Consumption and population: reduce one, but what about the other?
Water shortages, along with climate change, are perhaps the best and most topical examples for describing the complex affects of population and consumption.
Illustration by: Ryan Stevens
Our solutions to water shortages and climate change have, to date, focused upon consuming less. Reduce water consumption during long dry periods and use less carbon-based energy resources. Reduced levels of water use are quickly achievable after some reasonably minor behavioural changes and a greater understanding of its rarity. However, carbon-based resources such as coal, have become a political football, as it’s so readily available, especially in Australia.
The solution in southeast Queensland to the lack of drinking water? “Build more dams,” we hear the politicians cry out. A political chorus heard most profoundly by residents of the Mary Valley. Criticised as being similar to buying another wallet and then expecting that it would in some way create more money, the proposed dam is an example of bad policy. Live on tank water and you quickly realise water’s value and limitations.
The alternative to increasing water storage areas, according to scientific reports? More efficient use of our current water supplies. In simple terms -- use less water -- consume less.
To date, it is the high consuming nations, and not simply the most populous ones, that use the largest amount of carbon-based fuels. Our love affair with these fossil fuels is not a new one, and as with any long romance, it’s a hard thing to walk away from.
As Tim Flannery pointed out in his book The Weather Makers, extraction of coal from British underground mines was the motivator for the invention of the steam engine. Coal-powered steam engines ironically, were initially used to pump out water from the deep coal-mine shafts, so that more coal could be extracted. Such was the desire to use the rich carbon resource while it was still available. We have now -- well most of us have, recognised the need to reduce its consumption. As we have noticed with large cities and excessive car use, or with the hole punched in the ozone layer, pollution does accumulate in the atmosphere, and it does have an impact, no matter how the sceptics try to convince us otherwise.
In Australia, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, for example, is designed (albeit not very well) to curb consumption of fossil fuels. But, we are tackling climate change by focusing on consumption and yet the world’s population is expanding, including within the highest-consuming nations. So do we ever hear voices calling for less people?
We do, but most notably these occur in letters to the editor, online comments and rarely from former or currently serving politicians. At a government level, there is a strange silence except for the odd rant about so-called illegal immigrants. More often for state and federal governments it is a catch-cry reminiscent of the post-war slogan of “populate or perish”.
In 2004, the then Treasurer Peter Costello urged Australian couples to have “one (baby) for your husband and one for your wife and one for the country”. It is well documented that during his time in government Costello strongly supported increasing the country’s fertility rate. It is clear therefore that many of our political leaders feel the need for a higher population (we grew by 2.1 per cent over the last year), perhaps in the belief that it will feed a somewhat strange formula for economic growth.
As pointed out earlier this year by Andrew McNamara in his Queensland Conservation Council speech, The problem is us, most of the wealthiest countries, such as Luxembourg, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland and Sweden have populations under 10 million people.
Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, wrote in the Scientific American in June this year: “In an era of changing climate and sinking economies, Malthusian limits to growth are back—and squeezing us painfully. Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each.”
Less space, less resources to share and then we have the dangerous evolutionary situation of increased competition -- and that’s without even mentioning the sorry plight of our rapidly disappearing fellow plant and animal species.
Engelman’s solution is in line with UN agreed strategies. It is not population control, as this stirs up images of a Chinese “one child policy”. Rather it lies within education of, and freedom of choice for females.
“Mostly ignored in the environmental debates about population and consumption is that nearly all the world’s nations agreed to an altogether different approach to the problem of growth 15 years ago, one that bases positive demographic outcomes on decisions individuals make in their own self-interest. (If only something comparable could be imagined to shrink consumption.) The strategy that 179 nations signed onto at a U.N. conference in Cairo in 1994 was: forget population control and instead help every woman bear a child in good health when she wants one.
“That approach, which powerfully supports reproductive liberty, might sound counter-intuitive for shrinking population growth, like handing a teenager the keys to the family car without so much as a lecture. But the evidence suggests that what women want—and have always wanted—is not so much to have more children as to have more for a smaller number of children they can reliably raise to healthy adulthood. Women left to their own devices, contraceptive or otherwise, would collectively ‘control’ population while acting on their own intentions.”
Engelman uses the surprising example of China. It is not the coercive policy of allowing only one child that has helped reduce fertility rates he wrote, rather it was family planning via industry and farming collectives put in place before the 1979 policy, that did the trick.
Thailand, Colombia and Iran, “have experienced comparable declines in family size by getting better family-planning services and educational opportunities to more women and girls in more places”.
But for some, focusing on population levels, reeks of western arrogance. As UK journalist and author Fred Pearce puts it, “over-consumers in rich countries can blame over-breeders in distant lands for the state of the planet”. This statement is being echoed by many countries leading up to the Copenhagen climate-change talks.
In his online article Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat, Pearce wrote: “ Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world’s richest half-billion people — that’s about 7 per cent of the global population — are responsible for 50 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 per cent are responsible for just 7 per cent of emissions.
“For a wider perspective of humanity’s effects on the planet's life support systems, the best available measure is the ‘ecological footprint’, which estimates the area of land required to provide each of us with food, clothing, and other resources, as well as to soak up our pollution. This analysis has its methodological problems, but its comparisons between nations are firm enough to be useful.
“They show that sustaining the lifestyle of the average American takes 9.5 hectares, while Australians and Canadians require 7.8 and 7.1 hectares respectively; Britons, 5.3 hectares; Germans, 4.2; and the Japanese, 4.9. The world average is 2.7 hectares.”
The problem with a generic approach to ecological footprint analysis is that ignoring specific biophysical constraints means comparing countries may be as useful as say, comparing Wilson Tuckey with Bob Brown. We obviously have to be sensible with world-wide comparisons, especially if the value of biodiversity is considered lower than intensive crop land.
Australian soil, and the wildlife that effectively feeds off it, is not comparable to British or American soil types. The size of outback stations are not due to greed, instead they reflect a certain capacity of the land -- the carrying capacity. And the value of biodiversity in Australia should never be underestimated.
At the risk of angering many of my fellow Australian environmentalists, I could also say that how we generate our electricity is also based on biophysical issues. A predominance of fast-flowing rivers in high valleys leads inevitably to hyrdo-electricity. An abundance of coal in the ground, and under the current pricing structure -- what nation on earth would have previously ignored it?
Finger pointing and blaming each other without understanding the local resources and opportunities available is surely counter-productive and perhaps even hypercritical. Hyrdo-electricity sounds great for carbon reduction but what about the impact on local ecosystems caused by damming rivers? Europeans emit less carbon, but use nuclear power to achieve it, and where does the waste go and for how long does it last?
In Australia’s case we not only have fossilised plant matter under our feet. We have sun and lots of it. We have a huge coastline and large tidal movements, we have ancient hot rocks and in many regions there are good constant winds. In short, we have great potential opportunities if pricing structures are designed to benefit clean power. Those pricing structures, if designed well, will help direct our consumption towards more sustainable options.
Understanding our consumption patterns must therefore take into account the local conditions and opportunities. Solutions for reducing it are perhaps similar to our Australian wildlife and landscape, where diversity and local adaptation is the key. A single world-wide strategy must consider this.
However, as the environmental and climate sciences have taught us, focusing a question on only one part of an issue without considering the whole, means you will certainly miss the answer.
Reducing overall consumption is not the only solution and nor is simply targeting population levels. As the earth is a complex beast, so too are the issues surrounding human population growth and development. And any solutions we adopt must consider the well being of individuals in all countries.
Related articles:
- What we eat affects the world and its population
- Population: perpetual growth is not the answer
- Paul Summers: population distribution, size and sustainability
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