Op-ed

[Pradanos-Garcia, Luis]

Dear all,

I wanted to share this brief piece that was inspired by many of the conversations in this group. 

From Smart Innovation to Wise Design. The World Population Recently Passed 8 Billion. We Have no Plan to Deal with All that Shit.

Thank you!

Iñaki

Luis I. Prádanos (Iñaki) Professor and Chair Spanish & Portuguese Affiliation: Institute for the Environment & Sustainability Miami University Irvin Hall 268 400 East Spring Street Oxford, OH 45056 Book: Postgrowth Imaginaries Book: A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies Book: Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures Op-ed: How Did This Class Prepare You for Extinction? Intro Special Issue: Ecología y estudios culturales ibéricos en el siglo XXI

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[JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF]

Thanks Luis.  This is an excellent piece, and certainly design changes can help.  But eight billion people is still TOO MANY.  We really do need to stop ignoring the population explosion.  We have no right to push so many species off the planet, and increased crowding hurts the quality of life of everyone, as John Stuart Mill observed as far back as 1826. 

 

Of course, there are different ways to limit population and we should be seeking the most just--empowering women, focusing at least as much on population in rich countries if not more, etc., but to deny we have a problem requires a totally anthropocentric point of view and also allows the claims of those who want to push birthrates in rich countries. 

 

We are already well in planetary overshoot, as Bill Rees and others have shown convincingly.  We need to address the entire PAT triumvirate--population, affluence (consumption) and yes, also, technology.  This article addresses the last but not the first two.

 

best,

John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

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[Ashwani Vasishth]

"... But eight billion people is still TOO MANY."

 

I think we share the same concern and might even converge to similar conceptions of the future, John.

But what you say above is how you feel.  This does matter.  But it's not enough.

Robert Gates, in a 1996 special issue of Daedalus which focused on precisely this question (how many is too many), uses precisely the formulation you point to--I=P*A*T--to show that human population has NOT grown in a clean exponential curve.  He points to Deevey, and argues that it is misrepresentation to show population growth as an arithmetic curve.  He shows that, when plotted to a log scale, that same, well known, exponential cure that strikes dread in so many--the Ehrlichs onward at least--is in fact a composit of (at least) four surging curves.

The first surge in population (think modifications to ecological carrying capacity) occurs around the time of the tool-making age.

The second surge--also indicating a plasticity in our mechanical interpretation of "carrying capacity--when we stumbled upon agriculture.

The third, similarly due to variations in I=P*A*T, with the industrial revolution.

I spent the first half of my life coming of age in India.  I KNOW the draconian impacts of our historical response to Ehrlich's "population bomb" warning.  Forced sterilizations, punitive socio-economic measures (as in China).

Control population?  Sure.  But how?

Garret Hardin is famous (or infamous) for his "tragedy of the commons."  We skip oveer that critical piece of his argument--mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.   Absent that mutuality, force is the only alternative.  Historically, the ONLY way that population growth rates (forget number of people), have ever been noticeably lowere--as they continue to be today--is by educating women.  This rests on a recognition of a simple social fact.  Large families were old-age insurance for us--with high infant mortality rates, and fear of being left unsupported in their old age--folks opted to have way more children than they would have chosen, ceteris paribus.

My point is, if we're talking hypotethicals, we can certainly craft scenarios in which 12 billion humans live happily on the planet, WITHOUT destroying our ecosphere.change the other two variables--use WAY less stuff, and DRASTICALLY cut waste.

We ALWAYS choose the path we think simplest.

Reduce, reuse, recycle?

I don't want to reduce, its too much work to reuse, so...hey...let's at least recycle.

And so we sink.

(To be clear, I entirely agree with Rees, that the root problem is overshoot.  The question is--how do we best respond to that realization?)

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
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[Michael Howard]

It will be difficult to reduce population significantly in the time we have to eliminate fossil fuels and reduce other environmental impacts, because of population momentum. If fertility were to drop suddenly to replacement level everywhere, we'd still be at 9 billion by around 2060.

Wealthy countries are already below replacement level fertility, and the countries where fertility rates are high are the least responsible for carbon emissions and some other impacts. So it makes sense to prioritize the A and the T of the IPAT formula. This is not to deny that policies that affect population can be one wedge in the list of policies.

