Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to ScienceMag, the issue of Climate Change is now so urgent that all available options should be considered to reduce population growth in fast growing regions like Sub-saharan Africa.
Global warming policy: Is population left out in the cold?
John Bongaarts 1, Brian C. O’Neill 2,3
1 Population Council, New York, NY, USA.
2 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA.
3 University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA.
Email: jbongaarts@popcouncil.org
Science 17 Aug 2018:=
Vol. 361, Issue 6403, pp. 650-652
DOI: 10.1126/science.aat8680Would slowing human population growth lessen future impacts of anthropogenic climate change? With an additional 4 billion people expected on the planet by 2100, the answer seems an obvious “yes.” Indeed, substantial scientific literature backs up this intuition. Many nongovernmental organizations undertake climate- and population-related activities, and national adaptation plans for most of the least-developed countries recognize population growth as an important component of vulnerability to climate impacts (1). But despite this evidence, much of the climate community, notably the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the primary source of scientific information for the international climate change policy process, is largely silent about the potential for population policy to reduce risks from global warming. Though the latest IPCC report (2) includes an assessment of technical aspects of ways in which population and climate change influence each other, the assessment does not extend to population policy as part of a wide range of potential adaptation and mitigation responses. We suggest that four misperceptions by many in the climate change community play a substantial role in neglect of this topic, and propose remedies for the IPCC as it prepares for the sixth cycle of its multiyear assessment process.
…
Over the past decade, two unexpected developments have led to renewed concern about future population growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Fortunately, AIDS mortality has dropped sharply as treatment has become more accessible worldwide. In addition, and contrary to expectations, birth rates across sub-Saharan Africa have remained high, and declines in birth rates have stalled in several countries. As a result, the latest UN world population projection is the highest ever, expecting 11.2 billion in 2100, a nearly 4 billion rise from 2015 (4). Much of this rise is projected in sub-Saharan Africa (from 1 billion in 2015 to 4 billion in 2100), but Asia (excluding East Asia) and Latin America are also projected to grow substantially.
…
Policy Levers
Rapid population growth is one of the key drivers of emissions and one of the determinants of vulnerability to impacts; it therefore should be considered as a potential climate policy lever. A key first step in remedying the current neglect of the issue is for the IPCC to include population policy in its assessment of the literature on mitigation and adaptation options. Although the outline for the sixth IPCC assessment report has already been agreed upon (with no explicit mention of population policy), there is ample opportunity within its structure to assess literature on population policy as a component of mitigation or adaptation responses, as well as its costs and benefits, implementation barriers, and links to SDGs (see supplementary materials). The IPCC should also consider the inclusion of more social scientists experienced in reproductive health and population policy.
Beyond the IPCC, the climate and environmental communities and international development institutions should embrace scientifically sound analyses of population policy and human rights–based reproductive health programs. Other international environmental assessments (11, 15) have done somewhat better than the IPCC in covering this topic. Given the urgency of addressing climate change, all available options, especially those that have multiple benefits for sustainable development, should be assessed by experts and considered by governments.
Read more: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6403/650.full
This all seems awfully familiar – scientists promoting the view that scale adjustments to global population are desperately required to save the world from a catastrophe which is predicted by their models.
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China had the one child policy for decades and now is short on population to work and support the elderly in the population. Which brings up the rather interesting point that if we reduce populations, we also must cut benefits for the retirees. No more California-style hugh retirement deals. You work till you drop. There really isn’t any other option, short of private retirement funds only (which are based on what you actually saved) and even then we could run into problems. Asking to reduce the birth rate is asking to work till you die at your desk or running that piece of construction equipment, etc.
Sheri
Well, that must be a “good thing” since that’s what we used to do back with slave labor and animal transportation in the “perfect world” before Western white-heterosexual Christian families and inventors developed … er, fossil fuels. Ethics. Moral governments interested in individual freedom instead of national socialist dictatorships of theoretical academic beauty!
Any self-respecting welfare state has a level of benefits that requires an increasing population size. I wonder, if the Left had to choose between their state retirement benefits or their global warming dogma, which would they choose?
I don’t think the sub-Sahara contributes much to the world’s CO2, so shouldn’t the rich countries be targeted instead? Why didn’t they deal with that issue?
