An enlightening article. My only real comment is that those freeing climate change, corruption, poor living standards etc. are economic migrants and not refugees.

<< those freeing climate change ... economic migrants and not refugees>>

Dont worry Bren, the Greens and their allies are surreptitiously seeking to expand the definition of refugee.

This would've been a good article a decade ago, but the world has moved on somewhat. Literacy rates have improved and population growth has slowed in most countries, but you seem to have failed to notice. And there is already a great reluctance to give aid to countries with high corruption rates. But blaming the aid for the corruption is rather fanciful, especially when you consider countries like Nigeria which are not major aid recipients but still have high corruption rates. And apart from the export of second hand clothing by a charity, the only example I can think of of aid destroying a local industry is where agricultural subsidies are misclassified as "aid". And if that still occurs, it's not happening anywhere near as much as it did in the past.

Guy you seem to be getting your fiction mixed up in your article writing.

Drop the climate change scam as part of your narrative Guy, then try again. You can't get close to an answer with fiction for fact.

No use bringing fallacy into things, when you are supposedly being serious, about real problems.

Hear, hear and yes Aidan.

Improving literacy standards particularly among women, is the only way to reduce the birth rate, which is only able to continue at current rates in some of the more remote areas, given women there are just treated as goods and chattels, with no real rights, or no right whatsoever, to say no!

Be they prepubescent and visibly unwilling!

Hence the high death rate in childbirth, (unstoppable bleeding) without which population numbers, would likely double in those still primitive cultures?

Reportedly, coffee growing/exporting Kenya, has done some good things in recent years, with some reafforestation programs reversing rainfall patterns; and with it, returning some sustainability to some mostly subsistence lifestyles?
Well, coffee require quite copious water!
Rhrosty.

The author sees a climate pattern and assumes it is due to climate change - ie a severe drought. Africa had severe droughts well before anyone talked about climate change.. whether you buy into the IPCC or not, natural shifts in regional climates would still be occurring. The allegation is that such droughts are made worse by climate change. In any case, the main problem would still be the lack of political action to address the problems of such droughts, however they may be caused.

It is clear that I am not alone in thinking that this article covered too much ground, too thinly argued.

Of course, issues such as climate change will always polarise the readership and cloud all else - they cannot be addressed in an omnibus discussion.

If there is one glaring omission, however, it is the need for peace in troubled countries. Is not peace the single most important missing ingredient? If so, why is it that permanent war is the norm and occasional outbreaks of peace are so rare?

My private thoughts on this lead me to consider the size and political clout of the military industry as against the peace industry - if such even exists beyond NGO's.

Secondly, the continuing concentration of the world's wealth into the hands of the richest 1% of people and the top handful of western nations. Example: the de-industrialisation of Australia over the past 50 years... we are on the way down, not up.

Aidan,
I haven't heard about population coming down, can you give some figures? I cannot visualize it being significant enough to make a great deal of difference.

I do know that both Iran and Thailand have both shown that birth rates can be lowered by government sponsored family planning. In both countries the birth rate went from 6 children per woman to less than 2 per woman. This is what I believe the UN should be concentrating on, especially in those countries subject to famine.

Banjo I didn't say the population was coming down. The birth rate is coming down or has come down in many more countries than the two you mentioned, but as people are living longer, the population is still rising. And encouraging smaller families only works where parents can be confident their children will survive and have children of their own; it wouldn't work in countries subject to famine.

Well I supopose looking at the desert bloom in Israel after being a barren land was just 'luck' for the inhabitants. It seems to me that half of the white population from South africa have fled and its got noting to do with climate change. Surely quoting the IPCC just shows how desperate Guy is for people to join his faith.

Speaking of faiths, Runner... that canoe of the wishful antiscience faithful which you have been paddling for years is becoming less and less seaworthy, but as I stated above, mention of climate change tends to attract off topic comments.

Such as this one and certain others.

Aidan,
These are your words, "Literacy rates have improved and population growth has slowed in most countries, but you seem to have failed to notice".

I would like to know the non-western countries where populations have slowed. I think the amount of food aid we give them effects their fertility far more than literacy rates.

We should be giving free contraceptives if we really want to reduce birth rates. Iran and Thailand have shown the way, if it works there it is worth trying in other places.

I think the main points in this article are worth considering.

Regardless of whether climate change, however caused, has contributed greatly to refugee flows in the past, it will contribute greatly in the future. If the sea levels rise around Bangla Desh, we can expect those people to move to adjacent countries. This is merely one example.

The author’s point is that nothing we’re presently doing is addressing this problem adequately. I agree. Even aside from efforts to reduce human-induced climate change, what else should a small but rich nation be doing?

