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.
With more people there will be more smoking and with that more global warming.
http://www.starcitynews.com/cigarettes-a-secondary-cause-of-global-warming/1566
James Sexton says:
October 12, 2010 at 6:05 pm
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.
Agreed
The study is still affixed to the C02 hypothesis, which bypasses rationale and plunges headlong into trace gas emissions as the defining issue of our times. Twisted into a pretzel of circular reasoning, the air is sucked out of the balloon long before it is fully inflated.
Having worked in Nuclear Power for 20 years, I can assure you that THE ABILITY TO “POWER THE WORLD” exists! If you are worried about the U235 problem, use a THORIUM CYCLE and things are peachy.
Of course, you have to have an “educated” enough populace to run such establishments.
I found, sadly, towards the end of my tenure in nuclear, that in the USA the “career office politicians” who run the electric utilities have an AVERSION to nuclear power BECAUSE it takes too much “intelligence” to run it.
Surprisingly I have been dragged KICKING AND SCREAMING to the conclusion that the “nuclear option” has to come from the “top down”, as in France. With a program run from the FEDERAL LEVEL. And, (shock, horror!) the “Feds” do need to be able to essentially CRUSH the opposition. Although I think in France that hasn’t been hard to do…as the opposition in nominal, and the average French 6th form (or grader) can be put to a chalkboard (or Power Point!) and asked to outline the nuclear power process and nuclear fuel cycle, and they can do it.
In the good old USA 6th graders can stretch a thin rubber latex device on a cucumber. Amazing!
Amazing that no one noted that China will have a declining working-age population in about 10-20 years, and an overall declining population by 2040-2050. No one ever mentions this (probably because they will still have a lot of people).
Fitzy says:
October 12, 2010 at 6:35 pm
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.
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Agreed, for those nations, apart from the U.S., I think the best thing to do for them is to stay out of the way, and make sure others stay out of the way. Somalia and the Sudan both have things to work out before they can be expected to have any meaningful economic activity. Sadly, I think much of the cause of their difficulties and others like them is because of the misguided influence other nations are exerting towards them.
I noticed that the Stern Review uses a much higher population estimate than the UN.
Max Hugoson says:
October 12, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Having worked in Nuclear Power for 20 years, I can assure you that THE ABILITY TO “POWER THE WORLD” exists!
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Yep, further, given the recent additions and future additions to the world’s nuclear club, I think it’ll be ok if we go ahead and reuse the spent rods. Sadly, with the time frame necessary to build one today, I fear we may to late to get any online before the U.S. has to do something dramatic to solve the impending electrical energy crisis. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner. We’ll come out of it fine, but it will include actions that shouldn’t have been necessary.
The US is adding 3 million a year when it’s already in drastic ecological overshoot. How exactly is reducing its population an insanity?
If something is an insanity, encourage further growth looks a lot more to be it.
Which is the reason why the Catholic church is opposed to all forms of birth control, and is also the reason why the fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the US tend to have a much higher fertility rate than the rest of the population. Not to mention the mormons, Amish, and the immigrants from Latin America…
Some more information for you uneducated mind – if you are in overshoot, an expanding middle class can only bring you further into overshoot. That’s not a terribly complicate concept to understand. Since we are already deep in overshoot, while lifting the more than 5 billion poor people from misery to middle class lifestyle may prevent us from getting to 15 billion and leave us at only 9, it will also increase our ecological footprint by several fold, i.e. we’ll be much deeper into overshoot. And will collapse even sooner as a result.
You have to be absolutely our of your mind due to being subjected by years and decades by religious or free market brainwashing (or both in your case), and/or you have to lack even the most basic scientific literacy to not see that
Another one who’s living on a planet different than the one I am living on. Where exactly did you see that “CO2 reduction”? Enlighten us please.
Because last time I checked emissions were not only not being reduced but rising fast, with the only reason why they are not rising even faster being the economic crisis.
Contrary view: We need more people.
Environmentalist Stewart Brand: ‘By Second Half of the Century the Population Crisis Will Be Seen As Not Enough People’
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/76047
And here we have the technofixers joining the party. Yes, thorium reactors can provide a lot of electricity. So far so good. However, there two “minor” problems with this when people jump from that fact to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing to worry about.
1. You can’t prevent collapse due to ecological overshoot by providing plenty of one resource because you collapse when the resource in shortest supply becomes limiting (a well known principle known as Liebig’s Law of the Minimum that’s been around for some 150 years). While given unlimited energy, you can overcome a lot of the other limits to growth, thorium will not provide unlimited energy, so we still have face those limits.