Do they recoil from the ‘caring’ outlook when it’s their own families that need to be adjusted for the greater good?
A public demonstration and commitment to auto-castration for the male members could restore much-needed credibility.
Or perhaps they should all get honest jobs instead of depending on middle-class welfare, which is what the ACGW industry is, for their income.
Macdonalds is hiring now!
Well…, it’s very easy to stop population growth in most poor regions:
1) stop bombing and sanctioning the hell out of these places
2) don’t interfere with their politics
3) make the Worldbank provide loans again to poor nations for building (cheap coal-) powerplants.
Child mortality = population growth
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the premise of the article, if you do not realize that the necessary technology to create diseases that will reduce the population of the earth already exists and is becoming available to a larger and larger number of people every day, you are uninformed.
To quote Admiral James Stavridis (link below), “The weaponization of biology is coming, and coming quickly. And our ability to control that process — or not – will determine our destiny.”
Foreign Policy magazine is not some obscure survivalist blog.
Because the financial and physical requirements are so low, keeping the technology out of the hands of people who might unleash a plague is probably not possible. What will happen is that defenses will become more sophisticated, but there will still be a lag between the introduction of a novel disease and the deployment of vaccines and treatments. Who gets what and when will be a political issue. Obviously there will be some sort of priority for first responders and other essential personnel.
The decision to unleash this sort of population control does not have to be that of some government or vast conspiracy, just a few dedicated believers in the righteousness of their cause.
Like the man said, “coming, and coming quickly.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/24/zika-is-just-the-first-front-in-the-21st-century-biowar/
Interesting, the hypothesis. I followed the link to the Foreign Affairs article. A thought-provoking story.
But thinking this out some, it seems that there should be telltale events that would precede such Doomsday bio-agent releases, that if we’re looking for, will be evident and thus alert inducing.
For instance, say the Glorious Wing Nutt, leader of Norkistan, decides that his nuclear program isn’t going to be very effective at bankrolling his anti-West amitions. But a factory that churns out biohazard agents, especially the ones that are alive and multiply like crazy … is perfect.
He goes into the production of various kinds of influenza virons, ostensibly to produce vaccines – especially since the technology is no further in the distance than a hypodermic needle and a bunch of fertile chicken eggs. At least the “producing them in quantity” angle. (Actually engineering … or digging up from graves and reintroducing … particularly virulent, destructive and high-mortality virii is quite a bit more complicated than just making MORE of them)
Thing is, that the bugs like to “get away”. Creep out of their Petri dishes and flasks, their vials and tubes. They aren’t imbued with consciousness, but their evolutionary proclivity to multiply like crazy, then hang out on surfaces waiting to be picked up by passing animals … almost guarantees that there’ll be accidents.
And the factory of chicken-eggs-making-virii suddenly comes down sick.
Or not! Their legitimate cover story, doing EXACTLY the same thing — producing quintillions of live viruses — which are turned into “safe” vaccines through partially denaturing (heat, chemicals) the little devils would have plenty of preëmptive vaccination antidote at the ready. One might never even have a local outbreak: King Krud’s henchmen would just vaccinate everyone working the plant, and quarantine the community (and vaccinate them like crazy) as well.
To me, this is why I think the INFLUENZA virus is potentially the most dangerous of agents in the technology base of an enterprising megalomaniac. They’re easy to reproduce, and very easy to acquire. From having biologist friends who were hip to talk about this back in the 1980s over dinner, it seems that even the mutation of the things “in vitro” (in labs) isn’t very difficult. Nuclear radiation is cheap and potent as a mutagen. Science can cook up hundreds of varieties of influenza viruses … if they want … in a matter of months. Sobering.
Thing is though, that even with the quarantining and walling-off of a nefarious production facility, even then … there are those pesky critters that people live with or raise for food. All the wild critters … birds especially, but also rats, squirrels, racoons, and so on. Dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, pigs, goats, sheep, cattle. They are ALL hosts to various inflenza viruses. Some of them are “close enough” to humans that they share influenza susceptabilities with us. Or are silent carriers.