This article by Joel Cohen may be of interest:

How many people can the Earth support?

Journal of Population and Sustainability, 2:1, 2017

https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/618

'How many people the Earth can support depends in part on how many will wear cotton and how many polyester; on how many will eat beef and how many bean sprouts; on how many will want parks and how many will want parking lots; on how many will want Jaguars (luxury sports cars) with a capital J and how many will want jaguars (endangered felines) with a small j. These choices change with time and circumstance, and so will how many people the Earth can support."

Mike

Michael W. Howard (he/him)

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

The Maples

The University of Maine

Orono, Maine 04469 USA

tel. 207-581-3866 (Philosophy Office)

fax 207-581-2928

mho...@maine.edu

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[JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF]

I"m sorry but I wouldn't want to live in a world with 12 billion people.    It would surely drive the beauty from the earth and destroy the habitats of countless species..  It's madness, and you can't spin it.  Perhaps I'm alone in this but I see populations as AT LEAST as important as affluence and technology.

 

Mill saw the danger of this, that life would become unbearably regimented, silence would be overwhelmed with sound, there will be no more wilderness, no more places of refuge. I make my case here:  Population-de_Graaf.pdf (greattransition.org) 

 

I hadn't any idea that there was anyone in SCORAI who thought continued population growth was acceptable.  We need DEGROWTH...of both the economy and the population.  Maybe others want to weigh in.  

 

respectfully, 

John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

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[JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF]

My take on the population issue:

 

THE BEAUTY OF DE-GROWTH

 

“If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compel them to it.” –John Stuart Mill

 

I have followed the population debate with great interest, but in general it seems to ignore a larger issue. Would we want a greater population even if it were sustainable? Moreover, the debate obscures the fact that we must reduce population and economic growth simultaneously, as folks like Bill Rees, David Pimentel, and others have pointed out for a long time. Efforts to lay blame on one or the other for our current crises only divide us when we need to be united in calling for a lighter footprint on the earth. Charges of racism or xenophobia against those who do not wish to ignore the population dilemma drive us further from a united and comprehensive solution to the problems.

 

I come at the conversation as one who has focused almost exclusively (and wrongly, I believe) on the overconsumption side of the IPAT equation. I made the hit PBS special Affluenza and co authored the international best seller by the same name. Both laid the blame for our inequality and environmental crisis on overconsumption. In our defense, that was more the case then (1997) than it is a quarter century later. At the time, we, and the activist group Adbusters, pointed out
that the typical American consumed ten times as much as a resident of China, thirty times as much as someone from India. But in the meantime, China and India, to differing degrees, have narrowed the gap. Their combined consumption is now immense, exceeding that of the US, and China’s total carbon footprint is now higher than ours. At the time, Bill Rees and his “ecological footprint” analysis suggested that we would need five Earths were the rest of the world to catch up to US
consumption levels. Surely, the numbers are far more dire now, as many lower-income countries have leapt into the consumer society in the past twenty-five years.

 

Moreover, we know that carrying capacity in many countries (like Canada or Russia) is far higher than in China, India, or Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. Unless we assume the populations of these places will suddenly move north (with no immigration restrictions), the implications for wildlife and biodiversity in them are grim indeed. We can feed Earth’s existing population, and perhaps even ten billion, but at what cost?

 

Already, humans and their domesticated animals account for about 95 percent of the world’s mammalian mass, and we are continually depriving other species of habitat for our “productive” industrial agriculture and expanding population centers, or killing them with our poisons. There is no doubt that empowerment of women has reduced, and can reduce, the rate at which population grows but it has not stemmed the overall explosion of people, just as more environmentally friendly technologies have not “decoupled” economic growth from environmental impact.

 

Without question, offering Nature “half” as E. O. Wilson suggested, or even achieving the “30 by 30” goal (30 percent left wild by 2030) that the Biden administration wishes, is rendered nearly impossible by the inexorable increase and surging appetites of people. Moreover, as Fred Hirsch wrote in his 1976 Social Limits to Growth, many goods that humans desire are not assembly-line products: they are “positional” goods that increasing population renders more scarce—access to good land, to nature, to beaches, to green space, to silence, to beauty,
for example.