I know too little about current aid efforts to comment on specifics, but surely the focus has to be on improving education and infrastructure in the developing nations. At our expense. We must spend more, not less, on foreign aid, while recognising that there will always be disagreement about how well it is spent.

Experience has shown that the best contraceptive is wealth. Family sizes usually fall in societies which rise above a subsistence lifestyle. And no, I can’t quote figures on this; but I think the point is nevertheless valid.

What's missing in this analysis is the real villain of the piece: capitalism. Capitalism orchestrates population growth, climate change and the flow of refugees. The author talks about corruption as if our economic system suffered it as a blight, whereas "crony capitalism" is the normal state of affairs. "Corruption" is naked and crude in many countries (though capitalism makes it possible), whereas in the first world it's an institution. Profit begets power whose wielders in turn exert political influence in prospecting for more. "Corruption" in the West is evidenced in the vast disparities between the rich, the super rich and the rest--perceived by the majority as "normal". Crony capitalism is also evidenced in that despite our "democratic" societies, for the last few decades economic policy has been one-sidedly adjusted and geared towards this accumulating trend: political influence is overwhelmingly the the province of capitalists.
Until we address the underlying problem, a rapacious economic system which invariable impoverishes as many as it enriches, and which is beginning to devastate planetary systems, the "refugee problem" will continue to fret and bother our spoiled and benighted masses.

Well said Guy.
The problem, as always, is too many people.
Until we take steps to solve the problem and stop band aiding the symptoms we shall get no where.
We are breeding and eating ourselves out of house and home to the final conclusion.
Population growth rate means little while ever it is positive. Actual total numbers mean it all.
And the numbers are growing.
Homo Sapiens is but a virus in a planet sized Petri dish.

Phillip, the best contraceptive may indeed be wealth, but education of females is also a strong contender.

This has been demonstrated time and again in many lands and under a range of other circumstances.

A close third must be empowerment of women, ie allowing the females choice over such matters as their fertility and personal freedoms, including fair control over finances and giving them voices within their communities.

Nobody ever said that there is a single answer to all problems of the third world, let alone of the whole earth.

At last someone who recognizes that population growth is the underlying cause of the worlds environmental and social problems. Unless the world tackles population growth all other efforts are a waste of effort.

Some people like to create the impression that population is no longer a problem because fertility rates have come down in a lot of places. In fact, fertility rates haven't come down in Africa as expected, leading to a bigger UN medium population projection. A recent paper in the journal Science has the latest projections.

http://news.sciencemag.org/economics/2014/09/experts-be-damned-world-population-will-continue-rise

"To wit, there’s a 95% chance the world population will be between 9 billion and 13.2 billion by the year 2100, the team concludes online today in Science. Much of that growth, it found, will likely take place in Africa, whose population is estimated to rise from 1 billion to 4 billion by the end of the century. And, unlike projections from last decade, the new graphs show a steady increase through 2100 rather than a midcentury leveling off."

As shown by the graph, population growth is continuing in Asia and other places where fertility rates have already come down due to demographic momentum. A rapidly growing population has a pyramid-shaped age structure. Even with fertility dropping to replacement level or less, the births will take place in the huge young adult population and most of the deaths in the relatively tiny elderly generation. The population can go on growing for another 70 years before it stabilizes. This has little to do with people living longer.

The problem is that we are doing serious damage to our planetary life support systems even with the existing population. We are facing shortages or losses of arable land, fresh water, forests, fish stocks, biodiversity, cheap fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. While wasteful consumption is part of the problem, according to the last Global Footprint Network atlas, the top billion people in the richest countries are responsible for 38% of the world's consumption. People must consume in order to survive and consume even more to have what we would consider a minimally decent standard of living. If the population is big enough, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low.

It is very amusing that some are still saying climate change is not happening. The Senate in the US has just passed a resolution created by Republicans who in the past have been staunch deniers that climate change is happening. But, the Republicans will not admit to humans having any impact on the climate. In other words, they recognized that the carpet was being pulled from under them with what has been developing climate wise over decades.

2015 is not in a prime position for climate change with warm Ocean currents travelling into the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans plus the soot as shown in the photos referenced below.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/09/16/jason_box_s_research_into_greenland_s_dark_snow_raises_more_concerns_about.html

Guy's article is a timely reminder that climate refugees need to be considered. The Marshall Islands had been overwhelmed by seas twice last year; salt water has an impact on soil

For me there are two key points in this article:
a) population growth and resources are out of balance
b) we have to fix the problem in situ, that means locally. Shifting people around is futile and does not solve the problem. I would add that it makes the problem worse as it leads to loss of social cohesion followed by internal conflict, parallel societies, civil wars.
Education and re-directing foreign aid, perhaps a carrot-and-stick approach, are the suggested means to achieve a better outcome.
But it does not end there. Cultural and religious barriers create walls that need to be dismantled, and that is the really hard part.