Which is to say that in our 1980s discussions, we couldn’t make a credible argument for a totally impregnable compound in which the Bad Biologists would do their work, and which could totally keep the pathogens from escaping. Not without rather profound “prison compound on steroids” interlocks and expensive measures to purify the exhaust streams of the plant. Everything – sewage, ventillation exhaust, etc.
Anyway.
Happy thoughts.
If the “bad guys” really want to wage geographically total bio-war, they will be able to.
They have the PERFECT dispersal system as well: international airlines. Airports. FedEx. Tourists. Chinese trans-shipping agents. Imbedded operatives around the world. But mostly “families with kids” travelling. Kids are ridiculously fertile pathogen spreaders.
Back to our regular programming.
GoatGuy
“But thinking this out some, it seems that there should be telltale events that would precede such Doomsday bio-agent releases, that if we’re looking for, will be evident and thus alert inducing.”
Google “Jackson Ramshaw virus” and read a bit. The world did not know what they were up to and they accidentally created a virus that would wipe out an exposed mouse population. Apply that same technology to a human pox and the balloon might go up.
IIRC, in the Jackson Ramshaw case the disease was 100% fatal without a vaccine and 50% with.
Smallpox has been supposedly isolated, but its genetic code is on the internet and there are, even today, people with the ability to create a virus from the code.
The whole point of my post and the article is that we are approaching the time when you do not have to have great resources at hand to accomplish the act. A few aerosol cans of weaponized pox released in the right places at the right time would do quite a job.
Forewarned is forearmed.
You are assuming there is such thing as an effective flu vaccine, and that the flu vaccine doesn’t encourage dissemination of the virus.
Most of the bio-scares are on the same level as the global warming scare.
Most of the few humans with competence in this area know that they are likely the first victims, so they will never try. Government scale malevolence will also know that they could not control the damage, so what would they gain by trying?
It takes so much effort, trial and error, and resources plus commitment to maybe even come close to producing what the nastiest people could imagine. And yet the biggest, most effective, and most evil laboratory in the world by far, is Mother Nature. Every day for the last few billion years she has been cooking up biological warfare organisms, usually with little success. The mammalian immune system wasn’t born yesterday.
Practice scrupulous hygiene, boil your water, sterilize objects and skins regularly, and you can defeat most of the worst of Mother Nature’s plagues without recourse to pharmaceuticals.
The biggest danger is if most people suddenly got so frightened that they wouldn’t go to work for several days. A bit like Christmas in the UK, because eventually they know they have to go back to work and carry on as before to pay the bills.
Vaccines may be more dangerous than the disease.
Or Maybe not…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236284/
“All available options” never seems to include the option where they STFU and instead do something that actually helps the world. It is always about “levers”, i.e. “how can we force people to bend to our will”. They want to be the people telling others what to do, never the people doing it.
In the end nature will take care the population one way or the other.
I guess insurance-funded opioid deaths relate to this issue. Especially since the issue was not called out until general life expectancy numbers started to show it with a data reporting lag.
Soon these activists will drop the other shoe and declare that Der Zweck heiligt die Mittel. [The end justifies the means.]
War has a way of expanding the “Overton window” of what means are justified.
#HateLovesAbortion
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind a little less population density, but NOT by means of eradicating any current population, and NOT because of any connection whatsoever to the issue of climate change (human-caused or otherwise). I just think that the level of crowding in developed societies is ridiculous.
I think the focus of the population issue should be on economically DEVELOPED nations. Give the undeveloped nations a break, already. Help them to become developed, and encourage a population consciousness within that concept of “developing”.
Part of becoming more developed would seem to be allowing more breathing space for higher-level functioning in all respects. The crowding of developed civilization is what I find to be a contradiction of the whole idea of “development”. I think that “development” should be more spatially intelligent than I perceive that it currently is.
I think that there is intelligent population growth and intelligent development based on consciousness of clutter and crowding, and I do NOT, at all, associate this with climate. The climate card here is just parasitic opportunism, pushing a one-sided, fundamentally flawed point of view to fulfill an overriding political agenda.
Do all options include the one where they go first?
‘Would slowing human population growth lessen future impacts of anthropogenic climate change? With an additional 4 billion people expected on the planet by 2100, the answer seems an obvious “yes.”’
