When people are faced with the prospect of global warming, one of the quickest excuses for dodging lifestyle change is to raise the issue of world population. We’ve had comments about it on this blog in the past, and they usually attribute climate change to the fact that poor countries are having too many children. It’s always easier to blame the poor countries after all. I know many of you know this already, but it comes up so often I want to say it again. So let’s just compare some facts quickly.
- In Uganda in 2006, mothers had an average 6.8 children each, an extraordinary number, I’m sure you’ll agree.
- In the United States meanwhile, the average mother has a far more reasonable 2.1 children.
- However, a Ugandan has an ecological footprint of 1.5 hectares.
- While the average American has an ecological footprint of 9.5 hectares.
Do the maths – an American family with 2 kids does almost twice the environmental damage of a Ugandan family with 7. So who needs to stop having more kids more urgently?
I’m not suggesting for a minute that population isn’t a problem, or that poor countries don’t need to curb their population growth. They definitely do, or we’re going to have very serious problems in the future. But, those who blame climate change on population growth in Africa and Asia are sorely mistaken. It is a factor, but right now growth in developing countries is far more worrying than growth in poor countries. There is no escaping the need for lifestyle change.
Read more:
- Jared Diamond on consumption factors: “Yes, its population growth is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.”
- George Monbiot on population growth versus greed: “Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts. But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich.”
- Madeleine Bunting on population and environmentalism
February 2, 2008 at 11:35 am
Western consumerism (let’s not just isolate America all the time) may have been the cause behind alot of the environmental ills of late but the footprint of those third world kids is increasing rapidly. All the efficiency improvements in the world won’t make much difference when those Ugandan kids start to increase their impact as their lifestyle improves. Look at the standard of living in china, increases in the standard of living there despite the population controls are causing widespread shortages of energy, space, even clean air. We have to consume less, but population remains the key.
February 2, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Need to factor in some other considerations: one is that western countries have provision for old age by and large and low infant and child mortality. The significance of this is that in, say, Uganda your children are your old age pension and you need to have enough so that a few of them can survive to support you in your old age. Ironically a bit more propsperity distributed widely enough with good social infrastructure is (provenly) likely to reduce birth rate. We’re heading for a trade-off situation between birth-rate and ‘wealth’ (by which I mean a socially well distributed sustainable prosperity).
February 2, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Yes, the key to encouraging people to have fewer children is to tackle poverty and education, things we ought to be doing anyway. If we got on with those things, fertility rates would begin to fall.
Ant it’s a good point about children being your pension. It wasn’t that long ago that people in the UK had that many children, for the same reasons.
February 2, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Thanks Jeremy, and for the same reason some in the UK still do! There is little to hope for in terms of state provision in old age, for the present aging generations.
My own feeling on the population issue has always been that there are not too many people, only too many greedy people. Simplistic maybe; but didn’t Jesus say, ‘let him who has two cloaks give to him who has none’? A very simple principle – but who is ready to follow it?