 

These quality-of-life concerns are not trivial. Increasing research shows that living in more natural settings with access to parks, aesthetically pleasing environments, and green space not only improves life satisfaction but also aids both physical and mental health, reduces crime, decreases polarization, and increases people’s desire to stay where they are instead of continually migrating.
 
“Everyone needs beauty as well as bread,” declared John Muir 150 years ago. “Give us bread but give us roses,” demanded the immigrant millworkers of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. “Beauty will save the world,” wrote Dostoevsky.
Today, the beauty of the world, which is hardly only “in the eye of the beholder,” but coveted by all races and classes, is being overwhelmed by the pressures of population. Our national parks are bursting at the seams, and quiet contemplation of nature’s beauty, an important factor in mental health, is squeezed out, or poorly substituted for by videos on our phones. Moreover, sustainable methods of agroecology, needed to protect other species, cannot compete in pure production
of calories with industrial agriculture. The “Green Revolution” unquestionably prevented famines and allowed greater population growth, but again at what cost to the Earth and the other species we share it with?

 

So let us not waste time fighting between consumption and population.nd population. Fifty years ago, the book Limits to Growth made clear that both are leading us over the edge to catastrophe. It is time now to advocate degrowth of both population and consumption, while making clear that a simpler, more sustainable life can also be a healthier, happier one (and the evidence for that is powerful).

I'm curious if you disagree with this, Ashwani?

 

best,

John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

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[Pradanos-Garcia, Luis]

I am sorry if the piece gave the impression that population growth is not an important issue. I believe that population growth is part of the problem (it is in the title of the piece:) and I agree with most of you with the fact that the ecofeminist approach to reducing population is the one that is socially desirable. But we got what we got now (more than 8 billion people) and the more of those engaging in permaculture and other regenerative practices the better. 

I see technology, at least the industrial kind of technology the people originally using the IPAT equation had in mind, is mostly contributing to overshoot, as it is a technology designed for triggering growth (rather than convivial tools, to use Illich term). Actually AI "smart" technologies are obviously socially corrosive, energy intensive and massively extractive. But compost toilets are regenerative technologies. My impression is that we all mostly agree on the issues but maybe not so much in what is to be done and how at the practical level.

Cheers,

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[Michael Howard]

I don't disagree. And I agree that we should strive to avoid 12 billion by the end of the century. I support efforts to reduce fertility everywhere--and maybe most importantly in the high income countries, against the efforts of people wanting to elevate the birth rate. I just think it will be difficult to prevent some further increase because of population momentum, and in the short term--the next 30 years--we are more likely to have more success with the other dimensions of the problem. 

Mike

Michael W. Howard (he/him)

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

The Maples

The University of Maine

Orono, Maine 04469 USA

tel. 207-581-3866 (Philosophy Office)

fax 207-581-2928

mho...@maine.edu

http://umaine.edu/philosophy/meet-the-faculty/howardm/

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[Philip Vergragt]

I just want to comment on the calls for degrowth of the population.

I don’t disagree, but I have seen no new ideas so far how that could be done.

Here are some old ideas:

-nuclear war

-climate change, floods, droughts, hurricanes, famines.

-pandemics (but covid did not achieve a lot)

-birth control: are we really going to tell the Indians, Indonesians, and Africans that they should try harder?

-education for girls and women: so far the only rather successful option

-forced birth control like in China: let’s see how an inverse population pyramid is going to work out.

Population reduction: yes, but we should come up with more concrete ideas. And as long as we in the global north consume and pollute 20+ times as much as our friends in the global south, we have some work to do here at home.

Philip

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[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Does anyone think we’ve rather lost our moral compass if we’re toying with starting to hope for nuclear war or massive natural disasters, or draconian coercive measures to reduce the population? Misanthropy has always been a rather sinister thread running through the environmental movement. It’s not helpful. 

Philip is, in my opinion, quite right that there are no plausible ideas for viable ways to reduce the population. It seems rather pointless to go on about that which will never happen. 

Of course what we do observe is that more affluent societies reproduce less than poorer ones (for reasons that, I believe, are somewhat understood)). If that’s the case, is it possible that there is an inherent contradiction between degrowth and modulating population growth? 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com I get on Amazon

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[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Richard,

You’re quite right. 

The approaches you outline may have some impact if they were implemented. Will any policy that is politically viable be enough to tackle the scale of the issue I wonder? Or just tinkering round the edges? 

