A new study in PNAS by O’Neill et al. (2010) describe “population shifts” as having a substantial influence upon greenhouse gas emissions. From the abstract of Global demographic trends and future carbon emission:
Substantial changes in population size, age structure, and urbanization are expected in many parts of the world this century. Although such changes can affect energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, emissions scenario analyses have either left them out or treated them in a fragmentary or overly simplified manner.We carry out a comprehensive assessment of the implications of demographic change for global emissions of carbon dioxide. Using an energy–economic growth model that accounts for a range of demographic dynamics, we show that slowing population growth could provide 16–29% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change. We also find that aging
and urbanization can substantially influence emissions in particular world regions.
Thankfully, the authors did not make any assumptions about how reduced population growth would occur. From the discussion: (O’Neill et al. 2010)
Economic development is one factor that can facilitate declines in fertility and slower population growth. If it were assumed that increases in economic growth rates were driving fertility decline, our results would differ: faster economic growth would have an upward effect on emissions, offsetting the emissions reductions caused by slower population growth to some degree.
And from the final paragraph:
However, more rapid economic development is not the only factor, or a necessary one, in facilitating fertility decline. Policies can also significantly affect fertility trends. Although the appropriateness of policies that encourage even lower fertility in countries where it is already low is debatable and would require consideration of the trade offs associated with increased aging (29), in other regions, there are several such policies already considered desirable in their own right. For example, household surveys indicate that there is a substantial unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services in many countries. Policies that meet this need would reduce current fertility by about 0.2 births per woman in the United States (30) and 0.6–0.7 births per woman in the developing world (SI Text has details of this calculation). This reduction is comparable with the 0.5 births per woman difference in fertility assumptions between the population scenarios used here. In our analysis, emissions reductions in these regions (i.e., the United States and developing country regions other than China) amount to about one-half of the total reductions that result from following a lower global population growth path, suggesting that family planning policies would have a substantial environmental cobenefit.
Note the paper is freely available online through the PNAS open access option. Nature.com has a blog posting that’s helpful:
Aging reduces emissions as elderly people contribute less to economic growth. Urbanization has the opposite effect: The migration of people from the countryside to large cities boosts the supply of labour and so fuels economic growth and the demand for energy, the study finds.
Aging is likely to dominate future demographic development in most industrialised countries, the study concludes. But in China and India, which together account for more than one third of global population, urbanization is likely to be the key factor.
I believe that policy has been largely overtaken by natural incentives. Note that many Asian countries that did not use China’s one child per family policy experienced equal or greater declines in total fertility. The two primary factors appear to be education of females and institution of a safety net for the elderly.
Once women have a choice, they choose smaller families.
Guilt makes the world go around. So many of us think we’re literally destroying the planet by merely being alive. The really troubling part is that there are too many opportunists waiting to exploit our guilty feelings.
Not all “gilt” is green, but all green is definitely “gilt” for those receiving the gold…
Outlaw fertility clinics and remove children as dependents on income taxes. Limit the size of a residence for welfare recipients to 2 bedrooms and less than 1000 sq ft. and limit funding to basic necessities.
The U.S. is already on the verge of population decline. Our over-65 population is currently at 12% and will be nearly 25% within ten years. Encouraging a further reduction in the U.S. birthrate is insanity.
Everything that is old is new again. Who decides who lives and dies … Isn’t that always the question
Well if they feel that strongly about it, they should lead by example.
Haven’t yet read the study but I wonder if they accounted for the possibility that lower economic growth and lower populations may retard technological change and, therefore, the rate of decarbonization. In turn, lower economic development might itself contribute to factors that slow the decline in fertility rates. See, e.g., “Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being?” Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, vol. 1, no.3 (2009), currently at http://www.ejsd.org.
Actual living individuals and their dreams of families are being discussed in the third person plural by intellects who have concepts that are inimical. If that isn’t authoritarianism in the costume of science, what is?
