By Jenny Stewart*
There is a growing consensus that environmental problems, particularly the effects of climate change, pose a grave challenge to humanity. Pollution, habitat destruction, intractable waste issues and, for many, deteriorating quality of life should be added to the list.
Economic growth is the chief culprit. We forget, though, that environmental impacts are a consequence of per capita consumption multiplied by the number of people doing the consuming. Our own numbers matter.
Population growth threatens environments at global, national and regional scales. Yet the policy agenda either ignores human population, or fosters alarm when perfectly natural trends such as declining fertility and longer lifespans cause growth rates to fall and populations to age.
That there are still too many of us is a problem few want to talk about. Fifty years ago, population was considered to be an issue, not only for the developing world, but for the planet as a whole. Since then, the so-called green revolution in agriculture made it possible to feed many more people. But the costs of these practices, which relied heavily on pesticide and fertiliser use and relatively few crops, are only now beginning to be understood.
The next 30 years will be critical. The most recent United Nations projections point to a global population of 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100. There are 8 billion of us now. Another 2 billion will bring already stressed ecosystems to the point of collapse.
The latest global population projection from the United Nations. UN World Population Prospects 2022, CC BY.
It’s the whole world’s problem
Many would agree overpopulation is a problem in many developing countries, where large families keep people poor. But there are too many of us in the developed world, too. Per person, people in high-income countries consume 60% more resources than in upper-middle-income countries and more than 13 times as much as people in low-income countries.
From 1995 to 2020, the UK population, for example, grew by 9.1 million. A crowded little island, particularly around London and the south-east, became more crowded still.
Similarly, the Netherlands, one of the most densely populated countries, had just under 10 million inhabitants in 1950 and 17.6 million in 2020. In the 1950s, the government encouraged emigration to reduce population densities. By the 21st century, another 5 million people in a tiny country certainly caused opposition to immigration, but concern was wrongly focused on the ethnic composition of the increase. The principal problem of overpopulation received little attention.
Australia is celebrated as “a land of boundless plains to share”. In reality it’s a small country that consists of big distances.
As former NSW Premier Bob Carr predicted some years ago, as Australia’s population swelled, the extra numbers would be housed in spreading suburbs that would gobble up farmland nearest our cities and threaten coastal and near-coastal habitats. How right he was. The outskirts of Sydney and Melbourne are carpeted in big, ugly houses whose inhabitants will be forever car-dependent.
Non-stop growth means our cities are becoming less efficient and liveable. Harley Kingston/Shutterstock.
Doing nothing has a high cost
The longer we do nothing about population growth, the worse it gets. More people now inevitably mean more in the future than there would otherwise have been.
We live very long lives, on average, so once we’re born, we tend to stick around. It takes a while for falling birthrates to have any impact.
And when they do, the population boosters respond with cries of alarm. The norm is seen as a young or youngish population, while the elderly are presented as a parasitical drag upon the young.
Falling reproduction rates should not be regarded as a disaster but as a natural occurrence to which we can adapt.
Recently, we have been told Australia must have high population growth, because of workforce shortages. It is rarely stated exactly what these shortages are, and why we cannot train enough people to fill them.
Population and development are connected in subtle ways, at global, national and regional scales. At each level, stabilising the population holds the key to a more environmentally secure and equitable future.
For those of us who value the natural world for its own sake, the matter is clear – we should make room for other species. For those who do not care about other species, the reality is that without a more thoughtful approach to our own numbers, planetary systems will continue to break down.
Cutting births by just 0.5 children per woman can dramatically reduce the level at which the world’s population peaks. UN World Population Prospects 2022, CC BY.
Let women choose to have fewer children
So, what to do? If we assume the Earth’s population is going to exceed 10 billion, the type of thinking behind this assumption means we are sleepwalking our way into a nightmarish future when a better one is within our grasp.
A radical rethink of the global economy is needed to address climate change. In relation to population growth, if we can move beyond unhelpful ideologies, the solution is already available.