Of course, currently we see the opposite. Policies to encourage fertility in the aging developed world and now in a China that is reaping the consequences of its one child policy. 

I guess my point is that everyone has limited resources and limited ability to act. My personal preference is to focus on those issues where we might be able to achieve something concrete. 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com I get on Amazon

On 14 May 2023 at 09:55 Richard Rosen <richard...@gmail.com> wrote:

Joe, it is no more implausible that we cannot come up with reasonable social policies the speed degrowth for population numbers than it is that we will convince the world the overall economic degrowth should be implemented.  Both are very challenging but coupled issues.  The population does not just grow spontaneously, people make decisions and choices about having children.  For example, if a first child of a woman were guaranteed free university education, but the second or subsequent child had to pay full freight, that might have an effect on choices.  Or if all women had to at least attend a course on conception and child rearing and contraceptive issues, that might have an effect.  Population control needs discussion and should not be ignored.  It is a very long term issue that will affect the world in serious ways even if we get climate change and overshoot to stop getting worse, which itself is less likely if population cannot be reduced.

--- Rich Rosen

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 10:46 AM 'Joe Zammit-Lucia' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Does anyone think we’ve rather lost our moral compass if we’re toying with starting to hope for nuclear war or massive natural disasters, or draconian coercive measures to reduce the population? Misanthropy has always been a rather sinister thread running through the environmental movement. It’s not helpful. 

Philip is, in my opinion, quite right that there are no plausible ideas for viable ways to reduce the population. It seems rather pointless to go on about that which will never happen. 

Of course what we do observe is that more affluent societies reproduce less than poorer ones (for reasons that, I believe, are somewhat understood)). If that’s the case, is it possible that there is an inherent contradiction between degrowth and modulating population growth? 

Best

Joe

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[Tom Abeles]

Hi Joe/all

The two variables, population and resource consumption are time dependent with finance as the independent variable:

They who have the gold make the rules regarding access regardless of where in the  economic spectrum (the 1% factor) a population exists.

The first crack in this matrix is the defection of countries from the hegemony of the dollar as the world reserve currency which has hit the tipping point

in 2013 when China announced its Belt and Road Initiative and the management thereof with its 10 years of operations and the US response- guns and sanctions

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[Richard Rosen]

Joe, it is no more implausible that we cannot come up with reasonable social policies the speed degrowth for population numbers than it is that we will convince the world the overall economic degrowth should be implemented.  Both are very challenging but coupled issues.  The population does not just grow spontaneously, people make decisions and choices about having children.  For example, if a first child of a woman were guaranteed free university education, but the second or subsequent child had to pay full freight, that might have an effect on choices.  Or if all women had to at least attend a course on conception and child rearing and contraceptive issues, that might have an effect.  Population control needs discussion and should not be ignored.  It is a very long term issue that will affect the world in serious ways even if we get climate change and overshoot to stop getting worse, which itself is less likely if population cannot be reduced.

--- Rich Rosen

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[Joachim Spangenberg]

@ Joe: absolutely. While until the turn of the century, resource consumption increase was population driven, ever since increasing consumption per capita dominates impacts. To address this, SCORAI was founded, not for developing doomdsay ideas to address a secondary driver of earth degradation (the Club of Rome study expects a maximum world population of less than +15% by 2050. The OECD expects a world GDP of +200% by 2050 - so what should we fight again today?).

Furthermore, population is dealt with by (the few really good) development organisations, advocating measures like girls and women education, strengthening their right including the right to land, and the access to family planning tools, all pursued for other than environmental reasons and still the most effective one for slowing population growth. Let them do their job and focus SCORAI on its own, reducing resource consumption!

By the way, I am so fed up by such distracting discussions that SCORAI is now on my spam list.

Good bye!

Joachim

.

Dr. Joachim H. Spangenberg
SERI Vice Chair
Vorsterstr.97-99
51103 Cologne, Germany

RECENT (2023) publications
Spangenberg, J. H.,Kurz, R. 2023. Epochal turns: Uncomfortable insights, uncertain outlooks. Sustainable Development.https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2512
Spangenberg, J. H. 2023. Supporting the Global Biodiversity Framework Monitoring with LUI, the Land Use Intensity Indicator. Land 12: 820. https://doi.org/10.3390/land12040820
Spangenberg, J. H., Neumann, W. 2023. Energiepreissicherheit, Klimaschutz & Soziale Gerechtigkeit. Politische Ökologie 41(172): 124-127.

