curmudgeonathome, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 5:54:23 PM
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The Redefining Progress site has the environmental footprints of most countries as calculated in 2006. (Environmental footprint is a way of expressing total consumption in notional hectares of land.) The global average per capita footprint is about 22 hectares, already above the sustainable capacity per person, while the US footprint is 109. This leaves an average footprint of 18 hectares for the rest of the world. Now lets assume that all those 300 million high consuming Americans didn't just consume less, but were raptured up into the sky, leaving all their resources to be shared among the rest of the world. This would raise everyone else's average footprint to 23 hectares, an average standard of living equivalent to that in Argentina. However, the global population is growing at 1.3%. Assuming no increase due to the bonanza, and ignoring further environmental deterioration, peak oil, the pumping dry of aquifers, etc., it would take only 20 years of population growth at 1.3% to bring the average footprint back down to 18.

A previous poster has noted that population growth in the developed countries (partly due to momentum from past high fertility, but mostly due to immigration now) has been ignored. US per capita energy consumption has been quite flat for more than 30 years and is less than it was in the 1960s. See

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_12.pdf

Increases in total consumption are entirely due to population growth. This graph shows growth in US population by natural increase and immigration since 1970

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about-problem/our-lost-future.html
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 6:04:57 PM
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Aahahahaha Wow, that changes things. At a glimpse I thought the title of this article was something about the consumption of dwarfs being an environmental threat. My bad. Thought I missed something in our evolution somewhere.

Moving on.
Posted by StG, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 7:00:03 PM
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In defence of the USA, maybe you have to have a society as rich as the theirs so you can have so much excess money around to pay for all the advances in technology.

Medicine, electronics and science of many fields as well as a manufacturing high tech base like no other, no one is even moderately close.

The whole world wants US technology and medicine, the great consumers, but at the same time wants to hate them for being great consumers with a large ecological footprint, so ungrateful.

I don't see countries with small ecological footprints contributing as much or even a fraction of what the US does.

So maybe we need some new equation that recognizes that you need to get to that huge "super size" so you can generate technologies everyone wants, despite their supposed moral revulsion no one seems to refuse US technology.

They are the worlds great producers of life saving medicines and technology - let them have their consumption as a "thanks" from the rest of the world who contribute bugger all but whine a lot.
Posted by rpg, Wednesday, 22 April 2009 8:03:48 PM
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Guilt trip? The absence of over consumption=poverty? Talk about selective, binary reactionary thinking. Gentlemen please disagree by all means but lets have a debate not simple gain saying. The written equivalent of stamping your feet and saying it isn't so because *I* SAY so. Followed by what?

Neither the author nor I were saying advocating either. The article acknowledges that too many people is bad he simply gives PERSPECTIVE and OBJECTIVITY and FACTS to the debate on global damage, poverty and one of the reasons why there are so many refugees.
Enlightened self interest would support my contention to give the people positive reasons to stay home makes more sense that punitive actions. Consider 7 years transportation for trivial offences. Desperate people do desperate things.
NB the argument of selfish over consumption by 7% stands independent of AGW
One could ask where are the COUNTERING FACTS. Even scanning Plimer's Book there are underlying assumptions that are highly debatable. His is geologist's perspective.

As for the argument that it's in our nature to over consume perhaps that's true but should we then sit back ad do little simple thereby confirming that affluence= greed, obesity, selfishness, indifference, unacceptable and destructive pollution etc.
Even the dissenters on Yale 360 are far more reasoned.

I watch with bemused trepidation as the economy goes down the pan largely because of greed and unsubstantiated self fulfilling opinion(fear). Then hear people whinge because they have to economise or can't afford a holiday O/S this year or that THEIR decision to buy a McMansion is coming back to bite them! I feel for their pain but considering the above then comparing it to their plight with that of the so despised refugees .
Omar Kyam said it best “I wept because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet”
Having experienced my share+ of setbacks I wonder at the lack of perspective being expressed here
Posted by examinator, Thursday, 23 April 2009 9:09:05 AM
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Curmudgeonathome - the largest cause of deforestation in the Amazon is cattle ranches (60-70%), followed by small-scale, subsistence agriculture (30-40%). Large-scale commercial agriculture, logging (both legal and illegal), fires, mining, urbanization, road construction and dams make up the rest. If the cattle ranches are providing beef for the western hamburger market and the subsistence agriculture is providing sustenance for a burgeoning population, then the deforestation of the Amazon can be attributed to both over consumption and over population.
Posted by Candide, Thursday, 23 April 2009 12:21:17 PM
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If we desire to bang on about the environment and population growth, then we should be setting an example and I for one, find the consumption levels in our developed countries, an obscenity.

