Poll

All-Consuming Question: Is Population or Human Behavior the Problem?

by Robert Engelman on June 9, 2008

This entry was originally posted to the Island Press blog, Island Interactive, at www.islandpress.org/blog. Robert will post periodic updates on population as he promotes his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want.

Talking to reporters and others about my new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women, I'm sometimes asked where consumption fits into the population picture. A review in the intriguingly named magazine Bitch, for example, criticized the book for "failing to adequately distinguish between the individuals who are overpopulating the world and the individuals who are responsible for the type of overconsumption that causes environmental deterioration."

Well, the book actually doesn't identify any individuals who are "overpopulating the world." I explain on the book's second page why I don't like the word overpopulation. And for many years I chaired the board of the Center for a New American Dream, which works to make North American consumption a sustainable model for the world. I see More as being in one sense all about consumption, because it is through what we use, consume, and discard that human beings affect the environment.

Unfortunately for open discussions, consumption is often placed in opposition to population, as the Bitch review does - as if one part of the world has no population and only consumes, while another has no consumption and only populates. That's not how the world works. Population and consumption multiply each other everywhere, in rich countries and poor, even though the dynamics and magnitude of each force vary widely across and within countries.

One obvious connection between the two is that if populations had never grown large, the consumption levels of individuals wouldn't have much impact on the environment. We worry about consumption precisely because there are so many of us affecting nature and natural resources.

A second point, which I explore in More (p. 230), is that population growth itself has historically driven people to innovate in ways that often boost individual consumption. The exhaustion of forests as European populations kept growing drove people in the 16th century to use coal, long considered a dirty fuel inferior to wood. Improvements in coal mining made possible the Industrial Revolution, which in turn facilitated the hazardous alteration of the Earth's atmosphere today. In modern industrialized nations, sprawl and the great distances many people drive have a lot to do with high population densities.

As More makes clear, we're not going to solve human-induced climate change or most other serious environmental problems through any one policy change, technological breakthrough, or change in individual behavior. It's going to take action on every level, and even then we'll be adapting to a rapidly changing environment for generations to come. A world of 6.7 billion people can't easily change its behavior to leave no imprint on the Earth.

What's attractive about addressing population is that it will stop growing, for the best of reasons, if we can satisfy the wants of women everywhere for reproductive choice. A stable or gradually declining world population offers the best demographic platform for a sustainable future, one in which consumption is environmentally safe and meets the needs and reasonable wants of people everywhere.

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by Robert Engelman

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Human behaviors,

Submitted by PrudentPanda on June 7, 2009 - 5:58pm.

Human behaviors, particularly consumption patterns, rather than population, is the problem. On average, a US citizen consume far more than say, their India counterpart, in terms of resource usage, and have a much greater impact on our environment. cheap advertising | USA jobs | article directory

Human behavior may affect

Submitted by RichardG on April 1, 2009 - 2:13am.

Human behavior may affect how they live. For me good behavior will result in living peacefully and contented. Just like when we are saving or eating less. Discipline will always be a matter and discipline is one example of human behavior. There is nothing wrong being health conscious, because we only want to have healthy and strong body. It's just a matter of discipline. Food is the one of the essential things that man needs. Saving on food in times of recession is much easier than you think. In similar to what large supermarket chains would have you think, you can start saving on food expenses and not have to worry about payday loans to keep you and your family fed. First off, you never want to shop when you're hungry, as you will likely up your discretionary spending. Second, it helps to cook from scratch instead of buying prepackaged food. It tastes better, its better for you, and it can be cheaper. Freeze leftovers for a later date, and if it comes down to it, eat less unnecessary foods like snacks and soda. You save at least extra hundred bucks a year if you saving on food actively. Believe me once you start doing this surely you’ll never afraid getting starve in the future.

Are humans smarter than

Submitted by evasta on July 31, 2008 - 6:41pm.

Are humans smarter than yeast? This thread may be faded, but just in case anyone is still following it - all the comments here, including that of Mr. Engelman, seem to be missing both the point and the urgency of this issue. Population is of course a result of human behavior both biological and cultural, so I'm not quite following the title question. Most researchers agree, even by using different datasets and processes, that the global carrying capacity (with any degree of social justice and "freedom") is about 2 billion. Since we are now at close to 7 billion, it is quite clear that we are now overpopulated (regardless of the degree to which one likes or does not like the word and why). The immediate choice of everyone on the planet is to stop reproducing now to minimize future suffering as we get to that 2 billion number (by suffering, I'm speaking of wars, famine, plagues, and barren earth and sea here).OR to have more (any more) children and add to that future suffering. Greater education, reproductive freedom, economic power, gender equality, social justice, and social capital for women are indeed great and indeed result in reduced population growth and perhaps even slightly reduced population. It does not however get to 2 billion sooner enough to prevent much of the impending suffering and chaos. For why my sense of urgency is perhaps a bit more than yours, please educate yourself on matters of carrying capacity, population, and peak oil. As a start I suggest www.paulchefurka.ca

Public schools pollute by

Submitted by AlanDitmore on June 16, 2008 - 6:26pm.

