This page provides basic materials on the problem of the size and growth of the human population. Whether you’re a GPSO participant or are otherwise trying to raise awareness of these issues, you may find these talking points, links, and other aids helpful in formulating your message. We encourage you to look them over for ideas and information. Feel free to contact us for more resources.
Talking points
The basics
It took virtually all of human history for our numbers to reach 1 billion in the 1800s. It took only about a century to add the second billion in 1930. We added the third billion in just 30 years and the fourth in only 15 years. We are now at 6.7 billion with projections of over 2 billion more to come in the next 40 years.
The size and growth of the human population is linked closely to nearly all forms of environmental degradation we see today, from mass extinction, climate change, the toxification of the environment, and desertification, to aquifer depletion, ocean dead zones, deforestation, dying coral reefs, and collapsing fisheries, population plays a central role.
Population size is an integral part of the resource use equation. Total resource consumption (such as that of GHG producing fuels) is simply the product of population size times the average per capita consumption.
As important as it is to reduce our per capita consumption, no living person can bring his or her resource consumption down to zero. Only the absence of a person can do that.
For as much as 2.5 million years humans lived at numbers estimated to be no more than a few million. For most of that time, in fact, some experts suggest we numbered no more than 5 million and during some periods probably far fewer. Only in the last 200 years, the last 0.008 percent of our history, have we allowed our numbers to skyrocket into the billions. How could this not be a profound problem for the biosphere?
Since the human population currently grows by about 80 million annually, we are adding each year perhaps 16 times as many humans to the planet as existed at any point during all but the last moment of our history.
Every species of great ape on Earth, except one, is in imminent danger of extinction. That one is humans and we’re at 6.7 billion and growing. Is something wrong with this picture?
Selected ecological issues
Experts (and solid [pdf] research) on species loss routinely point to the size and growth of the human population as a key driver of the current Sixth Mass Extinction crisis. This is a threat not only to millions of species but, as we depend for our survival on the web of life, to humanity itself. It is grossly underreported in the media.
A sobering though seldom discussed issue, tightly linked to overpopulation, concerns our long term depletion of soil nutrients. Homo sapiens is the only species that has been able to treat soil as a non renewable resource, using supplies of exhaustible geological energy to temporarily side step the carrying capacity limitations exacted on other species by predation, disease, and starvation when population exceeds the ability of supporting ecosystems to supply sustenance. (more here from soils microbiologist Peter Salonius)
The taboo
Recent decades have seen a sort of taboo against public discussion of the problem of the size and growth of the human population. Yet we maintain this taboo at our peril and that of millions of other species. The earth is finite, and can only support a limited number of humans. Many experts tell us we are well beyond any realistic estimate of that number.
Solutions
There are a number of widely accepted, humane, empowering, and effective solutions to the problem of human population size and growth. They have track records of reducing fertility rates enough to slow or even reverse population growth. They include (a) educating girls and women in developing countries to help empower them and provide them with more options, (b) entertainment-education strategies to inform and expose viewers to alternative attitudes and ideas concerning such issues as family size, and (c) ensuring access (pdf) to family planning resources.
For more, see the “Population Solutions” section below.
Responses to common objections
Objection: Population growth isn’t a problem because the UN says it might level off later this century.
Response: The UN’s medium projection has world population growing about another 40% in this century. This is no comfort when the evidence is overwhelming that we are already deeply into overshoot at 6.7 billion. There is no time to lose in addressing population humanely and forthrightly.
Objection: We need population growth for a healthy economy. A shrinking population would mean fewer young people and more older people. It would therefore present serious economic problems.
Response: Any economic challenges posed by a shrinking population pale in comparison to the human toll exacted by large scale ecological collapse. Without a viable ecosystem, moreover, there is no economy.
Additionally, the burgeoning field of ecological economics shows well that continued economic growth is unsustainable. It cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. The logical alternative is a transition to a steady state economy.
Objection: The real problem isn’t overpopulation. It’s the excessive per capita consumption in industrialized countries. Complaining about population is to blame the South where per capita consumption is much lower than in the North.
