Population size 'green priority'

[mikepepler]

A story on the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4585920.stm

Solving the Earth's environmental problems means addressing the size of its human population, says the head of the UK's Antarctic research agency.
Professor Chris Rapley argues that the current global population of six billion is unsustainably high.

and more:

A number of studies suggest that humankind is consuming the Earth's resources at an unsustainably fast rate.
Even so, the issue of population is hardly ever discussed at environmental summits or raised by green lobby groups.

[clv101]

I think just talking about population size is missing the point. Behaviour is more important than population, the range of population being discussed is 2-10bn a factor of 5 but the range of behavioural ecological footprint is 0.5 ha/cap in Bangladesh to 10.3 ha/cap in the US a factor of over 20 (1997 data, link).

The point is that the world could support 20 times as many people behaving like Bangladeshis as it can people behaving like Americans. Maybe the world can only sustainable support 2 billion people (as is often said) with the same behavioural distribution as we have today but this figure is irrelevant since anything that caused the population to fall to 2bn would be sure to adjust that distribution. Population is important, just not nearly as important as behaviour.

[isenhand]

I would disagree, the population we have at the moment is sustainable and we could even sustain a larger population. I would agree with clv101, behaviour is more important. We can??t sustain our current behaviour and we need a radical change in the way we do things and the way society is organised.

[Bandidoz]

The question to ask is whether it's easier to control population or behaviour. You can get blokes to wear condoms, but you're unlikely to convince Westerners to live like Bangladeshis.

If people were machines then yes the current population *could* be sustained. However, people are people (wow Earth shattering observation ) and the experience of 6.5 Billion on this planet is one which risks breaking the food chain with sequential extinctions.

[mikepepler]

And let's remember that those Bangladeshis (or Indians, Chinese, etc.) all want their DVD players, cars, etc.! And why not? We all have them, and don't want to give them up, so why shouldn't they want them too? Of course, we all know they won't get them, because the party's nearly over and we drunk all the booze before they arrived... maybe it'll come to blows...?

[GD]

We'll have to give it up, they'll have to forget such aspirations... After all, in the long term - there's no choice. In the short to medium term, it can be down to what kind of information is available. The current paradigm of "more of the same" could well lead us to blows. We have a lot of awareness raising to do!

[RogerCO]

In thinking about a sustainable population size for the planet clv101 makes a very good point that it is about behaviour.
It is all very well to say that the world could support 6.5B if they lived with a third world footprint, but as mikep points out those living within that footprint today all want more.
So maybe the starting point is to think what do you actually want personally - I quite like many of the material and technological benefits of living in a rich country. Ability to travel the world is nice to have occasionally. Most modern medicine (although I could live without some of the wilder fringes ), whatever..., could be quite happy without a fair amount of typical UK consumption, but don't want to live like an average African.
Then the question becomes what is the carrying capacity of the planet to sustain your preferred level of consumption for all.

If you look at it like this then I suspect for almost all of us the answer is considerably less than 6Billion, or to put it in more parochial terms less than 60Million in the UK.

Of course how you get from here to there is quite another question as no-one (apart from suicide bombers) is going to volunteer for a cull.

As an aside thought I wonder when we will see the first eco- as opposed to religious- suicide bomber. If you had a terminal illness and a desire to save the planet might you be prepared to do your bit and go out in a blaze of glory ?

[Karl]

I think just talking about population size is missing the point. Behaviour is more important than population, the range of population being discussed is 2-10bn a factor of 5 but the range of behavioural ecological footprint is 0.5 ha/cap in Bangladesh to 10.3 ha/cap in the US a factor of over 20 (1997 data, link).

The point is that the world could support 20 times as many people behaving like Bangladeshis as it can people behaving like Americans. Maybe the world can only sustainable support 2 billion people (as is often said) with the same behavioural distribution as we have today but this figure is irrelevant since anything that caused the population to fall to 2bn would be sure to adjust that distribution. Population is important, just not nearly as important as behaviour.

The chinese is not very concerned for the enviroment or ecology, I think your little bangladeshis have the same feelings and can't wait to consume all the oil they can, Americans on the other hand is concerned and more often members of greenpeace and such organizations than say the amerinds, actually the white race seams to be more conerned with the wellfare of others, may it be cats, dogs well animals, people or the environment. The problem with the environment is that it's polluted with soft, immoral politically correct people unwilling to take the required measures in order to save it along with the progress of it's human part.