People are not stupid. In particular, women are not stupid. Where women are given the choice, they restrict the number of children they have. This freedom is as basic a human right as you can get.
A much-needed demographic transition could be under way right now, if only the population boosters would let it happen.
Those who urge greater rates of reproduction, whether they realise it or not, are serving only the short-term interests of developers and some religious authorities, for whom big societies mean more power for themselves. It is a masculinist fantasy for which most women, and many men, have long been paying a huge price.
Women will show the way, if only we would let them.
*Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, UNSW Sydney.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
108 Comments
New Zealand was a better place to live with a population of two million. If we let it drift back to that we would actually be richer.
My family lived just off Dominion Road (Auckland) in the 1960s. We did not have much money, but life was marvellous.
In the 2020s it would be a nightmare.
100'000 signatures mean the people will have to vote on the issue. Wether they agree or not is yet to be seen. Also what is the practicality? Obviously less immigrants, which easier said than done, then tell people to have no more than two kids per family? Try putting this in to law!
Most people in Switzerland struggle to pay the bills like everyone else in the West. Two incomes are a necessity.
It is my experience of decades in the country is that the one thing stopping Swiss families being larger is that the average Swiss can't afford to have more children. Quite simple a simple concept.
The majority go on in silence while departments are set up to look after the squeaky wheels.
If we are to last into the long term future, then we need a system which not only positively benefits humans, but the environment too.
Economic growth for the sake of increased GDP thanks to population increase is not good enough. In many places it means a decline in living standards per capita. It is mediocrity labelled as progress.
Here in Canterbury, driving in and out of Christchurch used to be a lot quicker 30 years ago but now noticeably takes longer as more and more people sit in traffic… this is an externality borne by the citizens but the increased consumption improves the GPD stats.
We could also talk about the declining water quality, or the loss of highly productive soils to urban development… all progress in terms of GDP but a continued decline in living standards.
For economic growth to be a viable goal in future, it needs to benefit humans individually, collectively as a civilisation and also to somehow benefit the planet we depend upon, all the while harnessing more and more cheap energy to keep the whole thing running… in my view this is never going to happen.
We need a new system.
That's a very anthropocentric way of interpreting what should, or shouldn't be? Surely carrying capacity should be a starting point for determining population? Land mass is not all created equal. A hectare of Mackenzie country, West coast swamp, or North island Papa is not ripe for urban sprawl, or Intensification for supplying resources.
What is the objective here? Why the obsession to full the place up with as many humans as possible? Do heaving throngs of humanity make a place attractive habitat for humans? For those seeking sardine can living arrangements there are huge areas of the planet already modified for their desired living arrangements. Half of NZ land has already been co-opted for human occupation, or extraction. The other half is not productive in the human exploitation sense.
I can't agree we are sleepwalking. This is deliberate activity undertaken by those infected with the self terminating disease, mythological anthropgenic supremacy disorder. Unfortunately the symptoms of the disease include a single minded drive to dominate and accumulate resources. We inevitably end up with these diseased individuals setting the agenda and surrounding themselves with impenetrable barriers to change.
It's reproductive maximisation theory on steroids.
My father (no siblings) and all his Cousins lived until their mid nineties, but they were brought up on good organic diets farming in the Wairarapa and Hokianga. I believe that we, and our kids, have consumed far more processed foods during our upbringing, so wonder if lifespans will be the same?Modern medicine may help, but surely that is going to get harder to access with age and weight related issues flooding the health system?
I thought we already knew the causes of those afflictions? Heart disease, lifestyle, cancer, toxic industrial civilisation.
If you know the causes, you don't need the magic pills, just how to avoid.
I know, I know, magic pills are where the money is, same with selling junky lifestyles and toxic products.
no one has a good solution
Depends how you define 'good' I guess, but population growth wouldn't be a problem in NZ if we turned off the immigration tap like we did during covid. So, the solution is no/low immigration as natural birth rates are already below replacement in NZ. We don't make the laws in other countries, but we certainly could sort out our own backyard.
