I knew that more economic development tends to mean smaller families, and I knew that people were having fewer children in many developing countries. But I hadn't grasped how quickly that shift was happening until I read this comparison from last Thursday's issue of The Economist:
The transition from a [birth] rate of five [births per woman] to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain--from 1800 to 1930--took just 20 years--from 1965 to 1985--in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006--and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.
But, while it's easy to assume that slowing population growth means a more sustainable future, it's not really as cut and dry as all that. Like The Economist points out: With development, you also get more people living the fossil-fuel heavy American lifestyle. Their argument: The problem of creating a sustainable future isn't really tied to birth rate. That's taking care of itself and couldn't go much faster without China-like impositions on personal freedom. Instead, the focus needs to be on the technology and policies that will help those children grow up in sustainable, energy efficient societies.
The Economist--"Demography, Growth and the Environment", via Follow the Energy blog.
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It won't matter. Example: At the huge Orwellian cube maze where I work, most of the people buy their lunch most days. The amount of waste, most of it plastic or styrofoam, is staggering, when you see the piles and piles and piles of plastic bags of it. But what is really hard to fathom is the number of bottles and cans you see in these bags after they're piled up to be hauled out. The trash cans are RIGHT NEXT to recycling cans for bottles and cans. RIGHT. NEXT. to them. But people find it easier to dump their plastic lunch plate and bottle/can into the same trash can.
If you go down to the cafeteria, where there is a very large seating area, you see that almost everyone gets their lunch "to go" instead of "for here," which again means a plastic container instead of a ceramic plate. And yet when you leave, you walk by a big conveyor belt for BOTH plates AND trash, and leave it there on your way out.
People *prefer* to eat from plastic instead of plates. And they *prefer* to throw bottles and cans into the trash. It requires no additional effort on their part not to pollute, but they pollute anyway. They like it.
There may be somewhat fewer of us in the future, but we're becoming ever more colossal assholes so it won't matter.
I've heard the self-limiting argument for birth rate before. Whistling in the dark.
Couldn't find the link, but I recently read that demographers in Europe mis-fired in terms of a declining birth rate, when in fact, what is happening is that people were having their kids at an older age.
Kind of a tangent, but there you go.
The energy cost to make a disposable plate is actually lower than the energy cost to wash a ceramic plate. You're left with the environmental costs of the materials, of course. But the difference between disposable and reusable is not as great as you might think - and certainly not enough to point out as a primary source of waste.
As senator Ted Stevens might say, NO!
1) Energy efficiency drives energy consumption. Efficient reduces costs and frees capacity, which in turn helps us do more things with energy
2) Technology can not save us (Unless you mean financially, then invest 3 years ago and see #3 below)
3) People say nuclear energy is bust because we'd have to build 1 plant a year for decades just to replace offline plants. Guess what? This year solar panel factories came online allowing a net production of 12 large nuclear (1GW) power plants, _each year_ ! In 5 years, this number could be as high as 40 GW. That is _40_ 1GW nuclear plants every year! Assuming no growth beyond this figure, WORLD ELECTRICAL CAPACITY COULD BE ENTIRELY SOLAR BY 2025. This will not save us, but instead should be a catalyst to increase quality of life and dumping our shitbag, "I can do whatever I want" attitude.
3) It's all about understanding value and conserving things that are important to us. Franky, traditional American values have been corrupted.
Education displaces ignorance. For instance, a $200 dollar waste water heat exchanger (installed) can save at a minimum about 20% of the gas used for hot water. My plumber refuses to do this because there is little precedent and he is worried about liability. This is $30 billion a year US consumers spend on energy. A $300 tank could effectively reclaim 75% of that energy (or higher for new construction) which would save US consumers over $100 billion per year. A $500 tank could clean & recycle domestic grey water and yield 80% less water consumption in addition to the energy savings.
The fact is we (the collective we) don't know what we've got. Our infrastructure for energy, water, and food is incredible value and virtually no one understands this. We could free up 10 to 20% of the entire US energy budget with junkyard parts and the will to do so.
Malthusians amuse me. First there was going to be a population bomb. That didn't pan out and now they are confronted with declining birth rates and a topping off of population at around 2050 and IIRC 9bil. Oh well, that doesn't matter because we have a new argument, it's not how many people that matter because they will just consume too much. What will be the Malthusian argument when that is also shown to be a big steaming pile?
@dculberson: Even if you're right, "energy costs" aren't the only costs to consider. There are externalized costs such as health effects from pollution, landfill costs, damage to ecosystems etc. Not everything reduces to a dollars and cents equation.
What I'm more interested in at the moment is the economic effects of a world without growth. At some point around the time we hit population 9 billion, the need for growth could create a huge drop in price for just about everything, leading to a big improvement in living conditions for developing nations (with commensurate environmental impact) but after which should come quite a recession. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that's the big downside to zero population growth, as we're already seeing here in the US.
As an aside I suppose that means that the fastest way out of our current recession would be to open the doors to legal immigration.
A reduction in birthrate (assuming there isn't a corresponding increase in the rate at which people survive to reproduce) is an *exponential* reduction in future resources required, whereas overconsumption by richer nations is more or less a one time multiplier in future resources required.
Reduction in birthrate is a clear win.
Constant population isn't going to be any sort of walk in the park anyway. Anyone heard of demographic decay? Suddenly you have more old retired people who can't produce or can't produce much than young people entering the work force.