Response: As important as it is to reduce our per capita resource consumption, conservative ecological footprint data indicate that no realistic reduction in per capita consumption on the part of industrialized countries would be enough, in the absence of increased attention to population, to bring us back to within Earth’s capacity to sustain us.
Moreover, there is no blaming the South or developing countries when we realize that nearly all countries on earth are deeply into overshoot of human carrying capacity. There is therefore scarcely a single thinking population activist who does not advocate population reduction as much for the US and other industrialized countries as for any developing country.
Objection: There’s no population problem. There’s plenty of empty land on Earth. You could fit every human being on earth inside the state of Texas!
Response: This notion confuses fitting people into a given space with supporting those people. The two are not the same. The question isn’t, “How much room is there for people on earth?” It’s, “How many people can the earth support at a decent standard of living, without damage to ecosystems that would prevent future generations from enjoying the same standard of living?”
For a brief blog post on this topic go here. For more depth see this webpage.
Objection: There have been many past abuses of human rights in the name of “population control.” Clearly, efforts to influence human numbers violate human rights.
Response 1: Understandable concern about some past human rights abuses has fueled the taboo against public discussion of population. But the premise that the population issue has at times been linked to abuses does not lead logically to the conclusion that we should abandon the issue. After all, other good causes such as health care and education have been abused as well. But we don’t abandon them; they’re too important. Instead we learn from past mistakes and work to avoid abuses in the future. The same applies to population.
Response 2: Programs and policies must, of course, be designed to prevent abuses. Yet we must take a slightly longer view as well. The most important purpose of addressing population today is to avert a cataclysm for humanity and millions of other species, a cataclysm in excess of any past human horror and sure to follow from global ecological collapse. A long list of widespread, severe environmental degradations hints that such collapse may already be under way. Nowhere, then, are human rights more a concern than in the effort to prevent the impact on humanity of global ecological collapse.
Response 2a: Addressing population may be the greatest humanitarian step we can take at this time in our history. Continued inattention to population can be expected to result in untold numbers of lives lost as a result of our overshoot of the earth’s capacity to sustain us.
Response 3: Today’s best established means of reducing fertility rates are, by their very nature, humane and empowering. They include educating women, using media strategies to expose families to new options concerning family size and the role of women, making family planning resources widely and easily available, and reducing infant mortality rates so families don’t feel compelled to have many children in the hope a few will survive. These are the stock-in-trade of respected groups working today to address population. Yet, for the most part, even the most radical solutions (such as one-child policies) advocated by today’s population activists explicitly repudiate force in favor of the democratic process, monetary incentives, and the like.
Objection: Any effort to address population is racist and elitist.
Response: Quite the opposite. The most important reason to address population is to avert ecological and therefore human catastrophe in the not-so-distant future. If we fail to avert ecological collapse, the victims first and hardest hit will be those people, often people of color, in the world’s poorest nations. To avoid the population issue, then, is to dismiss the lives and needs of these people. It is therefore the denial and avoidance of the population issue which may arguably be termed “racist and elitist.”
Objection: There’s no point in bothering to try to address population. It’s too late. As a result of carrying capacity overshoot and ecological degradation, we are headed toward an inevitable societal collapse which will involve a huge crash in human numbers as nature takes over with such methods as disease, famine, and war.
Response: Even if it turns out we cannot avert collapse, reducing fertility rates will still be one of the primary humanitarian steps we can take. It will reduce the number of people born into suffering and the number of people competing for scarce resources. It should reduce biodiversity loss as well. In short, it will soften the landing for those faced with adjusting to collapse. So regardless of your view of whether we can (or should) avert collapse, addressing human population growth is a key to reducing human suffering and ecological degradation as this century progresses.
Objection: We should do things which happen to reduce fertility rates such as educating and empowering women and making family planning options widely available, but we should not talk about them within a population framework. Population issues only stir controversy. We can do those things because they have merit in their own right and thereby take care of fertility rates without talking about population.
Response: It is intellectually dishonest and misleading to avoid discussion of one of the key reasons for taking the actions described. It has promoted inattention to overpopulation and inaction in addressing it. This is the conclusion of a major UK Parliamentary report. Further evidence is seen in today’s failure on the part of major environmental groups to address either overpopulation or the social and women’s issues relevant to it. Including the need to reduce fertility rates among the reasons for educating and empowering women and increasing access to family planning provides an exceptionally powerful reason for taking action and greatly increases the likelihood such services will be provided. Ultimately, forthright, intellectually honest discussion is more productive than hiding the truth.
