Population Growth in the Amazon Rain Forest

I recently had the incredible good luck to take a tour deep into the Amazon basin. It was everything, and more, than expected: overwhelming, an amazing diversity of exotic animals and plants, vast, isolated, and ruggedly beautiful. But, sadly, the indigenous people there live in poverty eking out a subsistence existence based mostly on fishing. We visited two small villages and it was obvious that in spite of the primitive conditions, making babies is no problem. We were greeted by children, many of them. And they appeared healthy and happy. Perhaps here in the isolated, resource-rich Amazon, there is room for additional people. But with total human population now predicted to top 11 billion, I worry about the rest of the world.

Time to Speak Out about Human Population

The most frightening — and fascinating — thing I know is a graph of human population growth over the past millennium. Starting in about 1800 the curve suddenly spikes almost straight upward, and this incredible growth in human numbers continues today. In my lifetime alone, population has increased by over four billion and it continues to rise at about 70 million people each year. And thanks to technological innovations and cheap oil, the wealth of each person on the globe, especially in developed nations, has increased even faster.

Under this onslaught, Earth’s vast cradle of resources, including oil, food grains, fish stocks and water, is being severely depleted, and the environment is being degraded. It is truly scary, for the graph can only be interpreted one way: dire times lie ahead.

The fascinating part is that few care that the population freight train is steaming toward a cliff. Why?

The problem is that politicians consider economic growth as their ultimate goal, providing jobs and an ever-increasing standard of living for their constituents. But the economy can’t grow by itself; it requires a partner: an increasing population, which provides a growing consumer base and more workers to produce more consumer goods. Thus, economy and population are like two yoked oxen heaving and pulling together. And no politician dares to slow them or unyoke them.

How will it end? An ever-expanding economy that requires an ever-expanding population to make it viable is a giant pyramid scheme. We all know what happens to pyramid schemes. Since the world is finite, population-economy growth must also crash to an end.

The Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace and other environmental organizations studiously ignore the population issue. Ditto for religious leaders led by the pontificating Pope.

So what can we do? The good news is that many steps are being taken to wean ourselves from fossil fuels and reduce our ecofootprint, such as smaller cars, public transit, compact fluorescents and wind turbines.

Truly tragic, however, is that population is being ignored. Media coverage of population is woefully lacking. It is a taboo topic. As long as human numbers continue to climb, they will cancel any gains made by conservation. It will yield not one millimeter of progress if through superhuman efforts we decrease our environmental footprint by, say, 20% per capita but the population increases by 20% over the same period. Global warming provides an excellent example. In spite of the Kyoto Protocol, the annual amount of carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2005 increased 32% world wide. Quite simply, we’re not getting the job done. And the best measures in the world won’t as long as we keep ignoring population.

Just like drug addicts, the first and most important step is to admit we have a problem. We need to drag the population issue into the open, shine a spotlight on it and start talking about it.

An important initiative has been launched called Global Population Speak Out, a project that is mobilizing scientists, writers and knowledgeable individuals to speak and write about population during the month of February. It=s a simple idea. If a large number of qualified voices speak out on population all at once, perhaps people will listen. Interestingly, one of the first to add his support was Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, the best seller that fuelled much of the concern about population in the 1970s.

Add your voice to the movement. Visit the Global Population Speak Out website (gpso.wordpress.com) and pledge your support. It doesn’t cost a cent, but it could make a world of difference.

European Values

To save the world we need to slow birthing in poor nations and slow consumption in rich countries. It sounds so simple, yet it’s incredibly complex and difficult. This post looks at slowing consumption, and at the United States in particular.

The American dream is built on: unfettered growth, every man for himself, the rights of the individual, and the belief that anyone can become rich or famous. When there are unlimited resources, this attitude works for there is plenty of wealth to go around.

But now the U.S. population is over 300 million, national oil is long past its peak, other resources are dwindling, smog and pollution are ubiquitous, space in the big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago is cramped, there is a large chasm between the rich and poor, and the US has the highest murder rate of the developed countries. Then there's the current economic crisis, a slap in the face, a sure sign that times have changed and that the American way no longer works. There’s a desperate need for a change of attitude, a fresh approah. But how to change?

Jeremy Rifkin in his book, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, provides some valuable guidance. Europeans value: the common good rather than individualism; quality of life over accumulated wealth; sustainable development over unlimited material growth; deep play over unrelenting toil; the rights of nature over the rights of individual property rights; and global cooperation over unilateral flexing of military power. Furthermore, most western European nations have slowed their population growth to equilibrium, or even lower, rates.

If we want to save the future we need, more than anything else, to change our mindset. Europe has set a fine example; let’s follow it.