I've heard the self-limiting argument for birth rate before. Whistling in the dark.
Do you have any reason to dispute the fact that birth rates have been steadily dropping for decades other than "you've heard it before?"
If you read the article in its entirety, it also brings up the fact that the US birth rate and that of several other developed countries dropped, but is now rising, again. There's also some data in there about the rate being the fertility rate, not the actual birth rate (the semantics of which are a bit hazy in my mind, at present, as I read the article late last night, but I think it somehow brings in live births vs. non-live births, infant mortality, etc.).
And yeah, the economic cost of the plates is the same for plastic vs. ceramic, and perhaps even for energy used in production, but does that take into account the fact that the plates must be shipped/trucked to their end destination, and the fact that you might get 1,000 uses from a ceramic plate, but only 1 from that plastic plate? That is,unless you work in my office, where we wash our plastic-ware and reuse it until the janitor mistakenly tosses it...
For many developed countries - especially Japan from what I understand, but this may go fot the US as well, the immigration+birth rate what was helping keep the population rising in developed countries (this is NOT a immigration debate - check the stats)
Also, recycling has as much to do with habits as conveinence. Ever been to Toronto? You almost feel harrassed if you don't recycle. Not necessarily saying that was a bad thing, but I was there a day when I purchased something and didn't bring my own "shopping bag" (hard to carry all that stuff on a plane) and got charged a 5 cent fee.
Now, if I could have only used cap and trade to bargain with them....
it is true that stable population is not enough.
it is also true that without stablizing population, NO lifestyle is sustainable.
"the Malthusian argument" has already played out as true. By any measure we have outstripped the carrying capacity of the Earth to sustain our standard of living, let alone support 2 billion more humans, and populations consuming more resources per-capita. (china, india etc)
A taste of middle class life is the best way to limit births. If you're dirt poor it doesn't matter how manny kids you pop out, you'll still be poor. A bit of wealth though, and you want to hang on to it.
Seems to me that 20 years is insufficient to claim any real data about it, since as already pointed out it could just be a shift to later childbirth, at 40 instead of 16. Unless it can be shown that later first childbirth is linked with fewer children as a whole, which I wouldn't be surprised at.
For population rates, dropping birthrates also need to be read in relation to lower child mortality: if you have 6 children and 2 survive to have children themselves, are you increasing the population more or less than if you have only 3 children and all survive to breed?
If birthrates truly are dropping, this will be a problem for us; we will be followed by fewer taxable young people, so there will be little government money to support us in our dotage.
There seems to be an assumption that the birth rate isn't going to drop to zero. What's the mechanism behind the drop? Last I heard it was dropping sperm concentrations in human males due to pollution. Anyone started to deal with pollution yet?
How many millions of tons of ceramic plates are floating in the Pacific right now?
I don’t need Malthus to see what’s happening right before my eyes. When I was a kid Tysons Corner Va. was rolling farmland, woods and creeks with teeming wildlife. Now it is paved over with strip malls and townhouses, the ecosystem eradicated. The human species will not stop growing until every square inch of the planet is covered with asphalt and assholes.
Given 21st century technology and a little forethought we could be living in utopia, a goddam garden of eden, it could be like a freakin Disney movie with bluebirds on our shoulders and fresh air and babbling brooks. ..But that wouldn’t be good for the economy, must have unbridled growth,
CIVILIZATION, HO!
Be the change. We can't expect others to change, we can only change ourselves. Pity our civilization is so determined to make as much money as possible. After all, money comes from destroying the Earth. Earth + work = money. Adjust the equation appropriately.
Agree with querent (#13). A stabilizing global population is a good thing, but not the end of the story.
It's pretty cool how reliable macro-demographic trends are. Greater prosperity, more education, more rights for women, more access to birth control, lower infant mortality rate - all tend to lead to fewer babies.
But the same ecconomic improvements that help cause the above (good things), also tend to mean increased environmental impact per person. We'll need a paradigm shift to tackle that.
I just found this one described on the 10xE site...
To help celebrate Saganseve here is Dr. Sagan on the topic of population growth and the environment..
In November 2000, the late Dr. Carl Sagan spearheaded a joint appeal to the religious and scientific communities for environmental action on behalf of mankind.
The letter signed by thirty-two Nobel laureate and other scientists as well as two hundred and seventy-one well-known spiritual leaders from eighty-three countries called for, among other things:
"a voluntary halt to world population growth without which many other approaches to preserve the environment will be nullified."
It is very cool that the Vatican signed a letter basically endorsing birth control. And also very sad that it has been ignored for almost 20 years.
http://earthrenewal.org/Open_letter_to_the_religious_.htm
There seems to be an assumption that the birth rate isn't going to drop to zero. What's the mechanism behind the drop? Last I heard it was dropping sperm concentrations in human males due to pollution. Anyone started to deal with pollution yet?
Where exactly did you hear this factoid, the Crazytown Gazette?
agreed! the problem with complex issues like the environment is that some people restrict their views to make it easily understood, restricting the issue to a question of energy without thinking about the big picture: dirty extraction of petroleum to make plastics (tar sands anyone?), transformation in countries under poor working conditions, the transport of products halfway across the world, cost of landfilling, slow degradation of a phenomenal volume of waste, chemical leaching, long term effects down food chains...always affecting the most most vulnerable...there's more than energy involved if you take a second to think