Population, Prudence and the Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle states that if an action might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, the action should not proceed until the advocates have provided scientific consensus that harm would not ensue. This statement, which is only common sense after all, has been adopted by the European Union and is promoted by the United Nations.

Unfortunately, society’s commitment to constant economic and population growth has trampled this fine tenet underfoot. There is no time for caution or common sense.

A growing population and increasing GDP demand ever more products, more services and more resources. How else can we provide jobs and a good standard of living to the growing population? The system requires never-ending innovation and production. Being careful would only slow things down. And heaven forbid that we should slow the train, it must keep chugging forward.

Take synthetic chemicals such as, for example, the organochlorines: PCBs, DDT, dioxins, furans. Only after they are shown to be toxic and have permeated the global environment is removal from the marketplace considered. These chemicals (not to mention nanotechnology and genetically modified organisms) are innocent until proven guilty; forget the precautionary principle. Why? Because we need growth: more, more, more.

Bizarre isn’t it? Not only is growth degrading the environment, destroying biodiversity and depleting resources, but it is also sapping us of the will to manage our affairs properly. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Imagine now a smaller population, say 3 or 4 billion, that is in equilibrium. There would be no pressure for growth, no need to pump out new chemicals and products heedlessly. Of the many benefits, the best is that we could re-establish the precautionary principle. We could act in a prudent, cautious manner.

Attenborough, Biodiversity and Plain Stupidity

A small controversy has been stirring in Britain these past few weeks. Well-known naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough spoke out, stating that there are too many people in the world. Furthermore, he became a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, the leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment. The Trust (www.optimumpopulation.org) campaigns for stabilization and gradual population decrease globally and in the UK.

What astonishes me is that many people can’t — or refuse to — see the simple logic that motivates Attenborough. Author Austin Williams, for example, attacked Attenborough, stating that ``experts can still be stupid when they speak on subjects of which they know little.'' What balderdash! Attenborough is a knowledgeable naturalist and understands that as human numbers increase other animal populations will decrease. More roads, more suburbs, more deforestation, more fishing and more monoculture agriculture will decrease natural habitat. Duh, that’s really hard to understand, isn’t it Mr. Williams?

As large predators disappear, lower forms of life will flourish. Already, we have jellyfish infestations because sea turtle numbers have declined. Many scientists feel that in the future algae, molds, rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes and other ``resilient'' creatures will flourish because all their predators will have disappeared. And there are dozens and dozens of other environmental, pollution and resource problems that are looming ever larger as human population grows.

Thumbs up to Attenborough. Thumbs down to all those who ignore simple logic.

Family Planning in Kenya: Insights from the Field

(This post is contributed by a lady who has donated many months of her time to help rural Kenyans cope with HIV/AIDS.)

Family planning and population control in Kenya deserves critical attention; it is a country whose population, despite being impacted by HIV/Aids, lack of health care and proper nutrition, is growing by 2.75% per year. In 1900 the population in Kenya was 1,352,000. By 2008 the population was 37,000,000. By 2050, Kenya’s population is projected to reach 65,200,000. Today, 32% of Kenyans are malnourished. Drought and climate change are reducing the nation’s ability to feed itself.

I talked to many women of childbearing age in rural Kenya. Almost all wish to limit the size of their families. Their biggest challenge is the strong Kenyan/African cultural belief in the succession of generations and of the strong tradition of ancestral power. In addition, many men measure their manhood in the number of wives and children they have and see condoms and other birth control methods as an affront. Abstinence for women is often not an option in a culture in which spousal rape or non-consensual sex is accepted as an entitlement.

Young people are slowly being educated in family planning and HIV awareness. However access to condoms and other birth control methods is sketchy in rural areas. In addition, approximately 33% of Kenya’s population is Catholic. The Pope’s recent message to Africa that the use of condoms is unacceptable exacerbates not only the issue of HIV but of population growth.

The change in culture that needs to take place for a real decline in population growth in Kenya may simply take too long to prevent a disaster. A basically corrupt and uncaring government has not supported the education and infrastructure needed to promote the need for population control in African. And the idea of negotiating cultural or behavioural change smacks of neo-colonialism if it comes from the international community.

The situation in Kenya is common to many developing nations. When a change in culture is necessary for major change, the process is ponderous and painful. And it must be coordinated and powered by the ruling government and supported by the international community.