Letters to the editor
Letters to the editor carry an excellent ratio of effort to impact. Realistically, they will likely be a popular action among the pledgers. Please go here for more.
Quotes
Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims. — Martin Luther King Jr.
You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms. — Sir Peter Scott, founder of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
The massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor. — Sir David King, science advisor to the UK government
One of the greatest challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we are able to tackle this issue effectively we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this earth. — The Dalai Lama
If any fraction of the global warming can be attributed to the action of humans, then this by itself is positive proof that the world population, living as we do, has exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth. So it is an Inconvenient Truth that any proposals to solve the global warming problem that don’t include reducing populations to sustainable levels are gross intellectual frauds. — Albert A. Bartlett
The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic. — E.O. Wilson
Nothing threatens the future of the world more than the uncontrolled growth of our species. Population stability can only be achieved if we ignore mythology and pay attention to reality. — Daniel Quinn
Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. — Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters. — Isaac Asimov
We feel you don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy — David Brower (at a time when the Sierra Club paid significant attention to human overpopulation)
[An EPA report] diverts our attention away from the “rapid population growth” that is destroying the natural resources and marine ecosystems, and it suggests instead that we focus our preservation efforts on the ecosystems and not on the agent that is destroying them. This is like trying to polish and maintain the beautiful woodwork in a home that is being destroyed by fire . . . — Albert A. Bartlett
The prevalence of [our nation's] hubris is demonstrated weekly by the pundits who infest the Sunday morning talk shows — the ‘public intellectuals’ representing America. Important environmental trends are almost never mentioned. When something like global warming is discussed, it is always as one more political issue rather than something well established by abundant scientific evidence and potentially much more threatening to civilization than Saddam Hussein could ever have been. — Paul and Anne Ehrlich
An alternative argument is that if we lived more responsibly, even in large numbers, there would be enough breathing room for other species as long as we took adequate conservation measures. Increasingly, scientists have had to acknowledge that we are reaching—or have reached—our limits as a population, no matter how we live. . . . As I argue in Sparing Nature: “The greatest and most effective conservation measure to save Earth’s biodiversity is to halt the growth of the human population, and perhaps reduce our numbers.” — Jeffrey K. McKee
High consumption lifestyles wreaking havoc on the environment and harming other people’s lives is a moral issue of commission. Evasion of the influential role of population growth in environmental degradation is a moral issue of omission. — Albert Bandura
The basic Population-Environment link (including general introductory articles and materials)
One message we need to repeat often concerns the basic population-environment link, raising awareness of how the size and growth of our human numbers is a fundamental driver of ecological degradation. Here are some links which may be helpful in formulating such a message:
Nice overview from Paul and Anne Ehrlich on the population/consumption issue:
Too Many People, Too Much Consumption
The Union of Concerned Scientists provides this quick look at the population-environment link in four areas: biodiversity, water, climate, and forests:
Population and Environment Linkages
The simple logic behind the population-environment link is outlined in this introductory piece:
Earth Needs Renewed Attention to Human Population Growth
Here’s an excellent overview piece from Jack Hart, a former editor at the Oregonian, the paper in which this first appeared. Hart makes the key point that “The Earth doesn’t care about per-capita greenhouse-gas production. It’s the total amount of CO2 in the air that matters.”:
Carrying capacity
One of the best brief overviews of the topic:
Human Carrying Capacity of Earth
This article works toward a determination of an optimal global population size:
Recognizing the signs of overshoot, from Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update:
By J. Kenneth Smail, professor emeritus of anthropology, Kenyon College, this article focuses on the scale of population decline we may now need and the time urgency involved, having neglected the issue for so long. It touches as well on the need for more open discussion of the topic:
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(The next two articles work well together, the first showing irrefutably that at current levels of per capita consumption we are in overshoot of Earth’s carrying capacity for humans, the second demonstrating that reducing per capita consumption alone won’t get us out.)