2. Since there isn’t a single thorium reactor that produces electricity in operation right now, there is no way thorium can make a difference on time to prevent collapse due to the collision of the BAU course of development with the realities of Peak Oil and other limits to growth which are already pressing hard on us.
Lots of good comments here. Hope I can live up to them.
By any objective measure this world is not overpopulated. Taken as a country, the world’s population density would be similar to Kazakhstan.
There is no shortage of energy–for the developed world. We can afford to be as cute and coy about what we use as super finicky restaurant goers picking at California cuisine.
The rest of the world cannot be so picky. They may jump on the CO2 bandwagon when it looks like money’s available, but ask them to choose between CO2 and reliable electricity–and start coughing.
The world’s population will peak at about 9.1 billion around 2075, give or take a couple of years. Given current rates of consumption and development, those 9.1 billion may require about 6 times as much energy as we use today.
The urbanization of the world’s population is a trend already in full swing, and we can measure important things by watching what has happened over the past half century.
Cities as a whole use less energy than urban areas, especially in developed countries. New York has what–3% of the U.S. population, but uses only 1% of its energy. But developing countries have to work to reach that plateau, going through the stages of construction, adequate infrastructure development, too many people to a room, adoption of appliances and motor vehicles, etc. They won’t have New York’s energy profile any time soon.
But they’re moving to the city because the farm they left behind does not have electricity at all, and they’re tired of burning kerosene for light and cow dung for heat. So, yes, they’re going to use more energy and more power to them.
As for demographic trends overall, about 46 countries, including China, start to decline in population about mid-century. Most of them are in Europe. America continues to grow at least until 2050, maybe longer depending on decisions we make about immigration.
Total fertility continues to fall, including in the developing world. That ship has sailed big time, and the population boom is over–we’re just dealing with the pig going through the python now.
The pill. Female education. Security in old age. Trust in better healthcare systems. A lot of factors are involved in this, and I sure don’t know which is most important.
But the population in 2100 is going to be smaller than the one in 2075, just from natural trends. And they are going to be laughing at us and our little worries… after they get over the shock of learning that we ate meat…
The simple answer to population growth is wealth. Once countries get wealthy, their rate of population growth declines, often going negative. But the prospect that billions of people might get rich and enjoy themselves, or (heaven forbid) that poor people might become wealthier than themselves, is too much for puritanical lefties to bear.
The answer to environmental problems (such as pollution) is also wealth. Once countries industrialise, they clean themselves up. The answer to natural disasters is also wealth (my city had a magnitude 7.1 earthquake last month, no deaths). You may begin to see a pattern here.
The surest way to wealth in the modern world is capitalism, free markets and globalisation. But we couldn’t have that, could we.
And the way to sustain wealth is not to reduce populations. Many rich countries or cities have shrinking populations that are not replacing themselves, and are dependent on immigrants and/or guest workers to maintain the labour force (and look after the aged). Singapore is an example well known to me. China itself is reliant on mass exodus of its population from the countryside to the cities. I suggest that these flows of migrants will not easily be sustained indefinitely, therefore successful future cities and states will be those that are able to at least replace their own populations.
There’s more than enough room and resources for everybody. Don’t worry, be happy. And do what you can to help others get wealthy, as this is good for them and for the planet. Environmentalism is anti-life. Ignore it.
All the best.
Well, you get an F in basic ecological literacy at the second sentence.
Population density tell you absolutely nothing. If we could move the whole population of the Earth to Neptune, there would be about 1 person per km2 there. And, assuming the were properly clothed so they don’t freeze immediately, they would die of starvation and dehydration very soon after.
What matters is the availability of resources necessary for sustaining a given population. And all of them, particularly the ones in shortest supply, not just some resource that’s particularly abundant that you cherry-picked. Moreover, it is not just the ability to sustain the population in the short term that has to be looked at, but the long-term carrying capacity – you can sustain a very large population for a short time by eating up your ecological capital, clearly not a desirable situation. By those criteria, the world has been deeply in overshoot for a while.
As I said, you fail the basic ecological literacy test, and you fail it as miserably as a Young Earth creationist would fail a geology test in college, i.e. you basically deny the very existence and relevance to the real world of the discipline…
Here we go again, another one who can’t work with single digit integers.
Here’s a simple math question for you.
If we:
1) have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet by some 30 to 40% (and rising)
2) are going to go from 7 billion to 9-10 billion in the next 40 years
3) are going to increase the per capita footprint of some 8 billion of those 10 billion by an order of maginute
Then by how much will we have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet in 40 years time?