[GD]

^^ ^^

[isenhand]

The question to ask is whether it's easier to control population or behaviour. You can get blokes to wear condoms, but you're unlikely to convince Westerners to live like Bangladeshis.

I don?t think is a case of living like Bangladeshis. We could still have and maintain a high standard of living but not like the Americans have at the moment. There is a lot of waste in the system and by restructuring the way we do things we can live more efficiently and in balance with nature. For example, one thing that would be possible is to produce things when needed rather than to produce a profit. Keep things as local as possible would be another things. This would require such a major change in society but it is possible to do and it will take some planning.

[mikepepler]

An interesting related story here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4600455.stm

[fishertrop]

Of course how you get from here to there is quite another question...

I think Roger hits the real nail on the head.

You can move the numbers for "std of living" and "total population" backward and forward all you like but the real question is "how are we going to change from the current paradigm?".

I totally agree with the posters who say we can have a lot of people with a decent-enough std of living, but the plain truth is that most people with the "inefficient" std of living simply will not give it up.

If you worked out a std of living that people in the west would accept (and I don't mean the people on this board!), which could easily include a ton of efficiency moves with little impact, you could then say either:
1) The planet can support Xbn at this std of living - and we can genuinely offer the developing nations a path to improvement if they trim their numbers
or
2) The west is going to live like this, the rest of the world can do what they like - collaspe, war, conflict, population controls whatever they like....

In this world, we can never talk about "fair" only about what the people with the power will accept - and people in the west would rather knowingly oppress the 3rd world or knowingly engage in resource wars than to accept drastic cuts in std of living.

What would it take for the UK (let alone the US) to take the voluntary measures to cut total population, consumption, luxeries etc?
Unless we get a collective ideological shot-in-the-arm and do it because it's "fair" and "right" and "just" for all, then we'd have to have exhausted all military options (perhaps including some nuclear) before we'd be prepared to take the self-sacrifice. And I don't say that as some "end of days" nut either.

[mikepepler]

The west is going to live like this, the rest of the world can do what they like - collaspe, war, conflict, population controls whatever they like....

Hmm, but having read half of "Collapse" so far, it seems that if the third world collapsed, so would we - the interdependencies are strong and difficult to reverse. Won't stop us trying though...

I agree with everyone saying that behaviour of the world's population is just as important as it's size, but the fact is that if a person exists they might choose to live in an unsustainable way. Now it's possible we could get to a society where this is so unacceptable that nobody does it, but I don't see many signs of it coming yet. Sure, everyone thinks they ought to recycle their glass, but they don't see any problem in driving to the dump in a 3-litre SUV to do it. We have a long way to go...

At the end of the day, the more people there are on the planet, the harder it is to be sustainable, whatever the target standard of living. If we could encourage the world to bring a halt to population growth and maybe pull back a little, then the adjustment would be a lot easier. The trouble is that it's widely acknowledged that populations tend to soar as a country industrialises, and only stabilise once the majority of people are reasonably well-off and educated. How are we going to manage this with declining resources? If people are living in poverty, not knowing how many of their children will survive, they will still have lots of them.

I think I'll stop here - I can't see that my rambling is leading to any easy answers, perhaps there aren't any...

[Bandidoz]

As an aside thought I wonder when we will see the first eco- as opposed to religious- suicide bomber.

I guess the nearest we've had to that, in a way, was Adolf Hitler. He committed suicide, did lots of bombing (indirectly of course!), and was (in part) driven by ecological concerns.

The lesson from history is that we don't learn from history. On that basis, how on Earth are the majority of people going to be driven to consuming less?

[genoxy]

I would disagree, the population we have at the moment is sustainable and we could even sustain a larger population. I would agree with clv101, behaviour is more important. We can??t sustain our current behaviour and we need a radical change in the way we do things and the way society is organised.

Afraid I tend to disagree with the above - however important is the behaviour and energy consumption, there is also the issue of food and water, and it doesn't matter if you're Bill Gates or a tea plantation worker in Sri Lanka - you still need to eat and drink. With big problems emerging regarding fresh water supply and agricultural land, how can our planet support its population sustainably?

For example, many dry countries relay on sub-surface water to supply their populations' needs. This can prove to be very dangerous, especially if the population was to grow even further:

Sub-surface water can be thought of in the same terms as surface water: inputs, outputs and storage. The critical difference is that for sub-surface water, storage is generally much larger compared to inputs than it is for surface water. This difference makes it easy for humans to use sub-surface water unsustainably for a long time without severe consequences

I think that if planet Earth could support a larger population, then it would have done so already at some point in our history.