Connecting the Dots Between Global Warming and Human Population

Global warming continues to dominate the news, and the news is grim. The world is heating up faster than scientists predicted. Global ice sheets are melting, hot smoggy days are increasing and severe weather hammers us more frequently. And, in spite of dire warnings , we continue to party on. Yes, the recession is helping, but we’ll be out of that in a year or two. And yes we are embracing more fuel-efficient vehicles, compact fluorescent light bulbs and other conservation measures. But these are too little, too late.
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Let’s connect the dots. A growing population leads to greater consumption which requires more energy which uses fossil fuels which leads to global warming. The first and primary factor is population. But all the solutions being proposed attack subsequent, secondary factors. And none of these solutions will be nearly enough. Take, for example, the environmentalists favourite proposal: dumping coal and using wind and solar. This won’t make a significant contribution for at least 50 years, if then. Why? Because the infrastructure involved with coal-fired electricity is gigantic. There are over 5000 coal plants in the world with more being built every day. Utilities don’t have the resources to scrap the plants that still have many years of useful life left and replace them with expensive solar plants. I don’t see people rushing out to scrap their one-year-old SUVs and buying hybrids.

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Like all complex problems, global warming has no simple solution. We need to employ many strategies including conservation, more efficient technologies and renewable energy. But all that won’t work unless we also slow and stop human population growth. It’s vital that we recognize this crucial fact. Let’s connect the dots.

The King Has No Clothing

Last year, Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was shown at our community hall and was followed by a spirited discussion moderated by an intelligent environmental lawyer who is gaining a national reputation. The audience appeared deeply moved by the film and enthusiastically offered a variety of actions we could take as individuals and on a community basis to avoid the disaster that global warming threatens.

At one point, a 12-year-old boy stood up and said that human population seemed to be part of the problem and shouldn't we be doing something about that. The moderator quickly dismissed the boy, stating that new technologies and conservation were the solution, and moved on to another speaker.

The young boy was the only one in the audience to recognize that human population is the real problem behind global warming. But no one listened. I despair.

Human Population Decline? Not Fast Enough

According to David Reher, a population historian at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, "historically, a 'large and well-nourished population' has always been considered the sign of a successful society and a successful economy. The very idea of decline and of population shortage is largely foreign to our society, mostly because for several centuries there has been no experience of shrinking population."

But, he says, there are several signs that global human population is heading into decline, after two hundred years of unstoppable growth. National fertility rates are dropping nearly everywhere in the world. Women's roles are changing. The processes of modernization have tipped the cost-benefit ratio of having large families, making them uneconomic, especially in urban settings.



"Times of flux are not times that are conducive to optimism about the future," Reher says. "Having children is ultimately an expression of confidence in the future; in the security of the life you can expect your children to be able to lead."

"For our children, and especially our grandchildren, persistent population decline — and possibly lower living standards — will likely be the only reality they will ever experience and the times of runaway population growth so prevalent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will be but a distant memory of the past."

"Periods of decline," Reher explains, "have been equated to decadence and to societies that were somehow unable to function properly." He goes on to say that this is "a time of deepening concern about the sustainability of society as we know it."

But global population decline isn't happening fast enough to make a difference in our negative impact on the planet.

In 1989, Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, a renowned French demographer, suggested that "… l’humanité part de zéro, il y a quelque 600 000 ans, et y retourne vers l’an 2400" (humanity started from nothing 600,000 years ago, and will return to nothing around the year 2400). Perhaps Bourgeois-Pichat was factoring global warming into his population projections?

It will be sooner now, however, with the latest climate change research added in. If global overheating is left unchecked (because we don't make the necessary transition to a renewable energy economy fast enough), by 2100 most species on Earth will be condemned to eventual extinction — homo sapiens being no exception.


[Reher's paper, Long-term population decline, past and future, was presented at the 2005 International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Conference in Tours, France.

Signs that the Human Population is Too Large

Several organizations, including the United Nations, have scientifically calculated that human beings have exceeded the carrying capacity of this good planet—that we are now using (considerably) more resources than the Earth is creating. In other words, since about 1980, we have not been living off the interest, we have been drawing down the bank balance. This is definitely not sustainable.

I also look at this issue from an emotional (qualitative) view. Here are some images and experiences that are not proof, but vivid signs or symbols to me that the population is simply too large.

• A crowded swimming pool in China (click on photo to enlarge it). Is this really a fun way to spend a sunny day?
• Gridlock across all 16 lanes of Highway 401 across the top of Toronto every rush hour.
• The ozone hole over the poles. This was the first major environmental problem on a global scale. It was caused by too many people using spray cans and air-conditioning.
• Professional "pushers" shoving people into a crowded Tokyo subway car (photo thanks to Scott-5x5)

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• Haze ruining the view at the Grand Canyon. This shouldn't happen in a remote area far from factories and cities.
• That almost all commercial fisheries will be wiped out by 2050. We are ransacking a huge larder of self-replenishing protein.
• Oil is $100 per barrel or more.
• Global warming and our inability (or unwillingness) to deal with it.

The Mathusian Devil is Knocking

Thomas Malthus was a demographer who in 1800 predicted that human population was increasing so rapidly it would outstrip the Earth's resources. Famine and catastrophe would inevitably follow. But the calamity that Malthus predicted never arrived. Remarkably, the production of food—not to mention a cornucopia of consumer goods—has kept pace with population growth. And the standard of living, on average, has improved significantly.

So why was Malthus wrong? First, he did not count on the ability of new-world frontiers like North and South America to absorb people and provide resources. More crucially, Malthus vastly underestimated the power of human ingenuity, namely science and technology. Plant genetics, fertilizers and pesticides have increased crop yields enormously; synthetic materials have led to mass-produced clothes; and automated production lines have manufactured countless consumer goods.

But there is an ominous chill in the air, for the Devil is finally knocking. He didn't come in through the front door, for the world is not suffering for lack of resources, as was predicted. Furthermore, human ingenuity will continue to find ways of making do. Take energy, for example. When oil reserves become short, they will be replaced by solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, clean coal, and—if we are desperate enough—even dirty coal.

Instead, the Devil has snuck in the back door. He is quietly and surely contaminating our environment and destroying the natural ecosystems on which life depends. We humans are incredibly motivated to produce the necessities (not to mention our luxuries), but there is no motivation to clean up behind us. It's an inconvenience.

That's why everywhere we look, there is pollution. And now there is global warming, which we are incapable of stopping. With pollution and environmental degradation having reached global scale, the outlook is grim, especially since the number of pollution-creators continues to grow robustly.