Anyone who thinks they can retire at 65 and then expects the young to look after them despite preventing the same from obtaining security from owning their own homes is the problem. But sure, let them import their servants provided they pay upfront for their additional consumption/costs inflicted on NZ Inc.
Did we turn off the population growth during COVID? All those extra bodies that were present at shut down were given a fast track to residency. I would say we were exactly where we would have been ex COVID when borders opened.
No one asks for this population growth, apart from those cashing in of course, but we get it anyway.
The exponential growth cult is 100% responsible for "preventing the same from obtaining security from owning their own homes".
Fertility rates are already plummeting across most of the globe. This is particularly acute in two of the three areas with the highest global population density: Western Europe and Southeast China (Indias fertility rate is now under 2 and steadily declining but not as rapidly as the other two.)
Response to steralising ourselves with our own waste.
'Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045'
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/28/shanna-swan-fertility-r…
Wow, poor people are fat because they are eating the wrong food and getting no exercise. A diet of soft drinks and chips and all the wrong cheap foods high in fat and sugar. Saw a girl of about 5 to 7 the other day on a bike, not a real bike of course it was an E Bike so getting no exercise. The next generation are doomed.
It would be pretty easy to prove wouldn’t it? Get someone to eat 2k calories of maccas every day. Last time I looked most doctors believed weight was more about calories not type of food.
Anyway my point was that most of us could eat significantly less and still not be starving.
and still not be starving
If you define starving as feeling hungry, then I'd disagree. Eating sugar/carbs, for some of us at least, makes you strongly crave more. As someone who was overweight for most of my life from prior to school I can say mainly eating meat with fat and fasting to get my body fat adaptive was the key. While I never completely excluded carbs myself, I don't think the long-term answer is to limit calories from a practical perspective (technically sure, calories in vs calories out will control weight). Practically, if you teach people to become fat adaptive again so they no longer feel hungry then that is a much nicer way for them to live.
I read a book recently about ultra processed foods and I learnt something. The food companies go for a crisp outside and a soft inside. Things that have a snap when you bite into them are addictive. A 50/50 combination of fat and sugar will keep you coming back for more until the whole cheesecake is gone.
Nowadays when I'm wandering around the supermarket and think I'd really like some of those gluten free rice crackers I think to myself No they are addictive little slabs of fat soaked carb that you only want because of the addictive snap of the first bite, so resist the trick.
The younger people are more porky these days because they haven't learnt to resist all the lower price everyday temptations all around us. A method to resisting the temptation is to become aware of the tricks the food companies are using to get you to eat fat + carb combinations that would be disgusting without deep frying, salt and sugar.
Many of my British Victorian ancestors had little choice but to make up the missing calories by eating a lot of bread and jam (carbs and sugar), it was all they could afford. We seem to be going back to those times except the baking and packaging is more sophisticated.
Seriously? Synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, made from natural gas, is the reason half the worlds population actually exists! To give one example.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-with-and-without-fe…
By demonising the self entitled I guess? Amazing what social pressure can do. Why should you spread your genes around on a full planet when it negatively affects everyone and everything else?
Obviously less people wouldn't solve all the problems caused by humans, because we are a nasty violent species, but we may be able to match our consumption and waste production to what our one planet can provide, instead of needing 2 or 3 mythical extra planets?
In NZ we don't need to do anything other than stop doing what we're doing.
That is, giving away residency for cents in the dollar only to be on sold by private employers/agents/educational institutes. For example, these guys: Nearly 200 employers stripped of right to hire migrants over visa scams (msn.com)
Oddly, the population bomb is what will cause the population collapse. Exactly as predicted. Keep up your comfy denial though. That the growth cult has owned all the messaging since the seventies is truly depressing, but hey I don't dwell on it and I get a lot of enjoyment pricking growth cultist bubbles. " :-)
"For those of us who value the natural world for its own sake, the matter is clear – we should make room for other species." How much room does this author need?
"Half of the 1.5 billion people added to planet Earth from 2000 to 2019 lived on just 1.1 percent of its surface.