John
“Aging reduces emissions…”
Glad to be doing my bit.
Members of the Pensive Set have contemplated many ways of reducing population, as they comb the pages of the Guardian and NYT and shudder at impending everything.
There’s the Duke of Edinburgh method of reduction, whereby a Prince Consort and patron of the WWF comes back to earth as a lethal virus. There’s the Sun of Heaven method, whereby an Asian overlord dictates the number of offspring permitted to a family. Then there’s the Latex-sans-frontieres brigade, educated types who want to persuade wired African truck drivers to use condoms when having a quickie in the ditch. There are the undevelopment theorists, who only drink Fair Trade and who send old bicycle bits to villages so they can be used to pump water and avert diesel addiction. Undevelopment theorists think Norman Borlaug and mass nutrition are the problem, not the solution. (Paul Ehrlich is their solution.)
Then there’s the method that works, but, sadly, we can’t talk about it. Okay, I’ll whisper it. You have an expanding middle class – a bourgeoisie, no less – in a genuinely competitive and capitalistic environment. It’s terrible news for all our educated self loathers afflicted with mal-de-siecle, but the only thing that works is for all the quaint impoverished people to become like us. Shopping malls and all! What’s worse, as I’ve observed in the aboriginal communities in my own part of the world, by far the most effective catalyst for this process is…snip me, mods, if this is just too gross…
…religious faith, preferably Christian and in close nuclear families and active congregations! (I warned you it was gross.)
So how are our central planners going to work this out ?
Tom Fuller says:
October 12, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Once women have a choice, they choose smaller families.
========================================================
Tom, surely you could take more from the study than just that? Personally, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of depth of the study, but it does reaffirm my earlier position in that rural settings use more energy (emit CO2) per capita than urban settings. Further, it seems to indicate that if the U.S. and Europe wishes to continue their economic freedom, we older people need to live it up quickly and die just as quickly. But we knew that already and I’m doing my best!
I’m consistently amused, by the ONE SIZE FITS ALL solution to everything that’s wrong – less peoples.
Despite prosperity being instrumental in reducing family sizes, rather than share the love, the green solution is to
equalize the misery. The way its working out you’d be wise to think green is a cover colour for something much worse.
Given the nightmare produced by the Million dollar bonus clubs in the finance world for all humanity, you’d think the solution would be smaller bonuses for the top shelf, and a smidge more aid via micro loans to the very poor.
Lest I get labelled a communist, shill, fraternising, sympathiser, they still have to work for their income, just like everybody else – excluding Al Gore and the Million dollar bonus club boys.
Rather than reduce the population, how about reducing the suffering?
10:10:10
10% more aid, 10% debt forgiven, 10% more education.
or we could try…
10% more infant smothering, 10% more warlords and roving rape gangs, 10% more aids/starvation/civil war.
No pressure.
mosomoso says:
October 12, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Well stated.
1010.org has already presented their instructional film on how reduced population growth might occur in a flash. A little black box with a red button and those reassuring but ominous words “Who wants to join us? Lets see a show of hands. Now, who doesn’t want to join us? Alright. No pressure.”
The erroneous thrust of the study is because of the mandated, grant inciting, economy crushing bent towards CO2 reduction.
If we were to take the CO2 reduction question out of the study, what would the conclusions be? Perhaps they would discuss food availability or resource allocation. Would the gist of the study see an aging population as a positive connotation? It used to be a key component in Standard of Living equations.
CO2 emissions are a by-product of energy use. Energy use is a proxy for economic growth. Economic growth raises the standard of living. An increase of the standard of living increases life expectancy.
The wheels are set in motion. There can be no turning back or stopping. To stop CO2 emissions would be a tragedy. To do it purposefully by any nation or nations would be murderous autogenocide on a scale this earth has never seen before.
Fitzy says:
October 12, 2010 at 5:46 pm
“…….and a smidge more aid via micro loans to the very poor.”
