Posted on 10/18/2009 11:29:26 AM PDT by Lorianne
Population growth is the real driver for higher greenhouse gas emission, so why don't more mainstream solutions start there?
Andrew Revkin, an environmental reporter for The New York Times and author of the paper's Dot Earth blog, warns that the math is pretty depressing.
There are about 6.8 billion people on the planet today, a number projected to get to 9 billion by 2050. Americans, the world's greatest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, produce about 20 tons of the stuff per person, per year. If we were to cut that in half, as emissions rose with the quality of life in much of the Third World, and everyone on the planet met around 10 tons per person, per year, simple multiplication says we'd collectively emit 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually come 2050.
That's three times the already problematic current number.
When we start to think about that number, 9 billion, a lot of "cheery suppositions" about what the world can do to curb climate change evaporate, Revkin said (via carbon footprint-minimizing Skype from his desk in New York). He spoke to an event in Washington discussing population trends and climate change, and the media that seldom correlate the two.
The interrelated topics aren't likely to get much talk when global leaders meet in Copenhagen in December for the next round of wrangling over a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. But at least the media could start highlighting the sensitive relationship, as was suggested at the talk hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center.
A couple of mental roadblocks emerge, central among them the sentiment that, well, there are just too many people on the planet, so what are we supposed to do about it? Any answer trips up against the politically touchy topic of family planning (a distinctly different concept, reproductive-health advocates stress, from "population control").
"The single most concrete, substantive thing a young American could do is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius," Revkin said. "It's having fewer kids."
But this is just a thought exercise, he cautions, and no model for the kind of official policy most Americans would want to live with. A recent study, though, by the London School of Economics and the British-based Optimum Population Trust, suggests meeting the world's unmet need for access to reproductive health would be the most effective and cheapest way to start dramatically cutting carbon dioxide.
Each $7 spent on basic family planning between now and 2050 would reduce emissions by more than a ton, the research says. To get the same reduction through alternative energy would cost at least $32 (or, as much as $83 to implement carbon capture and storage in coal plants, $92 to develop plug-in hybrids, or $131 for electric vehicles).
Providing such family planning over the next four decades would be the equivalent of reducing global CO2 by six times America's annual emissions.
All of this, though, assumes there's nothing controversial about getting birth control to rural Africa. Not that the conversation has to start with The Pill: Wherever women have been given access to reproductive health around the world, they have tended to opt for fewer children than they would have had otherwise, meaning that access has a controlling effect without being coercive.
Emily Douglas, Web editor at the liberal magazine The Nation and previously an editor at RHRealityCheck, suggested some historical context: World population projections were revised downward after the widespread dissemination of birth control in the West. Officials once predicted the trend would follow as birth control was made available to the Third World.
"But that assumption turned out to be false," Douglas said.
And so politicians head to Copenhagen with the most cost-effective solution to climate change (one piece, of course, of a broader menu) just as divisive as any other, inseparable from a web of policy problems that grows more connected to the climate by the day.
George Monbiot calls this a myth, saying “People who claim that population growth is the big environmental issue are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor”
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/29/the-population-myth/
Well, muzzies 'outrabbit' us by a factor of what? 6 to 1?....We're in trouble if they all acquire anything near our standard of wealth...Ain't we? /SARC
This jackass thinks the West should relegate itself to oblivion while the non-producing world explodes.
As much as this guy professes to give a damn about world overpopulation and dwindling resources, you'll never see him advocate for Blacks or Hispanics to regulate the size of their families. It's only the Whites in the U.S. or Europe who are the abusers of global resources.
The nations with the most going on intellectually, creatively, and a business acumen, are the ones he wishes to see fade away.
What then, when the world's masses of poor have expanded exponentially beyond what the producing nations can support?
Hell if this asshole knows...
This is getting closer to the main point.
Environmentalists, such as the Sierra Club, must be confronted with their chosen avoidance of issues that are related to their initiatives.
Excessive immigration (both illegal and government-sanctioned), combined with society’s obligation to provide free food/medical/education/housing/welfare for anchor babies and their uneducated parents, has driven a population increase within demographics that are less productive in our society.
This results in consumption of land/fuel/food/water to unsustainable levels, which is largely financed by borrowing from foreign countries like China.
When illegal immigrants start large forest fires (as in Santa Barbara this year), will the government in Mexico City pay their fair share of “carbon credits” to compensate the planetary climate for the actions of their citizens?
So what’s their point? They seem to think cutting carbon emissions is an end unto itself. What is the point of doing that? Perhaps to preserve their perception of quality of life of people living on this planet?
Or it’s simply for the planet itself with no consideration of the human cost at all.
Great message, we need to die off to preserve the planet for no apparent reason except to assuage their guilt or their perception of aesthetics.
Fuzzy caterpillars good, humans bad. Why? Because they said so, that’s why.