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[JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF]

Friends,

 

Not sure that dismissiveness ("sending you all to my spam!"), like that in Dr. Spangenberg's email, is the best way to influence the rest of us.  I'm not arguing that SCORAI focus on population; clearly our purpose is to critique consumerism. (my film and book AFFLUENZA, did exactly that).  But we might well make common cause with those who also see the unsustainable growth of population as an equal challenge. Ignoring it will cost us other allies.

 

It's not simply a matter of the amount of economic growth vs. the growth of population.  We also need to move to different localized and organic food system, and it's hard to imagine such agroecology matching industial ag in feeding an expanded population, with the consequent impact of the latter in depriving other species of habitat, etc. 

 

Why the either/or division?  Let's focus on consumerism but not hesitate to affirm that population (and technology) also impact sustainability.

 

By the way, hope everyone has read Ashley Colby's excellent recent article;

Christopher Lasch's forgotten utopia - UnHerd

 

thanks.

John

John de Graaf

www.johndegraaf.com

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[Tom Abeles]

The Fed is using increasing interest to curb consumption. In other words, a financial path which we can discuss. The important point is that there is a belief that approaching consumption as a financial issue is a possible path or part thereof which can be adapted to a variety of incomes across developed and developing economies and has been suggested.

tom A

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[Jean Boucher]

Yes, it's been established that generally the more money people have the more they consume - JB

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[Tom Abeles]

There is a significant difference between economics and finance as practice or policy. Individual income is only one dimension

[Jean Boucher]

Ah, nice, can you say more, Tom?   

[Harris, Craig]

so, if a communist/socialist regime were able

to implement a socioeconomic order

where all persons had similar amounts of money,

would this lead to degrowth ?? . . .

cheers,

craig

 

 

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jean Boucher
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 5:12 AM
To: tab...@gmail.com; SCORAI Group <sco...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Op-ed

 

Yes, it's been established that generally the more money people have the more they consume - JB

 

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[Jean Boucher]

In my mind, it depends on how much that 'similar amount of money' is. Sufficiency is a growing academic subfield, but I'm not sure it's gone much further than that.  JB

[Tom Abeles]

Hi Jean:

Hudson, Michael, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism

[Jean Boucher]

Hi Tom,

    I didn't read the book, but I found a nice video by Micheal Huson and it was refreshing, nice to hear an economist refer to Karl Marx here and there. But I didn't catch any reference to the environment. So, while Michael refers to money as debt, I also see it as the power to pollute: I can get a loan, and then have the power to buy a car, fuel, a house, cut down trees, extract resources and emit wastes.  So though there may be an academic point to the differences between finance and individual income/consumption, I'm not really seeing it as far as this conversation goes. Can you help me?  I also, presume that we both see the printing of money (the magical generation of power/value) as a toxic activity. I know you've long advocated a rehaul of finance.

Cheers!

Jean

[Tom Abeles]

hi jean

Hudson's work, and that of Marx (and others) are at the policy level and not at the personal level. While personal lifestyle and related are important, the question is how to cause a shift. That happens, internationally at the policy level. there is the ever present idea of bringing enlightenment to the masses via some sort of epiphany or tipping point. That's part of the issues surrounding the global effort for decolonization whether within a developed vs a developing world paradigm.

One might dig deeply into the shift that is occurring now that China has asserted itself  with the rapid development of its Belt and Road Initiative which is part of the shift to a multicultural restructuring. (And even its plans to move from a ff economy is but one small dimension.)

 

We are well beyond solar panels, triple glazed windows and electric vehicles. Even the conservative think tanks worried about issues of food have embraced alternative proteins whether produced from fermentation, veg based or animal cells instead of on the hoof, so to speak.

The bottom line is still finance

[Philip Vergragt]

I found a site where you can download the book by Hudson for free:

http://resistir.info/livros/hudson_destiny_of_civilization.pdf

on resistir.info there are tons of free leftwing books to download

Philip

 

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jean Boucher
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2023 11:04 AM
To: Tom Abeles <tab...@gmail.com>
Cc: SCORAI Group <sco...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Op-ed

 

Hi Tom,

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