I continue to drive a 1995 model car which has clocked up some 55,000 kilometres (walking's good - driving's bad!), however, my loving family saw the “error” of my ways and gifted me with a Volvo which I refused to accept.

However, greenwashing population growth is fatuous too since the increase in human population saw an elevation of fossil fuel production and at the same time (and "coincidentally") an elevation of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Add to that the contamination of our ecosystems and biodiversity, from pollution over the same period caused by population expansion and ruthless, corporate greed (not least in Australia) and I would predict that we are in for a rocky ride.

'Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Land Use Change and Forestry in Top Ten Countries, 2000'

Country Emissions (Million Tons Carbon):

Indonesia________________________699.0

Brazil____________________________374.2

Malaysia_________________________190.6

Myanmar_________________________116.0

Democratic Republic of the Congo______86.5

Zambia___________________________64.2

Nigeria___________________________ 53.1

Peru_____________________________ 51.1

Papua New Guinea_________________ 39.8

Venezuela________________________ 39.3

Source: R.A. Houghton, "Emissions (and Sinks) of Carbon from Land-Use Change," Report to the World Resources Institute from the Woods Hole Research Center (Washington, DC: WRI, 2003).
Posted by Protagoras, Thursday, 23 April 2009 1:23:59 PM
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Fred Pearce is has blinded himself with the use of averages.

His argument goes “ the world’s richest half-billion people’ are responsible for most of the waste and consumption. The WRHBP gets pretty well defined as the western middle class in the next few paragraphs.

He misses –completely – the point that the middle class lifestyle is NOT exclusive to the west

India has a bigger middle class than the USA, or Australia, or the UK .
It doesn’t show up in all their Mickey Mouse measures because India has hundreds of millions of dirt poor .The consumption & waste of India’s 300 million middle class is camouflaged when averaged against its poor. But its consumption and waste is no less damaging to the planet –it is merely, hidden.

If Australia or the USA had 500 million dirt poor they would come out looking super, super squeaky clean– environmentally speaking.

The author is again blinded by averages when he talks of population:
“the number of children born to an average woman around the world has been in decline for half a century now. After peaking at between 5 and 6 per woman, it is now down to 2.6.”
This is practically meaningless twaddle since much of Europe & Japan is in negative population growth and much of the rest of the world exhibits high growth.It not equilibrium ---it’s much, much worse.
The poor will gravitate to the rich, like moths to the light, there they will either merge with them and become super consumers or conflict with them leading to civil strife, war, societal breakdown.
Posted by Horus, Thursday, 23 April 2009 9:53:06 PM
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RPG hit on a very important point:
“I don't see countries with small ecological footprints contributing as much or even a fraction of what the US does.”
It would be interesting to know:
---how many third world children get fed as a result of WRHBP support ( think direct food + agricultural aid)
---how many get an education as a result of WRHBP support ( scholarships)
---how much third world infrastructure : hospitals, schools, libraries, roads, dams etc are there as a result of WRHBP support

If you issue demerit points for pollution and consumption, its only fair to issue merit points for contributions to medicine , technology, science.

An interesting argument was recently presented by China re culpability for pollution.
It goes like this: the recipients of Chinese goods should share some of the culpability for the pollution produced in China making those goods ( &, some green group actually bought it –said it was fair & reasonable!)
Perhaps the WRHBP should argue our disproportionate pollution and consumption footprint needs to be offset against our disproportionate contribution to whole worlds well being ( I’ll bet the greens don’t buy that one!)

Finally Fred Pearce cites Hardin’s metaphor: the WRHBP as a series of life boats
with the rest of the world in the water trying to get onboard.

