IS IT THE REAL PROBLEM WITH CLIMATE CHANGE?
We humans are already seeing and living with the consequences of higher temperatures all around the world. It is here to stay, and it is not going away. How much worse it may get will depend solely on ALL OF US HUMANBEINGS! What is at stake for humans? Everything. If we break it down to basics, it will be food insecurity, potable water insecurity, polluted food, air, and water, and because of sea level rise and new weather and climate shifts, migration of people all over the world. What could be the greatest contribution to our present situation is Earth’s human population growth. In 1800, there were 1 billion people on Earth. Today there are 8 billion. The population of humans doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion between 1950-1987.This was the fastest historical doubling which took only 37 years.
There is much debate in the scientific community about population growth and its effects on Earth. First, scientists differ greatly in their assessments of how many human beings Earth can sustain. Studies indicate anywhere between 2 billion and 1trillion people. There are also varying projections of what the population of humans will be between 2050 and 2100. Our world population reached 8 million people in November 2022. According to projections of the United Nations, our world population will be close to 9.7 billion by 2050, will peak at 10.4 billion sometime in the 2080s, and will stay there into the 2100s. China is currently the most populous nation with approximately 1.425 billion people, but its population has begun to decline and India, with a population of 1.414billion people, is expected to surpass China within the next year or so. As life expectancy around the world has increased and mortality has decreased, the world population has more than tripled since 1950. Because families have begun having fewer children around the world, the world population rate is now growing at its slowest rate since 1950. In many countries around the world, women on average are having closer to two children instead of five children which was the average back in 1950. It is also projected that by 2050, 8countries will constitute 50% of the world’s population growth. These countries are India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, the Philippines, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A key question is, can Mother Earth support and sustain 8 billion people now, and a lot more later? Most studies estimate the Earth’s capacity at or beneath 8billion people, although estimates range from 2 billion to 1 trillion people. But how do those studies estimating Earth’s sustainability anywhere between 2 billion and 1 trillion people translate into quality of life for all the people on Earth? We already see so many people around the world who are homeless or do not have enough food to eat or water to drink. Today, we already have a monumental crisis where 20%-25% of the world’s children younger than 5 years suffer from malnutrition. What about living space? The oceans will keep rising, consuming coastal and low-elevation land, and thirty percent of our planet’s land is already being used for agriculture and food production.
My first impression of world population growth was that we already have a huge number of people on Earth, and that the size of our growing population would definitely constitute the MAJOR IMPACT ON CLIMATE CHANGE. To me, it was simple math, and many people agree. If Earth adds 2 billion more people in the next 50-60 years, wouldn’t we expect there would be more emissions, greenhouse gases, garbage, pollution, and more pressure on resources, especially food and water? But many other people have a different point of view. They believe that population size is NOT the problem, and that Earth has the capacity to sustain a lot more people. Rather, our concerns over such things as food, water, healthcare, and housing are a product of our inequality, greed, and waste in how we use and consume resources. Inequality being an estimation that the wealthiest 10% on Earth consume about 20 times more energy than the poorest 10%. I decided to take a logical approach and look a bit deeper into the two different schools of thought.
As we emphasize in several of our articles, climate change IS being caused by heat-trapping emissions (greenhouse gases) produced when we burn coal, oil, gas, and when we cut down our forests. Therefore, our first premise is that humans are responsible for creating and releasing these heat-trapping gases and emissions into Earth’s atmosphere (at an alarming rate). Our second premise is that greenhouse gases and emissions are directly causing global warming and hastening the rate at which global temperatures are increasing on land and in water. Our next step is to consider the actual sources of these harmful emissions. Are the sources of greenhouse gas emissions equally distributed allover the world? Is it realistic to believe that all people in all countries equally contribute to these heat-trapping emissions? Should we expect to find that each of the countries in Africa create the same number of emissions as the United States, China, or some of the European countries? Let’s take a closer look.