Right.
The one country that does the MOST to help the world, with new medicines, AIDS help, foreign assistance, tsunami relief, charity ——— that’s the country that should die off or get as small as we can.
Not Russia, China, Cuba, N Korea ———— those communist hell holes should keep on expanding their dirty factories til they rule the world !!!!!!!
What sector is the best educated? That’s what it boils down to.
Every place communism takes over, what’s the first thing that happens? Why of course, it’s the purges to rid the nation of the intellectuals.
Here the communists have devised the perfect ploy, get the intellectuals to eradicate themselves, so communist global governance will have no intellectual objectors.
People refuse to recognize what is blatantly plain to see.
Communism is on the march, and the best minds on planet earth are about to blink out, unless people wake up.
*There are about 6.8 billion people on the planet today, a number projected to get to 9 billion by 2050. Americans, the world’s greatest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, produce about 20 tons of the stuff per person, per year. If we were to cut that in half, as emissions rose with the quality of life in much of the Third World, and everyone on the planet met around 10 tons per person, per year, simple multiplication says we’d collectively emit 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually come 2050.*
Nothing that a good global war wouldn’t solve.
To all environmentalists (including the Elmer Gantry of Environmentalism - Al Gore) who believe that they want to save the Earth from the carbon footprint of another human being and openly advocate suicide, my response is........ “Feel Free!”
This is a mindless descent into paganism. Humans are not the problems, idiocy is. The solutions come from humanity.
The truth is that the population growth rates will peak within the next 50 years and then decline. Industrialization has done this to almost every society it has touched.
Population will rise in the next few decades because the old are living longer - not because too many babies are being born. In fact, true demographic research shows a huge problem after the bulge of older citizens die. Populations will be falling dramatically. Russia knows this, Japan knows this, many European countries know this.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jan/09012611.html
WASHINGTON, DC, January 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Celebrated columnist and pro-family leader Don Feder gave a jaw-dropping presentation on the coming ‘Demographic Winter’ at the Rose Dinner which closes the official March for Life festivities every year. Speaking to hundreds of attendees, Feder suggested that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates “could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century” as “all over the world, children are disappearing.”
“In the Western world, birthrates are falling and populations are aging,” said Feder. “The consequences for your children and grandchildren could well be catastrophic.”
Feder noted, “In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling.” He explained the situation noting, “demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years.”
Beyond an inability to pay for pensions, it is likely that euthanasia will be one looked-to solution to the aging crisis, he said.
“Demographic Winter is the terminal stage in the suicide of the West - the culmination of a century of evil ideas and poisonous policies,’” he said. Among them he listed:....
Since the population of the US is producing 20 tons per person per year - should we not eliminate IMMIGRATION? Every immigrant stopped at the border is 20 gross tons saved every year.
How does that grab you?
Those parts of the world where real poverty continues decade after decade would be the right place to start.
ping
Welcome to China, get ready for the child tax.
Of course. Meanwhile, observe who does have children.
Steyn did an excellent job on this re: America Alone as well.
And many wonder why they get migration and tearing down/disregard for the nations laws.
These are godless people; Humanists against humanity; The elite who applies it to ‘others’ that are ‘unworthy’.
Ah, yes, Population Bomb Redux.
I smell Soros/Tides.
You’ll love this:
Hmmm... he said cut it in half, does this mean he kills one of his sons? I think not.
Bonus: married to a science teacher.
(shakes head)
Check this out:
Environmental Journalist Andrew Revkin Awarded for Groundbreaking Reporting
November, ‘08
Snip:
Scheduled to appear at the Chancellor award ceremony in support of Revkin was Dr. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a major voice on public action on global warming. Hansen has long been a critic of the Bush administration’s stonewalling of global warming, and its censoring of scientific information (something Revkin covered extensively, including working from memos he obtained from government workers). Andy first started reporting on Hansen’s work back in the late 80s, when the young journalist was producing some of the best coverage on the emerging issue of climate change.
Thanks for the links, I think. LOL Reading this stuff gives me indigestion.
I must say, as much as I like the first amendment and believe these foundations to be expressing theirs though their financial support, I cannot fail to grasp the absolute anti-American nature of these organizations.
That being the case, I would be very favorable to seeing their funds taken outright and disbursed to feed the third world.
I know that will hit some here below the belt. I just don’t see anything else to do. You can’t just stand by and watch these organizations dissect your nation.
Do you have a better idea?
BTW: I agree with your nose here.
Something to think about here.
Deaths in America per year
1,400,000 people die from abortion
650,000 people die of heart disease
560,000 people die of cancer
143,000 people die of stroke
75,000 people die of diabetes
Another perspective:
18,000 - Deaths by death penalty in American history (all the way back to the 1600s).
1,315,000 - Deaths in all American wars combined.
50,000,000 - Deaths by abortion since Roe v Wade
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