HIDDEN ISSUES: POPULATION GROWTH

WILLIAM JOHNSON, POPULATION INSTITUTE - While a great deal of attention has been paid to reducing emissions responsible for global warming, there has been far less focus on the role of population growth in climate change. The world's population is projected to increase 40% by 2050. Thus, a 40% decrease in per capita carbon emissions in the industrialized world would be canceled out by global population growth and higher per capita emissions in the developing world.

As population increases, the challenge of slowing climate change and the risk of catastrophic consequences rise inexorably. The world is already experiencing increased sea levels, floods, violent storms, droughts, heat waves, disease transmission, and environmental refugees as a result of climate change. The World Health Organization estimates the percentage of the world's population affected by weather disasters has doubled in the past 25 years, and the coming years may be worse. . .

Demurral and denial may be more convenient and politically acceptable than the truth, but we need to face reality. While nations struggle to find the appropriate technical, economic and political framework for sharing the burden of reducing carbon emissions, there is an urgent need to open a second front in the battle against climate change by reducing population growth.

Although the first challenge is quite difficult, the second is relatively easy. We know that family planning works, and when women have free access to information and services to practice family planning they have smaller families. A Baltimore Sun editorial by John Seager put it best: "If we had zero population growth, part of the global warming problem would, well, melt away." . . .

ANDREW WOODCOCK, INDEPENDENT, 2006 - Environmental problems such as global warming can be tackled only if the international community addresses the problem of population growth, a leading scientist warned. Professor Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said the 76 million annual increase in the world's population threatens "the welfare and quality of life of future generations".

But he said population growth was the "Cinderella" issue of the environmental debate, because its implications are so controversial that nobody dares to raise it.

Scientific analysis suggests that the Earth can sustain around 2-3 billion people at a good standard of living over the long term, wrote Prof. Rapley in an article for the BBC News website. But the current global population of 6.5 billion - expected to rise to 8 billion by the middle of the century - means mankind is imposing an ever greater "footprint" on the planet. . .

"Imagine organizing the accommodation, feeding arrangements, schooling, employment, medical care, cultural activities and general infrastructure - transport, power, water, communications, waste disposal - for a number of people slightly larger than the population of the UK, and doing it each year, year on year for the foreseeable future," wrote Prof. Rapley. "Combined with ongoing economic growth, what will be the effect on our collective human 'footprint'? Will the planet cope?. . .

"Although reducing human emissions to the atmosphere is undoubtedly of critical importance, as are any and all measures to reduce the human environmental 'footprint', the truth is that the contribution of each individual cannot be reduced to zero.

OPTIMUM POPULATION - Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tons, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report. . . The climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly L30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over L300 billion. A 35-pence condom, which could avert that L30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a "spectacular' potential return on investment '“ around nine million per cent.

The report adds: "The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has.". . .

A Population-Based Climate Strategy, the OPT's latest research briefing, says human population growth is widely acknowledged as one of the main causes of climate change yet politicians and environmentalists rarely discuss it for fear of causing offence. The result is that a de facto taboo exists, throughout civil society and government.

One consequence is that "couples making decisions about family size do so in the belief that it is a matter for them and their personal preferences alone: the public debate and awareness that might have encouraged them to think about the implications of their choices for their fellow citizens, the climate and the wider environment have been missing."

Valerie Stevens, co-chair of the OPT, said: "We appreciate that asking people to have fewer children is not going to make us popular in some quarters. Equally, expressing concern about the environmental impacts of mass migration, which currently accounts for the bulk of population growth in the UK and will have a major effect on Britain's carbon emissions, is a quick route to being labeled racist. But these are hugely important issues and the unfortunate fact is that both politicians and the environmental movement are in denial about them. It's high time we started discussing them like adults and confronting the real challenges of climate change."

EARTH DAY NET - International cooperation on population has gone a long way to slow the growth of world population. But fertility rates in many countries remain high. A quarter century of research shows that those rates decline when voluntary family planning is universally available and educational opportunities for girls and economic opportunities for women increase. Indeed, long-range strategies to address the threat of climate change are unlikely to succeed without paying careful attention to demographic trends.

Scientists across the globe agree that the influence of humans and their activities on the earth's atmosphere and climate is an established fact. If population growth and climate change are closely linked, then they should be integrated into policy and challenged together. Long-term strategies to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in an equitable manner will need to account for the current broad differences among nations in per capita emissions. Effective, voluntary family planning plus improved educational and economic opportunities for girls and women are a central part of good population policy as well as a key to greenhouse gas reduction.

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