The data shows that the richest 10 percent of our world population contributes 50percent of our annual greenhouse gases. How can this possibly be? We must first consider the sources of greenhouse gases which include cars, airplanes, trains, trucks, power plants, industry, buildings, and other parts of our lifestyles, economies, and carbon-intensive infrastructure which are all dependent on fossil fuels. We must also consider both the carbon-intensive production requirements and consumption patterns in the different countries around the globe. When we do, the data supports that the wealthier countries like the United States, and the wealthier people living within these countries, have higher carbon-intensive lifestyles and consume more than the less wealthy. For example, Kenya has a population of about 55 million which is about 95 times larger than the population of the state of Wyoming. Yet, Wyoming emits 3.7 times as much carbon dioxide as Kenya. Going a bit further, according to the Global Carbon Project, the entire continent of Africa with 16.7 percent of the world’s population, has historically emitted 3 percent of global carbon pollution while the United States with only 4.5 percent the world’s population, has emitted 21.5 percent of heat-trapping carbon dioxide since 1959. To me, these were wild statistics.
Therefore, the data supports the proposition that ALL countries are NOT equally responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, and likewise, that all people on Earth are NOT equally responsible. It is also likely that the more wealthy and powerful countries with greater emissions like the United States would also have very powerful, wealthy, and influential fossil fuel companies, utilities, trade groups, unions, and politicians promoting and protecting the existing carbon-intensive infrastructure. Available data also confirms that the impacts of climate change are disproportionately impacting countries and populations contributing the least to climate change. WOW! All this information was a gamechanger for me!
However, what maybe a certain reality attributable to population growth is food and water insecurity. I haven’t yet come across any studies of Earth’s capacity to sustain humanity that also addresses the quality of life most people will have on a very crowded planet. I certainly cannot imagine what life would be like with a trillion people on Earth, can you? So, what can we possibly do about population growth? If certain governments are ONLY concerned about human consumption and not population growth, aren’t they also missing the mark? There seem to be many countries ignoring the rights and needs of all people, but especially women and girls. Wouldn’t it make sense to educate and employ women? Besides improving their lives, women could also be educated in family planning, and hopefully have access to modern contraception. Less children would help to reduce the impacts of climate change. “According to the UN population fund (UNFPA), 257 million women have an unmet need for proper contraception, half of all global pregnancies are unplanned, and nearly a quarter of all women do not have enough agency to refuse sex.”
Seeing the big picture has changed my mind. Population certainly appears to be a very significant contributing factor which humanity cannot ignore and MUST address, but it certainly isn’t the ONLY factor. There does not appear to be a simple and direct relationship or correlation between human population numbers and environmental impacts like greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, pollution, and loss or endangerment of other species on Earth. Production of greenhouse gases for carbon-intensive lifestyles and consumption patterns around the world are equally important factors to be included in the equation with population growth. Other than the Brazilian government, should we place blame on anyone else for the destruction of the Amazon forests? Brazil elected to burn down and clear massive amounts of pristine forests to raise livestock and grow cash crops, which may have some benefit for Brazilians, but will primarily be for export. But what do we expect? We live in a capitalist system “focused almost exclusively on profits and not social needs.” Don’t get me wrong here. I am not advocating socialism. But humanity needs to start thinking outside the box and start coming up with solutions for our global predicament to avoid the consequences to both our environment AND to humanity, which have already been mapped out for us in detail over the last 4 or 5 decades. But do not despair. Very cool things are beginning to take shape and we will have a new section dedicated to these new ideas, processes, and technologies. WE JUST NEED A FEWHUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE TO GET ON BOARD SO OUR VOICES CAN BE HEARD AND WE CANMAKE A DIFFERENCE! SO PLEASE TELL ALL YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS AND FRIENDS TO CLIMBABOARD AND JOIN US!
References:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/world-population-reaches-8-billion-people-with-india-expected-to-surpass-china-.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/15/population-8-billion-climate?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/11/11/world-population-2022-reaches-8-billion/8323453001/
https://abcnews.go.com/International/world-faces-food-insecurity-crisis-global-population-reaches/story?id=93347906
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/20/dont-panic-about-birth-baby-8-million-before-hes-65-numbers-will-be-in-reverse?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/11/15/is-population-growth-fuelling-climate-change-its-not-that-simple-say-experts
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-population
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/World-Population-Prospects-2022
https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-reach-8-billion-15-november-2022
