Environment & Society: Perspectives on Population and Resources

Perspectives on Doom and Gloom

The Doomsday Clock

• The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, currently stands at 89 seconds to midnight as of January 28, 2025, indicating a perceived high level of global risk.

Human Population Growth

• The world population has reached 8 billion people, prompting discussions about the implications of continued growth.

• India has surpassed China as the world’s most populous country. In 2021, approximately 67,000 babies were born in India on a single day. China's population decreased by 850,000 between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022.

• The UN projects the human population will reach approximately 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100.

• This represents an additional 385,000 people per day.

• The annual population growth rate is decreasing, leading to differing interpretations of whether this is positive or negative news.

Malthusian View

• Thomas Malthus (1789) posited that population increases geometrically (e.g., 1, 2, 4, 8…) while food production increases arithmetically (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4…), leading to eventual global starvation.

• Malthus could not foresee modern technology's impact on expanding food production.

• “Preventive checks” are social customs that govern fertility, such as age at marriage and norms assigning responsibility to fathers.

• “Positive population checks” include famine, disease, and conflict over land, representing natural limits to growth.

• Malthusians advocate rethinking social policies to avoid promoting the welfare of the poor, as it may encourage reproduction and create resource waste. They suggest actively engaging in check-oriented infrastructure planning.

Neo-Malthusians

• Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1971) argued that the planet's capacity to support human life has been permanently impaired.

• Linkola (1994) suggested a world war could benefit the planet.

• Lester Brown (2011) warned about preventing environmental and economic collapse in “World on the Edge”.

Limits to Growth (1972)

• A study by Meadows et al. (1972) predicted that if current growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth will be reached within the next 100 years, potentially leading to a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

• The study suggested altering these growth trends to establish ecological and economic stability, ensuring basic material needs are met and providing equal opportunity for individuals.

• The sooner efforts begin, the greater the chances of success.

Limits to Growth (1992)

• Meadows et al. (1992) stated that human use of essential resources and generation of pollutants have surpassed sustainable rates.

• Without significant reductions in material and energy flows, there will be an uncontrolled decline in per capita food output, energy use, and industrial production.

• To avoid this decline, a comprehensive revision of policies and practices that perpetuate growth in material consumption and population is necessary, along with a rapid increase in the efficiency of material and energy use.

• A sustainable society is technically and economically possible, requiring a balance between long-term and short-term goals and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life.

Cornucopian Perspective

• Humans are innovative and can find ways to feed a growing population through advancements like the Green Revolution and fertilizers (Boserup).

• Worst predictions have not come true, and human well-being is better than ever.

UN Human Development Index (HDI)

• HDI includes: life expectancy at birth, education index (mean and expected years of schooling), and GNI per capita.

• HDI has improved the most since 1980, mainly in Asia (China and India), due to rapid GDP growth. Slower-growing countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh have made progress in health and education. HDI has improved the least in Africa, with Zimbabwe at the bottom.

• As of September 2021, approximately 698 million people remain in extreme poverty, nearly half in India and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries.

• The percentage of people who live on 1.90 per day is falling, but the pace of poverty reduction is slowing.

Consumption vs. Population

• Environmental thinkers argue that rapid rise in consumption, not population growth, is the most pressing environmental issue.

• There are enough resources to feed the world, even in 2050 when numbers peak; the problem is inequities in consumption.

• We consume 1.4 Earths’ worth of resources per year.

• If everyone consumed like Americans, we’d need 5.4 Earths to sustain us.

• The USA consumed 17% of world’s energy in 2019 with only 5% of the global population.

• The Indian middle class is expected to grow from 5% to 41%, totaling 583 million people, leading to increased resource use and greater environmental pressure.

Earth Overshoot Day

• Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity's demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.

• If we compare 1 Earth in 1970 to 1.75 Earths in 2019, we can see we are far exceeding the planet's maximum regenerative ability as the date occurs earlier each year.

Food Waste

• Approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced for human consumption are lost or wasted each year, costing roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries.

World Hunger

• In 2019, an estimated 821.6 million people were undernourished, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

• The increase in hunger is due to neglect of agriculture relevant to very poor people, the current worldwide economic crisis, and the significant increase in food prices.

• Poor nutrition plays a role in at least five million child deaths per year.

Ecological Stress

• National Geographic (2010) reported that all but 10% of large fish in seas have been plundered.

Soil Degradation & Erosion

• Approximately one quarter of Earth’s fertile soil is degraded (NG, 2010).

• Erosion rates exceed formation rates.

• In the US, annual soil loss exceeds 5 billion metric tonnes.

• Experts estimate that 99% of the world's food comes from the soil, and each year, >10 million hectares of cropland are degraded or lost.

• According to UN figures (The Guardian, 2004), approximately 300 million hectares have been severely degraded and cannot produce food.

Environmental Costs

• There is no consensus that ‘natural resources’ are running out.

• An influential idea remains that there are limits to the extent to which we can degrade biological systems and still benefit from them (carrying capacity, ecological footprints).

• Many environmentalists worry that the success of the past five decades has degraded the ecological foundation of the economy, making it difficult to replace lost productivity with fossil fuels or minerals.

Environmental Change and Conflict

• An estimated 25 million people are environmental refugees, and by 2050, this could jump to 200 million.

• Climate change, increased aridity, extreme rainfall, flooding, and rising sea levels pose a displacement threat.

• Armed conflicts and environmental stress due to climate change increase the risk of political instability or war as a result of water scarcity.

• Approximately 1.4 billion people now live in water-stressed river basins, estimated to double by 2050.

• Increased migration and displacement also pose challenges.

Family Planning

• Family planning debates continue, focusing on helping every woman bear a child in good health when she wants one.

• This includes the availability of family planning and access to education.

• Approximately 200 million fertile women have no access to contraception, resulting in 80 million unwanted pregnancies.

• When available, most women have fewer children, and better-educated women have fewer children.

Depopulation

• Population growth is slowing rapidly, and population could peak much earlier than expected, topping 10 billion in the 2060s, then begin to fall.

• Japan is experiencing a population decline of 100 per hour.

• Depopulation has been underway for decades in much of Europe, North America, and Northern Asia.

A New Hope?

• Calls for urgent optimism suggest focusing on how we can survive and thrive together.

• Strategies like depopulation and degrowth are debated, with arguments that the former is unnecessary and the latter would leave most people impoverished.

Summary

• Population growth rate is falling, but absolute numbers remain high.

• Food production has kept pace with population growth over the last 50 years.

• High environment costs threaten our ability to sustain food production in the future.

• There is a need to protect soil resources and introduce more environmentally friendly methods of food production.

• Future climate change will make society more vulnerable to environmental hazards and degradation.

• The debate is framed within Malthusian and Cornucopian perspectives – finding a path through this is key.