Blaming the symptom or the cause? (Part Two)

Demographers are telling us that the global population may peak around 2050–2100, and growth rates are already falling in most regions. According to the United Nations, the world population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and then rise toward a peak of 10.3 to 11.2 billion between 2080 and 2100, depending on fertility. 

This is supposed to mean that the future environmental trajectory will depend more on how people live than on how many people exist and that energy transitions, land management, and consumption patterns should matter more than raw population numbers, but will they? This would require getting away from fossil fuel dependence, industrial agriculture, deforestation, urban sprawl and wasteful production systems that are all the dominant causes of warming and biodiversity loss. 

This, in my view, remains a huge question mark. It remains obvious that population increase puts pressure on land use, water demand and habitat pressure. At this moment, it’s fairly easy to claim that one billion additional low‑consumption people have far less impact than a few million high‑consumption people, but who can guarantee that with time, a low poor people’s per‑capita footprint is not going to catch up as their economic situation improves? 

Society is extremely dynamic and with information circulating like never before the “bad example” of runaway consumption we display isn’t going to influence the poor in the good direction. Sure, if the population is a multiplier, it’s hard to put most of the burden on the symptoms. 

These are viewed as the “drivers”, our fossil‑fuel energy systems, our industrial agriculture, deforestation, mining and extraction, consumption patterns and waste systems. All are seen as the lower hanging fruits. Clearly, a growing population makes these drivers bigger, but if it’s not creating them, it’s a bit cavalier to speculate that it can’t amplify them. 

If we removed the drivers but kept the population the same, the impact would drop dramatically but it doesn’t as for instance the Trump administration is no longer motivated to fixing the drivers and the European Union has other priorities against a predatory Russia. We also know that the biggest environmental damage comes from a small fraction of people in the planet’s wealthiest nations. For example, the top 10% of global consumers produce nearly half of all emissions while the poorest 50% produce less than 10%. 

Countries with declining populations (Japan, Italy, Germany) have very high environmental footprints and conversely, countries with fast‑growing populations (many in Africa) have very low footprints. Still if given the opportunity through economic development these same countries would emulate their richer “models”! In the next blog, we’ll explore how a slowing world population might help, so please, stay with me!