A simple, logical proof that we are in overshoot of the earth’s carrying capacity for humans:
Six steps to “getting” the global ecological crisis
This article shows that, in the absence of a substantial increase in attention to population, no remotely realistic reduction in per capita consumption in industrialized countries would be enough to bring us back to withing carrying capacity. (Note that the article is based on GFN’s 2006 data. The 2008 data show the situation to be considerably worse. The article’s calculations are correct, based on the most precise data then available from GFN, not the rounded figures then used in some of the summaries on the GFN site or, in some instances, in the article.):
Return of the population timebomb
Population and the Sixth Mass Extinction
Good introduction by Niles Eldredge:
Excellent radio interview with Paul Ehrlich covers the Sixth Extinction and more:
Mass Extinction Event On the Horizon?
Ohio State University anthropologist Jeffrey McKee on the direct link between the size and growth of the human population and the Sixth Extinction:
Brother, Can You Spare a Species? (pdf)
Good, clear, and uncompromising information from the Rewilding Institute. Don’t overlook the links as you scroll down:
Dave Foreman on human population and biodiversity
Illuminating short film from the Species Alliance:
Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction
An astonishing list of facts from the Species Alliance:
Population and climate change
Alan Cookson, a retired science teacher in New Zealand, provides this quick overview of the population-climate change issue:
People left out of climate equation
Some depth concerning the population-climate change topic in this roundtable discussion. See particularly the portions by Fred Meyerson and John Guillebaud and Martin Desvaux. (See Betsy Hartmann’s comments to see how a subset on the political left deny the population-environment link. Such denial exists, of course, on both the left and right.):
Al Bartlett examines the problem of many scientists’ avoidance of the population topic despite their knowledge of its central importance in climate change. This article won the Population Institute’s 2008 award of excellence for Best Magazine Article:
Why have scientists succumbed to political correctness?
Population growth and the loss of tribal peoples
Here’s a topic ripe for discussion. It seems it is almost never mentioned. Yet the link between population and the disappearance of tribal cultures and their ways of life worldwide is obvious. There is information (though, owing to the population taboo, little on the link to population) on the plight of tribal peoples at the website for Survival International. Also, a recent issue of Smithsonian magazine ran a revealing article on the not-so-slow disintegration of the Pygmy culture.
Population myths and controversies
Is the problem population or our high levels of per capita consumption? It’s both, and this pair of essays helps cut through some of the confusion:
Pair of essays on population versus consumption
This essay shows it’s a myth that we can solve the global ecological crisis by reducing per capita consumption without attending similarly to population:
Return of the population timebomb (Based on the Global Footprint Network’s (GFN) 2006 data. Their new, 2008 data show the situation to be considerably worse. Calculations are correct, based on the most precise data then available from GFN, not the rounded figures then used in some of the summaries on their site or, in some instances, in the article.)
The population taboo
Major report from the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health spells out some of how the population topic became taboo and the detrimental impact that has had worldwide:
Return of the population growth factor
Al Bartlett dissects how population denialists go about avoiding the topic and diverting our attention away from it:
The Massive Movement to Marginalize the Modern Malthusian Message
Detailed historical examination. Emphasis on immigration, but with valuable historical observations and insights into the suppression of the population issue, particularly in the US:
The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998)
The link between population and world food supply
This is an issue deserving much more attention. There is a fundamental connection between population growth and growth in the world food supply. In all species, fluctuations in food supply are, in fact, an essential factor regulating population size. By adopting agriculture we have circumvented this normal process, thereby growing rapidly in number, far beyond carrying capacity. This has come at great cost to other species and the web of life on which we depend, and so threatens our own species as well.
The argument and its implications are often misunderstood. Yet it identifies a key unaddressed issue with regard to population. This view is discussed by Daniel Quinn in novels such as Ishmael and The Story of B, and has been the subject of scholarly work on the part of Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel. Russ Hopfenberg’s site is an excellent online source for more information. Of course portions of Daniel Quinn’s site cover the issue as well.
Population solutions
There are a number of widely accepted, humane, empowering, and effective approaches to reducing fertility rates enough to slow or even reverse population growth. The links immediately below examine such issues as increased availability of family planning options, women’s education and empowerment, entertainment-education strategies, and examples of national level success stories.