...Half of the additional GDP generated from 2000 to 2019 came out of 3,600 microregions the cover just 0.9 percent of the world’s land mass. Twenty-seven percent of the global population lived in them in 2019, totalling two billion people."
https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/Pixels-of-progress-chapter-1
You need to understand the difference between where they live, and all the resources elsewhere required to sustain them.
The densly populated cities/countries are not self sufficient. They are pillaging the global oceans, and importing grains, meat, fruit and vegetables from less populated areas.
Learn about rural depopulation and precision agriculture. Peak farmland is upon us. Data below from those evil cherry pickers ourworldindata.org.
"After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’
The world produces more food than ever, but the amount of land we use is now falling. This means we can feed more people while restoring wild habitat.
We see this decoupling in the chart that presents the UN FAO’s data. It shows that global agricultural land – the green line – has peaked while agricultural production – the brown line – has continued to increase strongly, even after this peak.6
This shows that feeding more people does not have to mean taking habitat away from other wildlife. This decoupling means that we can produce more while giving land back to nature at the same time."
https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land
Please check out my 2KID Facebook page
Population forecasts can change very rapidly. Given fertility rates are falling not growing 10 billion might be a pipe dream. Take Korea- "By 2100, [South Korea's] population will fall by 53% to 24 million, up from a 43% decline forecast in 2019."
Other forecasts don't even have the globe hitting 10 billion and given how rapidly fertility rates are falling I wouldn't bet on reaching 10 billion.
"On the other hand, neither the IHME nor IIASA models expect global population to reach 10 billion, instead forecasting a peak of 9.7 billion in the 2060s (IHME) or 9.4 billion in 2070 (IIASA). Both models also predict population to fall back to the 8 billion range by 2100."
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/when-will-the-global-population-reach-…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/fastest-aging-wealth…
Some models are better than others huh Prof? I have seen some calculations that we are at peak population now. That wouldn't surprise me. Most of the calculations adopted by the UN etc merely extrapolate recent trends into the future. i.e. declining birth rate trend, declining death rate trend=peak population at xxxx date in the next few decades. Those countries where population = prestige(big dick syndrome), have been fudging figures for a while. Population could fall off a cliff in the NEAR TERM. Climate, war, self inflicted industrial chemical sterilisation, energy scarcity, social collapse itself, pandemic, a mix, and hey presto, the anthropocene era is history.
I agree, I think the population forecasts are optimistic. The UN has a history of overestimating fertility. Look at the Korea example above to see how sensitive these projections are to fertility rate in the space of a few short years.
"...The highest forecast came out in 1973. That forecast numbered 6.49 billion, only 6% higher than the current estimate of 6.09 billion. However, the difference is much larger in terms of population growth. The 1973 forecast covered the period 1965–2000. During those 35 years, a growth in world population by 3.20 billion was foreseen. According to the current estimate, the growth was 16% lower: only 2.7 billion persons.
An important reason for lower population growth is that the world’s birth rates fell stronger than previously thought. Thirty years ago, the UN expected a drop in total fertility by 1.4 children between the periods 1965–1970 and 1995–2000: from 4.7 to 3.3 children per woman on average. Recent estimates indicate that fertility initially was higher than previously thought, and that it fell steeper than expected in that 30-year period, from 4.9 to 2.8."
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-05075-7_9
The problem is the so called intelligent people consuming to much of the available resources and blaming the suppossedly unintelligent. How many "intelligent people" can you fit into aircraft and fly around the globe gawking at "unintelligent" and buying their lovely trinkets before the penny actually drops about who's intelligent.
Population gloom merchants have been peddling this nonsense for decades and have been proven wrong. Far from starving to death, we have more people AND less hunger. We're making progress on every continent. Some ecosystems are under pressure, but the entire ecosphere is not. We're going to be OK. Frankly I'm more worried about what children are being taught. I have a 7 year old niece who literally trembled when we drove by a Fonterra facility; she was led to believe that's "where climate change comes from" and took it to be a quite confronting, immediate risk to her and our safety. Kids are going to be so damaged from this level of paranoia they're being stuffed with at our schools.