Public schools pollute by taxing and exploiting the childless. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/ When towns subsidise parents by relieving them of their educational funding responsibilities with public schools, the subsidised parents then pollute by having more children. This is mostly true in the 1st world, where I live and vote. In the third world enough peole lack contracptive knowledge to make the reverse true. But in the first world, media can teach contraception making public schools totally superfluous. And I don't buy US made products anyway. I suffered through 15 years of school, hated every minute of its authoritarian bullcrap, and want my revenge as a childless taxpayer!

I'm really happy you decided

Submitted by ccollins@igc.org on June 16, 2008 - 7:07pm.

I'm really happy you decided not to have any kids. You've done a big favor for the human race. THANKS!

Public schools pollute by

Submitted by AlanDitmore on June 15, 2008 - 11:41am.

Public schools pollute by taxing and exploiting the childless. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/ All breeding IS overconsumption. Zoning causes sprawl and raises rents.

I can see you didn't spend

Submitted by ccollins@igc.org on June 15, 2008 - 4:33pm.

I can see you didn't spend much time in any school at all--public or private. Clearly nobody bothered to educate you to the fact that every time you go to the doctor, get your car worked on, or buy any product made in America you are benefiting from a workforce educated primarily in public schools. You haven't even learned that pollution isn't the same as taxing & exploiting. Maybe you should put your tax dollars to work and go back to school.

A simple way to alleviate

Submitted by gbisshop on June 12, 2008 - 7:48pm.

A simple way to alleviate hunger and many other environmental crises: Eat less meat! We could feed the current world population and many more by eating a more plant-based diet. Meat eating is very wasteful of resources. 1kg of beef takes 16kg of grain, huge amounts of water, large quantities of antibiotics, and produces large quantities of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) and nitrous oxide (another more potent gas). Most forest clearing globally is to graze livestock. We are killing the planet to satisfy our taste for meat. Changing this is something we can all do, at no cost. Worth a try? G. Bisshop

Right on gbisshop. The main

Submitted by gogreenman on June 27, 2008 - 7:19pm.

Right on gbisshop. The main thing is beef. Those animals consume so much natural resources for what? Unhealthy red meat. Plus, they are a big contributor to global warming.Yes, rain forest are being cleared for cattle. Not eating beef won't put farmers out of business. They will just have to switch what they farm is all. Grow crops that can feed people. You can get all you need from vegetation, you don't need meat! Also, man-kind is fishing this planet to the point of no recovery.

NOT TRUE!! Eating less meat

Submitted by ccollins@igc.org on June 13, 2008 - 5:24pm.

NOT TRUE!! Eating less meat won't help alleviate hunger one bit! True--eating less meat is good for you & industrial meat production is very environmentally harmful & resource intensive. However, whether you eat steak or not, people will go on starving unless they can afford to buy the food produced on the land that was previously used to feed cattle. People aren't starving because of food scarcity--they are starving because they can't afford to buy enough food & they no longer have the land to grow it. --C. Collins

Sure, the simplistic view

Submitted by ccollins@igc.org on June 12, 2008 - 5:47pm.

Sure, the simplistic view that "poor countries over-populate, rich countries over-consume" is an exaggerated stereotype. However, many Americans have only grasped the first HALF of this over-simplified notion. I still hear a lot of my college students saying that the problem is "too many people". It continues to be a widely held notion in the US that starvation and poverty are caused by poor people having too many children. Even though Americans gobble up strawberries from Mexico, grapes from Chile, and coffee from Guatemala, MANY still haven't realized that we live off of the land and resources of these poor countries. When peasants lose their land to giant agro-export estates and are forced to work for starvation wages--THEY GO HUNGRY. Liberals who contend that educating women is the panacea to over-population are equally simple-minded. Daily life definitely improves when women become more educated and take more control over their reproductive decisions. However, having large families is a necessary survival strategy for poor parents who must rely on their children to bring resources into the family and care for them in their old age. And, when women become more educated and earn more money, they may have less children, but they (and their smaller families) also become more affluent consumers. The problem that drives both over-population and over-consumption is a globalized system of production for profit that expropriates land and keeps wages low in poor countries and encourages wasteful mindless consumption in the West. The entire process is completely UNSUSTAINABLE and doomed to collapse. -C. Collins

Over-population is not the

Submitted by gogreenman on June 27, 2008 - 7:21pm.

Over-population is not the answer. Communities coming togeather is. In poorer nations they would be better off helping one neighor and the next, rather than have a bunch of kids to do all the work. Yeah 1 or 2 kids max may be.

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All-Consuming Question: Is Population or Human Behavior the Problem?

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