For pete's sake, Farida Akhter can not seriously believe the picture painted by the graph below is sustainable. I can't accept for a second that you think it is sustainable either, Cheryl. Or you either Stezza, if you deign to turn up here:

http://j.mp/87vugj

This article (or its author?) is crackers!

OF COURSE the population size and rate of growth are major factors in climate change!

OF COURSE they need to be part of the discussion. It would be woefully remiss of COP15 to leave the population factor out of discussions or to address it only fleetingly.

Discussion on the population / climate change connection has not in any way diverted the debate. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The climate change debate had diverted energies away from the population and sustainability debate.

If population is discussed at Copenhagen or thereafter in relation to the climate change issue, then it will certainly help bring the climate change debate closer to the sustainability debate. And afterall, it is our overall sustainability that really matters, not just the fossil fuel consumption, felling of forests and farting of cows!

If population is not discussed at Copenhagen or thereafter in the climate change issue, we will basically be addressing only one of the big factors of sustainability, while another one, that is at least as enormous, will continue to go utterly inadequately addressed.

OF COURSE real commitments need to be made by the major polluting developed and developing nations. And as part of their commitments, they should be looking at their own population growth and what they can do to reach stable levels, not least Australia!

And OF COURSE we should all be thinking very hard about what can be done to reduce population growth in the third world.

Farida Akhter focuses on historical greenhouse gas emissions, for which the developed countries have an overwhelming responsibility to take action. It is also quite true that if we are going to prevent births (and immigration) to fight climate change, it is much more effective to do it in rich countries than poor ones. However, Akhter ignores deforestation, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity, for which the poor (and poor country elites) must bear much of the blame. Even with greenhouse gases, most of the emissions currently going into the atmosphere come from developing countries and not the developed world.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/developing-nations-outstrip-rich-on-greenhouse-gases/story-e6frg8gf-1225799158422

If there are sufficient caputs, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low. Even if all the developed countries disappeared, there are quite enough people in poor countries to trash the planet if they attain the developed country levels of affluence they aspire to. Although we should certainly do a lot more to reduce fossil fuel use and the senseless waste that goes on in rich countries, it is hard to take all those protestations from poor countries about overconsumption very seriously, when so many of their people struggle so hard to migrate to developed countries where they can partake of it.

This graph from the Oct. 6, 2007 New Scientist shows that it would take the resources of three Earths to give everyone a modest Western European standard of living.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2624/26243101.jpg

Paul Harrison, the author of "Inside the Third World", once wrote that limiting population is the only real long term answer to environmental problems. This is because the bottom fifth of humanity need to increase their consumption, and the middle three fifths are not going to be satisfied with the odd bicycle or radio.

“It is a well acknowledged fact that developed countries and major emerging economy nations lead in total carbon dioxide emissions.”

Not quite true. Australia produces only 0.01% of TOTAL CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS, simply because it does have a relatively small population. It seems that some people do not like the fact that we have a small population, because they only ever mention the per capita output. The fact remains that we have less total emissions (and that’s what counts) because we have so far had a small population.

The author, while giving the developed countries a serve, seems totally unaware of the fact that ‘developing’ countries have made a pretty good contribution to the poor state of the earth by clearing forests and cutting and using every skerrick of wood they have for burning, thus degrading the countryside to an extent not seen in developed countries.

She also accuses us of eating too much. If, instead of mucking about with ‘feminism’, she advocated lower populations and, therefore, better land care, people in undeveloped countries would eat better.

And to think that our crackpot Prime Minister wants to transfer Australian wealth to people like this via his useless carbon tax!

You're only off by two orders of magnitude Leigh, Australia produces at least 1.3% of total CO2 emissions, with only 0.32% of the world population.

Weird when you consider that India with more than a billion people (17.6% of the worlds population), only emits 5.5% of the total carbon dioxide.

Funny old world innit.

After reading the comments above, I don't think I'll bother wasting my time reading this article. Often I find the comments and discussion much more interesting anyway. Thats the best thing about OLO.

In regards to rstuarts graph, it is interesting that the most prominent decline in population was due to the bubonic plague. I wonder if during this period anyone imagined that the world population would recover and grow so quickly? The next time an event such as this happens (whatever it may be) I believe the decline will be much more severe, and that humans will survive, prosper and multiply again until the next such event. Or not...