'It's Not Either/Or' — Population and Consumption in the Climate Solutions Debate

A look at the problems in optimizing both objectives.

“Uncontrolled population growth is exponential, whereas population easing would tend to be linear: multiple offspring themselves multiply exponentially, whereas a non-existent offspring does not spread non-existence.”
—Blackthorn, cited below

I wrote here about adding a Quick Hits series to God’s Spies. This is the first in that series.

In this post, I’d like call to your attention a piece by a Twitter friend, a man who goes by “Blackthorn.” According to his bio, he is “an American living in Europe. PhD in social sciences (U. of London). Works in international orgs.”

The essay I’m looking at is this one: “it’s not either/or”. In it, the writer looks at the relationship between global warming as both a technological problem, “humans using a means of energy production that pollutes,” and as a demographic problem, “one of overpopulation.”

This dichotomy informs some thinking about our shared coming disaster, but not most of it. For example, you hardly read these days in IPCC literature about population issues as a driver. As Simon Lewis puts it in The Guardian:

Every government now agrees that the climate crisis is driven by how the world’s wealthy – which includes much of the UK’s population – currently live, consume and invest.

This is a major leap forward compared to previous reports. The last IPCC summary on solutions in 2014 labelled population growth as one of “the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion”. Such dangerous misunderstandings are no longer present in the summary report. Seven years on, these old “blame the poor” arguments increasingly seem like a relic of a previous age.

Some writers contend that the IPCC is worse than negligent in its latest report. The data that shows that population is indeed a global-warming driver is present in the underlying scientific report, but was scrubbed by the IPCC’s controlling politicians from the Summary for Policymakers, the only document anyone really reads. That makes the IPCC complicit in hiding this fact, not just ignorant of it.

Side note: I suspect there are two tripwires in place in talking about population. The first is the hint of eugenics, anything adjacent to the wish that “others should die so we can live better lives.” A ghoulish thought indeed.

The second is, as the writer linked above contends, a desire to censor “anything that might call into question the goodness of continued growth.” Economic growth, presented as “what’s best for us all,” is best understood as “what improves the lives of the already wealthy,” since that’s what growth actually does in the real world. Opposing growth is anathema in a post-modern capitalist world.

Back to Blackthorn:

What happens if we look at this as an over-population problem rather than an energy-technology or excessive-consumption one? … The metric that can shed light on this issue ­– how much rise in emissions owes to development vs. to population swelling – is carbon emissions per capita.  A rise in this indicates what you could call intensification of carbon emissions; a steady per-capita rate, in which the absolute increase in emissions tracks population growth, would indicate that emissions growth is population-driven. [emphasis added]

As to solutions, we clearly need to do both — curb growth and (humanly) decrease population. But in practice, what does that look like? If we could do both, what combination of changes achieves the desired effect?

The answer isn’t obvious, especially since population decline, even at an accelerated pace, has a considerable lag time. In addition, as Blackthorn points out, while population explosion is exponential, decline can only be linear. Multiple births beget multiple births. Multiple deaths beget nothing.

For me, the most interesting section is where he starts to tease out what exactly would a decline in birth accomplish from a climate standpoint?

For that discussion, start reading with this paragraph:

Let’s jump to possible solutions.  Speed is of the essence, because deadly climate breakdown is happening already.  How rapidly could we pivot to reducing carbon emissions, and start to re-absorb atmospheric carbon, with simple population easing as opposed to a switch to non-polluting energy or mass conversion to leaner lifestyles?  Where would a steep level of population easing – an immediate decline in fertility to below replacement level – get us in a few years?

Note especially the charts. The first shows the rate at which we’re projected to eat earth’s resources (our ecological footprint) if nothing changes.

(“Biocapacity” in the chart above is one earth’s-worth of resources.)

His second chart shows the effect on our footprint of 25% reduced consumption alone. The third shows our footprint with just population control via the fertility rate. The fourth combines the two. It’s a fascinating discussion. I hope you find it so as well.

Again, the piece is: “it’s not either/or”.

I’ll close with his closing:

[T]he population vs. consumption debate risks settling into opposing camps with ill will and negative stereotypes – self-flagellating ascetics vs. Malthusian misanthropes.  But it’s a false dichotomy.

I wholly agree.

Like so much else in this post-modern political world, refusing to take one from column A and one from column B — on the assumption that one of those columns contains only evil — will destroy both columns and we who created them.