A very quick blog/brain dump, prompted by some Linked In Comments earlier today. Its draft and if I get time will refine and add some references in the next few days….
Seems to me we are facing a population conundrum. Today the world’s population is just over 8 billon; up from just 3 billion in about 1960 (and just 1 billion in 1800!) and estimated to reach 9 or 10 billion in the second half of this century. We also have to acknowledged, that in reality this population growth is locked in. It is driven by young people alive now living longer, through improved health care and improving economic conditions especially in the developing economies (eg Sub Saharan Africa, South America, etc)
But we do have some challenges:
- On the one hand population growth is not evenly distributed. For example, a number of developed mature economies have rapidly ageing populations and a relatively reducing work force, the output of which will struggle to support a viable economy. Some populations in some countries are actually in serious decline; for example, China, Japan, Italy, much of Eastern Europe, etc have populations falling by as much as 10-20% per annum.
- This presents very major economic challenges. Even here in the UK, with small population growth but an ageing population, it seems we need more younger capable people to help maintain levels of economic activity sufficient to support our growing and aging population. I have noted my view the need to support the immigration of more younger skilled people to help address this challenge – one that Brexit has exacerbated in the UK.
- On the other hand, there is clear and existential risk that that on a global scale, if all the worlds current and future population, attain the levels of consumption, use of energy and emit CO2 at the same rate as those more developed economies then we have a problem.
On the latter it is unarguably clear we are in a climate emergency. The curse of excess consumerism is heating the planet and degrading life sustaining ecosystems all over the world (Plastics in our oceans, bleaching coral reefs and more volatile food production are beginning to have a fundamental impact). The climate emergency is also a major factor in in the increasing number of “climate refugees” which could exceed 1 billion people globally by 2050.
Before I address a possible pragmatic way forward we also have to acknowledge that a major proportion of the value and wealth accrued by some individuals and corporations through their efforts in open free market economies over the last 100+ years has come with may uncosted and unallocated external costs. The external costs of this unconstrained consumerism are now being manifest in the clearly more vulnerable state of our global ecosystems and the climate emergency. I wrote a little blog on bees and GDP to exemplify this issue.
It is also very clear that globally it is the wealthiest countries and individuals who are the most responsible for the climate emergency.
In cogitating my thoughts, I also like to refer back to the late Prof Hans Rosling and his very easy to understand presentations and lectures on population. He showed that the world on many measures has improved markedly over the last 100 years.
However, he did note that we still have to address the impacts of human caused climate change through CO2 emissions (including mass migration). He was also clear that the richest of us had the highest per capita carbon emissions and this absolutely needed to be addressed. Whilst he also showed that inequality between countries was decreasing, he overlooked somewhat that inequality within many countries has been increasing since the 1990s. He also had not noted the recent phenomenon of falling life expectancy in some places like the US.
As I opened, the global population will reach a plateau in the next 50-100 years and that is already locked in. There is little we can do to change it – save to move it around a little!
So, I feel a number of actions are required which have to be inextricably linked if humanity is to have a sustainable future:
- We should plan for global population to grow to perhaps 9 or 10 billion and then perhaps decline in a manageable way into the 22nd Century. Given the uneven growth, and population falls in some places, we need to proactively make it easier for people, especially young people to move around the world. We need to embrace and enable mass economic migration. The alternative is having to deal with hundreds of millions of unmanageable climate refugees at the same time as some countries are facing economic collapse because of rapid falls in, and/or an ageing population.
- In the UK, the “small boats ” is the tip of the iceberg and the current UK government response to that issue is both immoral and ill-informed. In a UK context one should reflect that as a result of over two hundred years of imperial expansion the “British” were the world’s largest immigrants. For people in the UK today to have an issue with immigration into Britain, is deeply hypocritical.
- It is also clear that we need to reduce the average levels of per capita consumption and carbon emissions – and that needs to happen urgently and equitably – and it is the “richest” people and economies that need to make the biggest changes. (The oh! look at China arguments don’t cut it – globally its per capita emissions that is the issue and the gross over consumption of the most-wealthy that is the problem. One can’t ignore exported emissions either – most from Europe and the US to China!))
- The impacts of the last 100 years of consumerism should act as a warning to us all. This means addressing the current inability of our fiscal and regulatory systems to capture and allocate those external costs. This worth a read re the failure of GDP to account for externalities.
- So, governments have to work to ensure that our economic activities and especially the consumer prices of goods and services, fully reflect all the external costs associated with their production and sales. This implies very major and radical fiscal changes. We also have to regulate to protect the environment.
If we can address this, the actual population becomes less of an issue – although I hope and favour that by the 22nd Century the human population on earth will be less than it is today and perhaps gently declining. More importantly, I hope that population will have adopted economic systems that reflect the vital importance of, and are in balance with, nature (which is clearly not the case today).
If we can’t do this, we really are in trouble no matter how many of us there are.
Some of my earlier related articles/blogs from the last 4 or 5 years…
Mark Barry 