M’kay . . . these ‘future impacts’ will not limit population growth? Just how bad can these impacts be if we are going to increase population 50%?
“Climate change, where is thy sting?”
Best population control IMO:
1) your baby? then YOU (and sperm donor and your families etc) take care of it
2) INDIVIDUALS can contribute
3) NO government theft of taxpayer money to FORCE contributions
All Available Options –
I think we can still dig up the formula for Zylon B. If all means all.
The only viable conclusion I see is that sub-Saharans go for the immediate gratification with less concern for implications.
It seems until the ramifications hit them in the face, the explosive population growths will continue.
IMO we should not reward that with immigration allowances to Europe and the US, or they will overwhelm us, and the process continues.
For globalists and liberal elites, overwhelming us is what it’s all about. Cheap labor and more votes.
You just knew that population pruning agenda was hiding behind the mask of the scary climate change industry .
I have yet to see an earth has a fever promoter not jump to the line…..” well the planet has too many people anyways ” when their earth has a fever arguments are exposed as an exaggerated fraud .
Are fuel poverty deaths a climate policy lever too ? What an efficient way to eliminate the poor and elderly by the tens of thousands per year . Heck almost as much as drug deaths . Over 70,000 per year in the USA and climbing fast . Perhaps drug deaths could be another “climate policy lever ” ?
Get the government in the business ,maybe give away free drugs as a price signal to encourage weak and addictive persons to get off the planet while hypocrite A holes like Suzuki multiply … well like maggots .
Nothing is stopping environmentalists and progressives from not having children. If they want to remove themselves from the Gene Pool, that is there right.
Yeah, but it’s really everyone else’s rights they’re concerned with.
The phrase “All Available Options Should be Assessed” for Reducing Population Growth” proves my point. All available options are only the ones that converge on socialism. The only options that will be allowed end up justifying destruction of human lives and human prosperity on the speculation that humanity will be better off in the long run. This is nothing less that a renewal of Gaia worship, where the goal is to make the Earth pristine and pure once again by purging evil humanity from it.
Well, they’re getting closer to openly calling for a human cull.
Remember, eugenics’ ‘final solution’ only wanted to get rid of ‘mongrel races.’
So when do the human sacrifices start?
They already have. Little old ladies are dying of cold because they cannot afford to heat their flats in the housing schemes in Scottish winters, as the price of electricity is pushed up so that rich landlords can have subsidies for bird-killing windmills on their lands. Little old ladies sacrificed on the twin altars of Gaia and Mammon.
What stops population growth is economic development involving growth of wealth with education:
https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg
AGW activist policies that sabotage energy supply slow economic growth. They this also slow the deceleration of population growth and prolong higher CO2 emissions that would otherwise fall with birth rate reduction linked to economic improvement. Thus green energy policies are self-cancelling in regard to CO2 emissions and utterly pointless.
Can anyone say Paul Erlich.
I lived 7 years in the Highland of Tanzania as a Vocational teacher.
Monthly income was 25$ (now possibly 50$) – for the 10% of the population that had work. All the others lived as subsidence farmers, getting only one income after harvest.
Numbers of children per family about 5, the wealthier had less. If somebody would start a one-child policy, all the families would be at risk, if something would be happen to that one child. No social security.
Children helping on the farm, caring for the old people.
The poor do not emit CO2, but the wealthier with few kids.
Just give them wealth and the population growth will stop.
How do you reduce the population of the planet without being called a mass murderer, start a nuclear war. Relatively clean and simple, just a few billion deaths and lots of time to rebuild in their image.
Shared Climate Change Nobel prize for population control to Mao, Stalin, Pot and Hitler and all the other lesser mass murders.
I stopped reading when the 2nd sentence said 4 billion more people expected by 2100. Every credible estimate I have seen projects topping out short of 10 billion (so 2.5 billion more) around 2070 followed by a slow decline.
The UN revised its forecast a few years ago (FWIW).
http://www.cairco.org/blog/world-fertility-worlds-most-important-graph
Click on “Graphs” to see the 2017 revisions. You get a drop down box with nations and regions – “World” is one of the choices.
https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/