Over-population is the ‘elephant in the room’ when it comes to discussing global environmental problems: everyone knows about it, but no-one is willing to discuss it.
The bottom line, we argues, is that the current human headcount is higher than our planet can sustain – and still it’s growing at an unprecedented rate.
Are we just too successful a species? Could the annual 76 million rise in the world’s human population be putting too much pressure on the Earth’s ecosystems, threatening our very future? Do you think population control should be higher up the global agenda?
How do you measure a population problem?
Are you 50 or over? Then during your lifetime, the world’s population has more than doubled.
The figures do seem to indicate there’s an issue here. Every year there’s approximately a 76 million annual rise in the world’s population, which currently stands at about 6.5 billion — more than double the population in 1960, and at this rate we’re heading towards 8 billion by mid-century.
This puts pressure on the planet in so many different ways, including: Where our food comes from. So far, food production has kept up with population growth. But it’s unevenly distributed: 1 in 6 people suffer from hunger and malnutrition. It’s also environmentally costly to grow food production: half of all the commercial fertiliser ever produced had been applied since 1984, and the distance food travels to reach our plate is growing all the time. And what we eat changes as we get richer: world cereal consumption has more than doubled since 1970, and meat consumption has tripled since 1961. A vicious circle emerges: more cereal needs growing with more fertiliser and water in order to produce more meat.
Where our energy comes from. By some measures we’re already past ‘peak oil’ production, and in a society reliant on hydrocarbon energy that means lifestyles need altering. We’re already pushing in the direction of growing our own energy—in the form of ‘biofuels’—but doesn’t that conflict with the food problem, above? For population to keep growing, will we be willing to embrace less heating, less transport, and perhaps even a ‘carbon tax’ on consumer goods?
Where our waste goes. Despite recent and visible efforts in different parts of the world to recycle more of our household waste, the majority of rubbish worldwide still goes into landfill—or rots in large piles outside cities. Pollution is a huge problem, an estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants. At the same time that we’re rapidly running out of places to dispose our existing waste, our ‘improving’ lifestyles seem to generate more of it.
Is controlling population growth the real answer to fighting global emissions?
The problem with the overpopulation debate is that nobody has quite advanced a successful theory on how the phenomenon can be controlled.
After all, we’re not entirely separate to the ecosystem, we’re part of it—and if the planet is currently supporting 6.5 billion souls, despite the tragic inequality and frightening environmental truths, you could argue we’re not overpopulated yet.
However, that inequality could be the very key to how we’ve avoided overpopulation so far. The problems of population are linked to consumption. At present, a small minority of the global population consumes a majority of the resources listed above. That minority’s share of consumption, and waste creation, has also increased significantly the last 50 years. The majority consumes very little.
But it’s the forward view that scares the experts. We can almost see on the horizon a collision between dwindling supplies of energy, food, water, and the lifestyle aspirations of billions.
In other words, it’s not the overall numbers that matter, but how many join the middle classes.
As we get richer we eat more, consume more meat, demand more energy, create more waste. The consumption habits that have spiralled alongside our population growth are the same ones that threaten to doom us.
I wonder if the real ‘elephant in the room’ is not over population, but the proportion of the global population that are taking up these destructive habits?
Perhaps the question whould not be how many of us can the Earth sustain, but how many of us can live at Northern / Western consumption levels?
Is this the real reason the powers that be are afraid to touch this topic?
