Uttering the “P” Word on Earth Day
By: Robert Walker
Executive Vice President, Population Institute
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
When the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, there was much discussion about population growth and its strain on Mother Earth. World population at that time was 3.7 billion. Today, with world population at 6.8 billion and still growing, nary a word is being said about population and its impact on the planet. What gives?
Thomas Hayden in reviewing three new ecology books for the Washington Post this week writes “Bizarrely, none of these authors discusses population growth in any kind of depth, if at all.” Julia Whitty writing for the May/June edition of Mother Jones magazine calls discussion of population “the last taboo.”
If human numbers were a problem in 1970, they are even more of problem today. There’s more deforestation, more depletion of fisheries, more plant and animal extinction, and a whole lot more concern about the human impact on the world’s climate. Then there are the concerns about energy, food and water. But, there is still little or no talk today about population. Why?
There are multiple reasons. First, discussion about population today inevitably raises concerns about coercion. Woman should not be forced to have fewer children. Fair enough. But outside of China’s one-child policy, few women are being forced to have fewer children. The problem, in fact, is the opposite. Women in many parts of the world are bearing more children than they want. Some women lack information about family planning or access to modern contraceptives. In other cases, women have little say in reproductive matters, particularly in countries where child marriage is prevalent and respect for women is low. When it comes to population, empowering and educating women and giving them more reproductive choice is a good thing.
Second, there are those who regard discussion of population as somehow racist. With birth rates falling toward the “replacement rate” in economically advanced countries, poor developing countries are largely responsible for world population growth. What right do we have to tell people in the developing world that they should have fewer children? Good question.
First, let’s acknowledge that when it comes to climate change and preventing the depletion of scarce resources, it’s far more important to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the U.S. and other developed nations. That’s because we consume a lot more resources. The ecological “footprint” of a child born in the U.S. or even Europe is much higher than a child born in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. That’s why we all need to change our consumption patterns.
Second, lowering birth rates in many developing countries is enormously beneficial. Family planning saves lives. High fertility rates are associated with high rates of maternal death and infant death. Early teen pregnancies, in particular, have bad health outcomes. Smaller families are not only healthier; they are more likely to be better educated and better off financially.
Of course, we don’t have to reduce population growth in poor developing countries through voluntary family planning. But if we fail to do so, many of these countries may not be able to feed themselves in the decades ahead. Unless birth rates fall further, countries like Niger and Uganda will triple their populations by mid-century. Yemen, which experts warn is running out of the water, is on pace to double its population in 30 years or less.
In some cases, rapid population growth is contributing to environmental and economic impoverishment in the form of deforestation and soil erosion. In some cases, like Rwanda and Sudan, population pressures have contributed to political strife and even civil war. There are, in fact, dozens of failing, or potentially failing, states where family planning will likely make the difference between survival and a humanitarian disaster.
Keeping silent about the world’s population crisis may make some people feel better, but it won’t make the world itself any better. We don’t do anybody any favors, including our posterity and all the other living creatures on this planet, when we ignore population growth and its implications. In a world beset by conflicting needs, there aren’t many ‘win-win’ propositions anymore, but voluntary family planning is one of them.
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Looking out beyond Earth Day 40, perhaps we can reflect upon words from the speech that Norman Bourlaug delivered, coincidentally in 1970, on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize.
Near the end of the very first year of Earth Day celebrations Dr. Bourlaug reported,
” Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.”
Plainly, he states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}.
Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food. According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and no food, no people.
Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life as we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years. Recall Dr. Bourlaug’s prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the “Green Revolution” and to the extraordinary increases in the world’s supply of food. Please consider that the seemingly miraculous increases in humanity’s food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug’s great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers.
We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing, large-scale food production capabiliities (as opposed to sustainable farming practices) on the population numbers of the human species between now and 2050. If we keep doing the business-as-usual things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world’s food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the future.
It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the corporate production of food; for providing broad support of sustainable farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present superabundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for following Dr. Bourlaug’s recommendation to “reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely.”
April 25th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Bill Ryerson, Robert Walker, John C. Feeney, Joe Bish and many others have spoken out loudly and clearly to the family of humanity about what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding synergistically at a breakneck pace toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s gigantic, ever expanding global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘WALL’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Many scientists have remarked eloquently on the collapse of civilizations. The global challenge we appear to face today, one that singular and unimaginable, is that the collapse of human civilization in Century XXI is not simply the end of another human civilization. What is occurring now is likely not only the collapse of a human civilization but also the human-driven destruction of the natural resource base, the ecology, and biodiversity of Earth.
Concern for the future of life as we know it and for the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the children leads me to point to the great value I attach to the open discussion of the global predicament looming before the human family. We simply must make good use of the best available science to adequately explain the population dynamics leading to the collapse of our civilization. Without such knowledge, I cannot see how necessary changes in the behavioral repertoire of humankind can be made.
Is there doubt in the mind of anyone in the PMC community that the future will ultimately be brighter for children everywhere if people choose now to consume and hoard less; to protect, preserve and share more; and to effectively check the unbridled increase of unsustainable large-scale production capabilities as well as to humanely regulate the propagation of the human species?
April 29th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
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