Introductory comments from the Population Media Center on the links between girls’ education and fertility rates as well as a range of health issues:
http://www.populationmedia.org/issues/womens-empowerment/girls-education/
Powerful Partners: Adolescent Girls’ Education and Delayed Childbearing:
http://www.prb.org/Publications/PolicyBriefs/PowerfulPartners.aspx
The use of entertainment-education strategies:
http://www.populationmedia.org/what/our-method/
Informative talk covering both the silence on population and important factors in bringing down fertility rates. Emphasis here on access to family planning:
http://www.populationandsustainability.org/papers/campbellagm.pdf
Two Success Stories:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote2_6.htm
For more depth on a number of the elements above see Robert Engelman’s recent book which focuses on the relationship between population issues and women’s autonomy:
More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want
The Rapid Population Decline RPD position
A current issue among those concerned with population and overshoot concerns the degree and speed of population reduction we need. Though it’s a tougher sell, some analysts observe that a very large and speedy voluntary drop in the size of the human population may be the only way to prevent the worst impacts of global ecological collapse. We can assume it might thereby spare many human lives by averting much of the natural correction we might expect as a result of continued overshoot. Obviously it would be best for the health of the biosphere.
RPD still embraces humane approaches, but begins to add consideration of such possibilities as one-child legal policies.
The link below features a passage from Alan Weisman’s book, The World Without Us, illustrating the magnitude of population shrinkage which could, in theory, result within less than a century from a universally applied one-child policy:
Jack Alpert is an advocate of RPD with some ideas concerning democratic implementation. Here is a summary of his position:
http://www.skil.org/position_papers_folder/conservationofearth2008.html
Population organizations
Here are several representative organizations involved in population issues.
New England group raising awareness and strengthening regional action on regional to global issues of population and sustainability:
New England Coalition for Sustainable Population
Unique organization producing research-proven serial broadcast dramas to educate, raise awareness, and promote empowered, healthy attitudes toward family planning and related issues:
UK group raising awareness and promoting research and policy. Excellent information and well argued articles highlighting the impact of population on the environment:
Raising awareness throughout the Midwestern US through talks, interviews, ad campaigns, public programs, and more:
Informing people about population and working to put information into action:
Formerly Zero Population Growth. Educating young people and advocating for action on global population:
Australian ecological group formed by people who felt that the issue of human population numbers was overlooked, or regarded as too contentious:
Sustainable Population Australia
Major reports and statements from scientific groups
Major 2007 report from the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health argues for increased attention to population and reports that its underemphasis in recent years has impeded progress on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals:
Return of the population growth factor
1992 report signed by a majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences includes clear statements regarding the population-environment link and steps we must take to intervene:
World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity
From UK-based Scientists for Global Responsibility:
Statement on Population and Sustainability
1994 statement from 58 academies:
Joint statement by fifty-eight of the world’s scientific academies
Statistics
2008 World Population Data Sheet (Lots of useful stats from From the Population Reference Bureau)
Index Mundi provides useful national and global population statistics.
UN population projections (2006 revision)
UN report – World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision (links to pdf’s)
World population statistics from the US Census Bureau
Resources on the math of population growth
Exponential growth calculator (includes a variety of functions)
Simple exponential growth calculator
Tutorial on exponential growth
More on modeling population growth (including the logistic model)
Al Bartlett’s famous talk: Arithmetic, Population, and Energy
Visual aids
Some visual aids and quick facts appear on this page from the Sustainable Scale Project. They encourage you to use materials from their site with attribution.
Thinking of making a video? For some inspiration, check out Dave Gardner’s Population Decline is Part of the Solution. Dave is a filmmaker currently producing and directing the feature length Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity.
Here is a presentation on population and consumption growth (PDF).
Images used in Wikipedia articles (such as here or here) are generally in the public domain or otherwise available for your use. See an individual image for details.
For Creative Commons licensed photographs (generally free for use with attribution) relevant to population topics try this Creative Commons search using the “flickr” tab.
As time permits, some useful images will be added to the GPSO Facebook page at this link.
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