A better metaphor would be to see the WRHBP as a tug boat. Attached by long lines to a flotilla of engineless canoes , all the canoes are overloaded & getting more overladed by minute . The tug boat is the only thing with a hope in hell of dragging them to the yonder shore
Posted by Horus, Thursday, 23 April 2009 9:57:07 PM
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*The article acknowledges that too many people is bad he simply gives PERSPECTIVE and OBJECTIVITY and FACTS to the debate on global damage, poverty and one of the reasons why there are so many refugees.*

There are so many refugees Examinator, because there are ever growing
numbers of people. Genocide happened in Rwanda, for good reasons.
They bred like rabbits for far too long and eventually the proverbial
hits the fan. Ignore that at your peril.

Of course you are on a Western guilt trip and there is much to
quibble about the claimed figures. Australia for instance, burns
one hell of a lot of diesel, to feed those in the third world and
to provide resources to those people.

We could of course deny the third world supplies of wheat, barley,
meat, coal, iron ore, aluminium etc. Our CO2 figures would look
dramatically better, whilst they starved.

The notion that people in the third world, if their GDP is only
2$ a day, are not creating environmental damage, is of course flawed.

You might well dream that you can change human behaviour, but I doubt
your chances. A word of advice. If you are not sure, back human
self interest as the driving factor and you will most likely be on
a winner.
Posted by Yabby, Thursday, 23 April 2009 10:04:11 PM
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I have long considered it a peculiar paradox that the best non-coercive means of reducing population growth is increasing wealth (and all that goes along with that) but at the same time increasing wealth results in increased consumption...
We want to reduce population growth - easy, raise living standards. Oh, whoops - we raised living standards and now everyone wants to consume like a Westerner.
It is, however, even more complicated by other factors. There are some cultures with a strong emphasis on large families. Presently AFAICT these are mostly poor countries (see other thread on Faith and GDP) but I wonder which would win out - the low-population replenishing tendencies of wealth or the high-population replenishing mores of faith/culture?
Posted by J S Mill, Friday, 24 April 2009 1:20:10 PM
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Horus,

The argument that you say that 'some green group actually bought' has been strongly advanced by the leading Australian economist Geoff Carmody, including in an article published in OLO on 30 March (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8733). Geoff thinks the argument is fair and reasonable too.
Posted by IanC, Friday, 24 April 2009 1:37:14 PM
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LanC-The article you refer to by Geoff Carmidy, states-They badly need to steer away from a production model to a consumption model.

Remembering the disaster it was for the consumers in this country when petrol prices rose,would the Greens be so keen to accept this idea if they suddenly found it affected their personal household budgets the way the petrol prices did. That's the trouble with all this green house omissions and carbon footprint talk. Everybody is all for it as long as it doesn't directly affect THEIR job or THEIR income. The other fellow over there should be the one to make the sacrifice.
That's why the only way to reduce carbon footprint is really only through keeping population explosions under control.
Posted by sharkfin, Friday, 24 April 2009 11:55:13 PM
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Fred Pearce-Hardin's metaphor had a certain ruthless logic. What he omitted to mention was that each of the people in the lifeboat was occupying 10places whereas the people in the water only wanted one each.

I would like to alter your alteration to what he said, to say that what he also omitted to mention was that if you let the poor people in the water onto the boats and they kept on having heaps more childen than the people already in the boats they would very soon be taking up many more seats.

My alteration to your view of this still makes what Hardin says applicable. That is- If they let the poor people in the water on board there would be chaos and all would drown- therefore the people in the rich lifeboats had a duty to their species(I prefer the word family and children) to be selfish - to keep the poor out.
Posted by sharkfin, Saturday, 25 April 2009 12:26:22 AM
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How about that deceptively simple relation, applicable when you reach the limit of your resources, "more people = more expensive and less per person". This is happening with water in the capital cities, where all the cheaply obtainable water is used, leaving only restrictions, and far more expensive options for increasing supply.

Maybe population growth isn't the panacea it is portrayed as?
Posted by Fester, Saturday, 25 April 2009 7:55:16 AM
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