@ Banjo, most focus upon the headline figures which can appear alarming, but the real data shows trends e.g. crashing fertility rates, and static numbers of youth internationally (think 2 billion now, will be about 2 billion in a 100 hundred years).

Prof. Hans Rosling (statistician, doctor and development expert) explains well as featured in The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/may/17/hans-rosling-data-population-fertility

and several demographers have looked at trends with Deutsche Bank predicting that peak population will not be reached..... the only significant fertility being in sub Saharan Africa.

However, those reports that predict or project increased headline population don't seem to feature that salient points i.e. fertility rates have dropped below replacement level, and that is it prosperity i.e. education and health leading to people living longer, therefore it is old people impacting the data creating a spike..... which will subside over time due to lower fertility.

Ehrlich's claim to fame was highlighting fertility, less developed countries, non-Europeans and the 'population bomb' coming to outnumber the western world, coincidentally something neo cons (+ media) fret about, and use to alarm their constituencies....

In fact Robert Reich describes it correctly, as Ehrlich is not a demographer. We are not dealing with high fertility rates or inputs, but a 'baby boomer bomb' due to longevity from prosperity.... but from Malthus through governments and advocates today, they same intent on blaming poor brown people for the western world's profligacy = maintaining the status quo.

As Rosling says, it's not how many many (i.e. headline figure), but how we manage our resources in an equitable way to deal with ageing populations, and limited working age populations.

This graphic of Australia's age distribution allows comparison from 1900 to the present and on through projections to 2100, with the population divided into 5 year intervals.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-09/interactive-infographics-census-2011-australia-transformed/2829132

If you look at 2015, you will see that only 15.3% of the population is over 65, and no elderly interval is as large as any of the younger intervals. Even if you look at the projection for 2030 (for what it is worth), only 19.8% will be over 65. Globally, the problem of people living longer is trivial compared to the problem of demographic momentum. In any case, the very low life expectancy figures of, say, 200 years ago were mostly due to very high mortality before the age of 5, as well as lots of deaths in childbirth.

Historically, the First World is responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions that are currently in the atmosphere, but the biggest emitter today us China, and it is still the biggest, even if you exclude production for export.

http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world%E2%80%99s-top-10-emitters

This is not because the average Chinese person is living it up.

Blaming poor brown people for everything that is wrong in the world is stupid, but so is claiming that poor brown people can do no wrong, or if they do, it is really our fault.

The bottom two billion in the world are relatively blameless when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, as shown in this video by Hans Rosling

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2013/may/17/population-climate-change-hans-rosling-video

Nevertheless, they are responsible for a lot of the deforestation and extinctions, as well as the land degradation. Making them more prosperous would help to bring down fertility rates in the countries where they remain high, but it would also mean more pressure on our life support systems, which are best understood by natural scientists, not demographers. Nor would it do anything for demographic momentum in the countries where fertility rates have already dropped.

Last updated in 2012 at five minutes to midnight, the clock has moved forward two minutes as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists grows further concerned about the emissions trajectory.

Divergence,
the interactive graphs are great!

Just a couple of points along the lines I argue that not enough consideration is given to the economic forces that underwrite past, present and future demographics.

First, when you say: "Nevertheless, they [the poorest two billion] are responsible for a lot of the deforestation and extinctions, as well as the land degradation", you don't acknowledge that these populations are slave to global capitalism, and that deforestation etc. is mostly the consequence of first and second world demand for resources and cheap commodities/labour.

Second and more important, looking at the hans-Rosling video, he paints far too rosy a picture of a kind of equilibrium he foresees in 2100, whereby the world is 'united' in conspicuous prosperity and population has stabalised around 10 billion, his only requirment being that we all produce less greenhouse emissions at that time.
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'.
No account of the strife that must occur during this century is mooted, but it also fails to account for how we got there, or how this utopia will be supported economically when the growth of new markets--along with the satiety of old ones--will be exhausted.
hans-Rosling's idea of monolithic prosperity also fails to breakdown the actual disparities which obtain within; these are vast and the picture Thomas Piketty has recently painted shows "patrimonial capitalism," and all its social implications, again in the ascendency.
Even putting aside the drastic inequities which mark "prosperity" generally, even if we accept this as a necessary state of affairs, unless there's a paradigm shift in what that means, it can't be sustained in a human world (it will be practically a human monoculture) that has reached its natural limits.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.