Population control, which is a touchy phrase at best, is a political and religious hot potato. Few power structures seem willing to get burned.

Closing the Rich-Poor Divide

Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that we all agree that human population growth should be slowed and, yes, even reversed until it reaches a stable, sustainable level. How do we proceed? Where do we place our priorities? Since 95% of future growth is projected to occur in third-world countries, this seems an obvious place to focus.
Developed nations need to re-design their foreign-aid programs so they are built on a foundation of family planning, empowerment of women and education. This not only encourages less children but also helps lift these countries out of poverty, a key goal. In fact, stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. Some positive steps include ensuring at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys, providing rudimentary, village-level health care and helping women gain access to reproductive health care and family-planning services. We desperately need more enlightened foreign aid and organizations that can deliver it.
But it’s not so simple. The poor countries don’t want the rich nations preaching to them. “You caused the environmental problems with your profligate consumerism. You get your house in order first,” they respond. And they are right: Rich nations must work to reduce their eco-footprint. The two sides need to work hand-in-hand in a partnership built on dialogue and mutual respect. One side must work to decrease population growth; the other side to minimize their environmental impact. Only by working together can we achieve these goals.

Let’s close the gap between rich and poor.

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?

Surfing

This week I took a break and went surfing. Here’s a collection of population info-morsels from the Net.

- President Obama’s Science & Technology advisor, Nina Fedoroff, stated that human population exceeds earth’s limit of sustainability. What an incredible change of view from the previous administration.
- Ten thousand years ago, humans and our domesticated animals comprised 0.1% of earth’s total mammal biomass. Today we account for 98%. Incredible! We’ve gone from being totally insignificant to ruling the world.
- So what about the other mammals, the other 2%? Is there room for them on the planet too? Not in Plainfield, New Jersey, where the deer population is deemed too high and when sterilization didn’t work, officials organized hunters to shoot deer from trees. Oregon has a cougar management program that sets the minimum number below which hunting, i.e., culling is not allowed. Bizarre, isn’t it, that they can calculate and control appropriate population numbers for cougars, but not humans.
- On the contrarian side, one website stated that earth’s population will stabilize at 10 billion, which the planet can easily sustain. Water, it claimed, could easily and cost-efficiently be gotten by desalination and rain-water collection. Hmmm?
- An Alternet piece stated “The last 200 years of economic growth has been based on a monumental Ponzi scheme ... and we are coming to realize Thomas Malthus was right.”
My board ran ashore.

Environmentalist ignores population -- Why?

“How to achieve sustainability” was the topic, and a large and sympathetic crowd – we tend toward green here – hung on every word. The speaker was Dr Neil Dawe of the Qualicum Institute and the locale was the community hall of the little island where I live.
The message was frighteningly clear: the world is in bad shape. The fundamental problem, Dawe asserted, is the relentlessly growing economy, which does not recognize that humanity is an integral part of, and is wholly dependent upon, nature. Instead the economy is in direct conflict with nature and is remorselessly grinding it down.
Dawe’s proposed solution is a steady-state economy. To achieve this goal, we as individuals need to raise a clamour and make our voices heard until politicians listen. Wonderful stuff!
During the animated discussion period, however, Dawe shocked me to the core. He shrugged off a question about human population growth by admitting it helps make the economy grow, but he feels curbing population is too complex and too wrapped up in religious issues to be dealt with. Therefore, he doesn’t address it.
Encroyable! It is impossible to achieve a steady-state economy if population continues to increase. Not theoretically, not practically, not in any way. After all, it is humans that purchase, consume and strive for a better life. An expanding population is the fundamental factor driving economic growth.
Why do religious leaders, politicians and most environmental organizations ignore this simple and irrefutable fact? One reason is that many religious groups are mired in dogma that defies logic, even sanity. Examples include the Pope’s recent condemnation of condoms in AIDS-ravaged Africa, and the America’s fundamentalist Christians’ denial of evolution and belief in Armageddon.
Perhaps it goes deeper. Have we entered a dark age where logic and common-sense are worthless commodities? Is gaining wealth and power all that matters? The financial meltdown is but one, albeit a gigantic, indicator that we have entered an era of denial, anti-intellectualism, greed and just plain not caring about the planet or our children’s future.
I tossed and turned long into the night wondering how to get human population on the agenda.