This story illustrates perfectly the issue with overpopulation, especially if heavy infrastructure investment does not occur. No driving on roads till Wednesday, good people of Tauranga.
What a debacle.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350175237/people-tauranga-are-asked-sta…
South Island is empty indeed. And wonderful to live in.
You do realise as well I hope we are much richer than folk further north, great exporters, and high tech.
Food and coffee is good too.
There is mismanagement, letting others in. I am one.
Did you know more Aucklanders move out of there than move in (within NZ). Been that way for many years.
Much richer? I thought incomes were lower in the South Island?
The South Island benefits hugely from the North. If it were its own country it would be difficult for so few people to pay for everything a country needs, particularly specialist healthcare. The ChCh earthquake may have almost bankrupted it.
The problem I have with the edulites from the big city is that's mostly what they get to see. People.
The trends are clear - lower birth rates across the industrialised world have been in place since the mid 1960's. The more industrialised we get the lower the birth rate. Solution, immigration. The more educated we get the lower the birth rate as the article states. Solution, immigration. As such, a third of the people on the planet have already bought into the above.
The other two-thirds haven't because a) they are not very industrialised & b) they are not very well educated. Solution, get the other two-thirds educated & industrialised quickly, although I expect to be accused or cancelled on the industrialised part. There is also the issue of being educated but not having access to your own birth control means because of the way some societies [often religious] choose to be. In Africa's case, however, it's both.
My pick? We may be struggling to get to 9 billion as the boomers die away, which has already begun.
Is that cheering I can hear in the background?
Industrialisation does drop birth rates and weights.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/28/shanna-swan-fertility-r…
Our monetary system requires two main things to avoid collapse: An increase in debt and more people taking on said debt. It’s basically a Ponzi scheme. If these two things reverse, then we’ll get a shrinking of the money supply and likely a depression.
Monetary reform is needed at some point in the future. If we keep the system we’ve got, our leaders will have no choice but to keep the population increasing, and to encourage more borrowing.
Men do suffer from the biological hormone driven impertive to sire as many offspring as possible. If there were no consequences, I doubt there would be many men resisting the urge to spread their seed as far and wide as possible.
Perhaps if men actually went through the physical process of childbirth, they mightn't be so keen?
Next Monday we'll get the total fertility rate from stats NZ about last quarter and the full 2023 year. It was 1.58 last quarter. I won't be surprised if we are under 1.5 within the next year. Then it will become headlines and a part of the national conversation.
Then young people will feel like the pressure is off for them to have kids because others aren't also, leading to further falls in birth rates. Time will tell.
Ex fossil input, even the South Island is overpopulated.
We have history to tell us of the fighting - and it was over resources; mainly food when you get right down to it.
I've just been reading of a NI Maori tribe vanquishing a Banks Peninsula tribe, and salting the meat to take home. In European times. We forget about energy and food and ex-fossil energy base-lines.
At our peril.
Population is increasing. We live like kings of yore. Yet we still like GDP to "grow".
There are educated choosing not to have children, and I would say uneducated, choosing to have children.
There are educated choosing to have children, and I would say uneducated, choosing to have children.
We complain about the effects of over population yet don't mind dredging, backfilling and excavating our harbour to put in an artificial stadium knowing this will add pressure to any remaining ecosystems in the inner harbour. I remember the marina water was light green and see-thru, now is like black colour. Oh well, it is the price of progress.
If only we would let them? Huh? Is she referring to abortion? If so, why not make that explicit? Otherwise what does she mean exactly? If we are already seeing birth rates decline in western countries, then the only way the population is increasing is via immigration from non-western countries. Has the author seen who votes for pro-immigration parties (I think women "lead the way" here). I suspect the author is one of those lefties who cannot see their own contradictions, given this addition to the article:
"another 5 million people in a tiny country certainly caused opposition to immigration, but concern was wrongly focused on the ethnic composition of the increase"
Sure okay. I think the reality is actually the reverse, in that she is okay about population growth, so long as it isn't white.
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