No, Fitzy, I won’t call you any of what you mentioned. I share your concern. The problem is, we’ve tried that and it didn’t work. See Freddie, Fanny Mae, and ACORN.
I hate to say this, but I believe Ben Franklin was correct. “The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty.”
Actually, I believe an inverse application of the thought. Make sure they are not comfortable in their poverty. The distinction is slight, but I hope the connotation is seen.
Hal Lewis has a name for this type of article – climate fraud.
‘Human emissions’ have not caused climate change.
Why are these people wasting their time on meaningless ’emission scenarios’?
Why are we paying for this nonsense?
Why did this pass peer review for publication in PNAS? So these liars can steal more money for more useless ‘research’.
Let the Climate Reformation begin.
Stop paying for these worthless indulgences.
[Population is usually reduced by war, famine and disease – look at what happened to the Roman empire]
May you live in interesting times
The protecting the environment and impending cataclysm as some have said has replaced christianity or any other religion for that matter. Its something the human soul maybe needs, a higher calling so to speak, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with atheism or activism by itself, but if one fills their soul with garbage like the “holier then thou” green movement, well you are just as bad as the “holier then thou” christian. I hate to bring religion into it again, but I truly believe these people have adopted a new religion to fill a void in their lives.
To me, there is nothing wrong with sensible religious discussion, if people do not want to be christians, this is a free country (the US) and they have many more to choose from, but choosing the “pop culture” religion will not fill that void, it will just make them depressed, bad scientists, etc and they will preach to us from the pulprit of “I am green, and thus am ordained to judge you”.
To me, this is the issue that global warming itself is just a small part of, and as people still think Paul Ehlrich is visionary are the same people that need to read more religious books (or books in general and get out more) and/or find a calling. I do not care if its Budhist, Hindu, Muslim or Christianity, but if you find the need to fill your soul with something, the pop culture religion of today is not the solution.
James Sexton @ur momisugly 6:13pm
Yep, you’re right, I forgot about Freddie, Fanny Mae, and ACORN.
I was kinda aiming for developing nations, however, since the back room boys exported all US know how to comrade China – I could be convinced that America is now a third world country.
Ben was a charmer, and he was right, nothing motivates a Man like an absence of the necessities of life.
Unfortunately when you have nothing, can get nothing, are offered almost nothing and have the land taken out from underneath you, its hard to get ahead….thinking Somalia, big parts of the Sudan, New Orleans and parts of the Gulf of Mexico, you get my drift.
Cheers.
population is popular:
among the authors is shonali pachauri, daughter of rajendra, whose wife is also into “population” studies:
Jan 2010: EU Referendum: Richard North: Keeping it in the family
Shonali is, in fact, Rajendra’s youngest (of two) daughter…
As for the elder daughter, she is Rashmi Pachauri – and often calls herself Rashmi Pachauri-Rajan. She, like her mother, Dr Saroj Pachauri, works on population issues, the latter being regional director, South and East Asia Regional Office, Population Council, working out of New Delhi…
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/keeping-it-in-family.html
also worth noting Schneider and Ehlich in the Acknowledgements:
PNAS: Global demographic trends and future carbon emissions
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
…P. Ehrlich, S. Schneider, and D. Kennedy for guidance and support during
development of the original version of the PET model. Funding was provided
by the National Science Foundation, a European Young Investigator’s award
(to B.C.O.) and the Hewlett Foundation. Funding was provided for early
stages of the analysis by the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/09/30/1004581107.full.pdf+html
mosomoso says:
October 12, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Beautifully written (sincerely) but do leave Phil alone won’t you? He is “ex officio” patron of tons of stuff and hasn’t been president of any part of WWF for over ten years.
I have decided to reduce my energy consumption one beeswax candle in the evenings and a small renewable wood fire in the evenings during the winter months or whenever the cave becomes excessively cold and damp…