Category: Population

Consumption not population is killing us

admin /17 August, 2008

Jared Diamond in The New York Times 

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

Giovanni on population and poverty

admin /15 August, 2008

The facts on population growth

admin /5 January, 2008

The Australian government supported the US in proposing that future climate change agreements should include some real targets for China, India and Brazil, the fastest growing economies on the planet. The logic is that these large and rapidly growing nations will contribute most to the growth in climate change over the next 12 years.

Hear Malcolm and Giovanni discuss the numbers on The Generator

 

Others point out that the US is still the world’s largest emitter and that reducing consumption by the mega rich is more important than limiting growth in the developing countries. Still others point out that any limits on consumption are meaningless if population continues to grow exponentially.

The figures given in the graph here demonstrate the reasonably generous scenario that total global resource consumption doubles, population growth rates halve and we reduce the wealth gap between the rich and poor nations to almost half what it is now. Whether the world can sustain this growth rate is extremely unlikely but this is commonly given as a politically palatable solution.

 

Population growth and consumption

admin /4 January, 2008

Author, Jared Diamond, pointed out in a New York Times opinion piece this week that citizens of the North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia consume about 32 times the amount of resources as people in the developing world. The implications of this are that the 1 billion people in developed countries consume the equivalent of 32 billion people in the developing world or 6 billion Chinese or Inidan people. There are in fact 3.5 billion people in the poorest parts of the developing world and around 2 billion people in China, India and Brazil.

People concerned about population growth need to take this into account when looking at the relationship between world population and resource consumption. If the world population continues to increase at existing levels, world population will double by 2020 with most of that growth occuring in the poorest  parts of the world. Assuming relative wealth levels remain the same, they would still consume less than one quarter of the world’s resources and we would consume over 60 per cent.

Say we decided to halve resource consumption across the planet, there are a number of ways we could do this.

• Halving the population of the world and maintaining current consumption levels and acheiving zero population growth
• Halving consumption levels and eliminating population and consumption growth
• Halving population growth and allowing everyone in the world to consume at current levels of China or India. This would be a three fold increase for the world’s poorest and a ten fold decrease for the world’s wealthiest.

Worth thinking about.

Population growth and consumption

admin /4 January, 2008

Author, Jared Diamond, pointed out in a New York Times opinion piece this week that citizens of the North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia consume about 32 times the amount of resources as people in the developing world. The implications of this are that the 1 billion people in developed countries consume the equivalent of 32 billion people in the developing world or 6 billion Chinese or Inidan people. There are in fact 3.5 billion people in the poorest parts of the developing world and around 2 billion people in China, India and Brazil.

People concerned about population growth need to take this into account when looking at the relationship between world population and resource consumption. If the world population continues to increase at existing levels, world population will double by 2020 with most of that growth occuring in the poorest  parts of the world. Assuming relative wealth levels remain the same, they would still consume less than one quarter of the world’s resources and we would consume over 60 per cent.

Say we decided to halve resource consumption across the planet, there are a number of ways we could do this.

• Halving the population of the world and maintaining current consumption levels and acheiving zero population growth
• Halving consumption levels and eliminating population and consumption growth
• Halving population growth and allowing everyone in the world to consume at current levels of China or India. This would be a three fold increase for the world’s poorest and a ten fold decrease for the world’s wealthiest.

Use the Ebono Institute calculator to test the relative ease of acheiving these scenarios.