Sustainability is such an all-embracing issue that you inevitably get drawn into wider issues. Construction is clearly a vital way of addressing energy consumption but there’s an even more fundamental ones being increasingly raised by scientists – population. My fellow blogger Mel Starrs has been posting on this of late, most recently labelling it a "sticky issue". Now new director of London’s Science Museum Chris Rapley wades into the debate.
In an interview in this week’s Time Out (I’ve not bothered to include a web link as I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to find the bloody thing, with no success) he says: "People are the root cause of global warming… We need to reduce the planet’s birth rate – by improving healthcare, education and contraception". According to Rapley that would cost a lot less than introducing "technological fixes" to solve global warming. "The trouble is that people don’t want to talk about the issue of population."
James Martin is strong on the population issue in his book The Meaning of the 21st Century. He claims there are "non oppressive" ways to lower global birthrates. "The population declines strongly in countries where almost all women can read and full women’s liberation is in effect," he writes. "Population tends to decline when GDP is high." Perhaps Martin’s argument could be the starting point for a joint global movement to end poverty, introduce universal education and therefore as a result tackle climate change. Sounds pretty simple.
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on Sep 21st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Sustainability “experts” engaging with development theory?! Surely not!
A better book than Sach’s “End of Poverty” is Amartya Sen’s “Development As Freedom,” if only because the latter is not “endorsed” by Bono.
Women’s agency – the ability to work and make decisions – has been shown to reduce fertility rates and child mortality. GDP is part of this but not proven essential – Kerala is a good example, with low GDP but high life expectancy and low mortality and fertility rates.
I am continually surprised and dismayed that child poverty – and women’s agency, by extension – are not higher on the environmentalist / climate change agenda. I more often hear things such as “a stable world population is 1 billion people”. What stupidity!
on Sep 24th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Phil – follow the Guardian article with J Porrits vew on his blog at http://www.jonathonporritt.com/pages/2007/09/bunting_and_population.html
on Sep 24th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Why is Porritt calling population “the dreaded “P” word”?!
I am glad Bunting points out “Only 8% of the land of this country is built on, but, as a Mori poll commissioned for Kate Barker’s review of land use for the Treasury showed, it doesn’t feel like that: those polled put the figure at 50%.”
A comment by Quixotematic on Bunting’s article is indicative: “Malthus was right – in fact it is elementary. He simply was unaware of the potential of oil.”
I think this is trying to say that the technological advances that have kept food production in line with population growth are all as a result of oil. A similar thing was presented in a Bill Dunster presentation I found by following Phil’s link to building.co.uk; the presentation had a curve correlating population growth to the discovery of oil.
[Um, hello - sanitation? The discovery not so long ago that disease is transmitted by water?]
This is just intellectually lazy and euro-/ western- centric. From the UNFPA:
“The more developed regions include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe and North America, which are collectively home to 1.19 billion people. On average, population growth in these regions is almost 0.3 per cent per year, a rate that is projected to dip below zero before 2025″
“The population of less developed regions is estimated at 4.6 billion and is growing at a rate of 1.6 per cent annually. Over the next 30 years, almost 98 per cent of global population growth is projected to take place in developing countries.”
I wrote my dissertation on water supply and sanitation in Ghana and was shocked by what I learned, but these are real and solveable problems.
Quoting Lomborg quoting a UN consultant “It’s not that people suddenly started breeding like rabbits; it’s just that they stopped dying like flies”.
Let’s help the third world stop dying like flies, and put the whole population debate to rest once and for all.
on Oct 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I really like these videos on exponential growth and over population:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&mode=related&search=
Reminds me of being in a science class and the teacher wheeling in the TV and video.