Additional bonus question for the students who managed to at least get a D on the test so that they may make that D a C:
If the question above was asked without any consideration of the effects of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Uranium, Peak Phosphorus, and Peak Fossil Water occurring in the same period, how does the answer change when those are accounted for?
GM, sigh. Look at the people who define carrying capacity. Tell me that some of them are sane. I’ve seen no evidence of that to date.
Tell me just what resources we are running short of in the next 40 years? Maybe we could get a Julian Simon/Paul Ehrlich type of bet going.
When you get to define carrying capacity using the time-tested work of people like Paul Ehrlich and stuff like that, you can justify, as I’m sure you would, a carrying capacity of about 11 people. As long as it includes you.
“Some more information for you uneducated mind…”
Me not uneducated mind. Me see Hockeystick and know straight away no good. Read Icelandic Sagas you educated mind.
“That’s not a terribly complicate concept to understand…”
Overshoot with bigger middle class make more overshoot…maybe less people but more overshoot because several fold footprint. Big footprint much worse than many poor people, so never win. That terribly complicate!
“You have to be absolutely our of your mind due to being subjected by years and decades by religious or free market brainwashing (or both in your case), and/or you have to lack even the most basic scientific literacy to not see that”
Yet I’m not so out of my mind as to see the world and the life within it reduced to a bunch of facile equations and simplistic extrapolations.
You’ve probably got a good mind, GM. You probably are, as you imply, my mental superior by a long way. Yet it’s all going to waste. Stop loathing yourself, and you’ll develop the capacity to think.
GM is obviously an over educated elitist of marginal intellect. pg
GM says:
October 12, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Oh yes, I love debating with demographic illiterates. Most of the increase you are citing is from immigration. As job opportunities shift to other places, like Mexico or China, so to will the population shift. The U.S. is on the cusp of a population change that will reduce us to third world status.
drastic ecological overshoot get a grip man, we are about to join Japan , Russia, and Western Europe in a population crisis. The economies that can afford larger populations are shrinking. The expanding populations will dominate the world.
Well, those people are geologists, physicists, engineers, biologists, agricultural scientists, ecologists, and other experts in various scientific fields. Actually Ehrlich is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion, if he never existed, those conclusions would have still been reached by others, in fact they were before him (check the Hubbert papers from the late 40s and early 50s). In the same time, people on the other side are almost exclusively economists. Given the “spectacular” track records of economists in their own bubble-world fields, what exactly makes them qualified to speak on scientific issues regarding the physical world?
Oil, gas, coal, uranium, phosphorus, water, soil, fish, a laundry list of minerals. Plus, we have already run out of waste sinks.
Given the incoherent babbling you manage to type above, it apparently is indeed terribly complicated for you, because it doesn’t even reproduce the meaning of what I said, let a lone reveal any actual understanding of it.
“Mike Davis says:
October 12, 2010 at 5:08 pm”
There was couple, in Tasmanina, Australia if memory serves, who had 16 children (Possibly more now as it was a few years ago), ALL on welfare. The woman believed she was serving Australia proud.
GM says:
October 12, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Well, you get an F in basic ecological literacy at the second sentence.
Population density tell you absolutely nothing. If we could move the whole population of the Earth to Neptune, there would be about 1 person per km2 there. And, assuming the were properly clothed so they don’t freeze immediately, they would die of starvation and dehydration very soon after.
Actually, I would love to see anyone breathe in liquid helium/other nasty stuff and survive long enough to die of starvation and dehydration, but that is besides the point. I am just pointing out how you question someone’s science and then get something so fundamentally wrong there.
Here we go with the sustainability argument. Here is what will happen. When we reach the “tipping” point, poor people will die until there is enough food for everyone else. Some people who have not been outside of a city will resort to cannibalism while those of us who live in reality will go to the rural areas and work for a farmer if thats what it takes to survive. Then we reach equilibrium…where some people die, some people don’t breed, and others have herds of cattle at eight head a pop. Who knows? Is your solution to letting people in third world countries continue to live in misery and die off better then the harsh realities of our planet’s solution? Its up to you to prove it. I tend to like reality better then fantasy…And I think the best solution is to invest in industrializing the entire world so they can enjoy the same quality of life as we do. If we reach the maximum point as you say we will, then we let reality dictate to us what it will. Until then, I would rather everyone on our planet had the best life possible without interfering with other people’s lives.
Since you need this reminder, here I go; The Earth is a planet. It does not talk to us, it does not care whether we live or die, and it sure as hell does not have a magical number painted on its ass that tells every species what limit of them can exist on the planet.