When Environmental Writers Are Part of the Problem

Many thanks to guest blogger, John C. Feeney, Ph.D., a psychologist turned environmental activist and writer. The full article can be viewed at http://dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/when-environmental-writers-are-part-of-the-problem/

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When talking about causes and proposed solutions for our ecological plight, few environmental writers tell us more than half the story. There is a near universal tendency to focus on the importance of cutting fossil fuel use while staying mum on the topic of population growth.
That the size and growth of the global population is a root cause of ecological degradation is well known to scientists who recognize, for example, that the ecological footprint for the world is the product of population times per capita consumption. Yet we hear all about the need to save energy by switching to florescent light bulbs. We read about the ethanol debate and carbon trading schemes. But in all the talk of ways of reducing per person consumption, how often does anyone mention the need to address the other factor in the equation?
Why the silence? Population growth received a good deal of attention in the 1960s and 1970s. But then came China’s draconian one child policy, right-wing groups pushing free market capitalism by cheerleading growth and dismissing the need to limit our numbers, and political wrangling among environmental and social justice groups. The result was the demotion of population from its status as social and environmental issue number one.
Indeed, many writers avoid the subject of population despite recognizing its importance. For instance, David Roberts, environmental writer at Grist, acknowledges he never writes on the subject. His reason? “Talking about population alienates a large swathe of the general public. It carries vague connotations of totalitarianism and misanthropy and eugenics. It has been used quite effectively to slander and marginalize the environmental movement. It is political poison.”
Is Roberts’ view wise? I don’t believe the subject of population is, in fact, “political poison.” Though they do so too infrequently, a variety of groups and writers do grapple with it. And there’s no evidence their work has set back the environmental cause. They identify population growth as a problem because it’s the truth, and they know bringing people the truth is productive while avoiding it is ultimately damaging.
Addressing population growth means taking humane measures to assist with the social and economic issues which drive it. That means improving education for girls and economic opportunities for women in developing countries. It means increasing access to family planning and reproductive health care services, and encouraging positive attitudes toward smaller families. And it means reducing infant mortality rates. Any notion that it need involve involuntary measures such as “totalitarianism and misanthropy and eugenics” is simply wrong.
True, some have tried to use the population topic to try to slander and marginalize the environmental movement. But these groups presenting irrational arguments from such vantage points as the Christian right and the libertarian right have had, at best, a marginal impact. Their attacks are best dealt with head on, exposing their agenda-driven illogic.
I frequently raise the population issue with people and have encountered almost universal recognition that it is a problem needing more attention.
Environmental writers who have avoided the subject of population should rethink their stance. Let’s embrace truth, not avoidance.

Things that Work and Things that Don’t

Suzuki trumpets these solutions for the world’s ailments. The Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, Greenpeace and other environmental groups swear by them. Here are their recommendations:

- Walk, bike, carpool and use public transportation.

- Recycle and re-use.

- Wash clothes in cold, not hot water.

- Install low-flow shower heads to use less water.

- Use compact fluorescent bulbs instead of standard light bulbs.

- Build high-insulation homes and plug air leaks in windows and doors in older homes.

- Replace old appliances with energy-efficient models.

- Adjust your thermostat—down in winter and up in summer.

- Run dishwasher only when full.
Sure, these are common-sense steps. We should be doing them regardless of the situation. But they miss the point, and definitely won’t solve any long-term problems. With global human population increasing at about 80 million per year (3.1 million in the USA), water supplies, to take but one of many resources, will continue to decline—the US southwest is already facing tremendous shortages— no matter how many low-flow shower heads are installed.
Here are some solutions that get at the root cause and, thus, will actually work.- Help raise public awareness of the importance of putting the brakes on human population growth. Contact your elected officials and demand action. Some good websites: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/; http://www.optimumpopulation.org/; http://www.npg.org/- Talk with your children, friends and relatives about a proper family size, that is, no more than two children. Check out: onlychild.typepad.com- Since most population growth will come from third-world countries, it is absolutely essential that we help them with family planning and empowerment of women. Our politicians must make this issue a top priority and put much more intellectual and financial effort into it. Population control in the third world is a complex and difficult issue, but we ignore it at our peril. My next blog will address this topic.
So, are we going to continue to fool ourselves with things that won’t work, or do we tackle the real problem?

FAMILY DOCTORS URGED TO JOIN FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

According to The Optimum Population Trust (a UK think tank on population policy that is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning), each new birth in the United Kingdom "is responsible for on average about 160 times as much climate-related environmental damage as a new birth in Ethiopia or 35 times as much as a new birth in Bangladesh." It'll be much worse in Canada and the US, I'm sure.

The reference for these stats was in an article in the July 25, 2008 Telegraph (a UK newspaper), by Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor: "Limit Families to Two Children 'to Combat Climate Change'." The subtitle was "GPs should tell parents not to have more than two children to help in the battle against climate change, according to doctors."

According to the article, John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health, at University College London and GP Dr. Pip Hayes, from Exeter, suggested in the British Medical Journal that "GPs should talk to their patients about the consequences of having a large family, and provide advice on contraception, population and the environment."

The authors said, "We must not put pressure on people, but by providing information on the population and the environment, and appropriate contraception for everyone (and by their own example), doctors should help to bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics, analogous to avoiding patio heaters and high carbon cars."

What an enormous stride ... suggesting population policy because of climate change! But while we're making suggestions, why not suggest one-child families? If we all keep replacing ourselves (with two-children families), how are we to bring the global population down?

Is having fewer children an effective way to tackle climate change? Is there an ideal number of children? Should doctors talk to their patients about family planning from the perspective of climate change? Have you ever broached this topic with friends or family of child-bearing age? If so, what kind of response did you get? I'd like to hear from you.

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.