It’s no coincidence that most of those who are obsessed with population growth are post-reproductive wealthy white men: It’s about the only environmental issue for which they can’t be blamed.
The brilliant Earth systems scientist James Lovelock, for instance, said in August that “those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.”
But it’s Lovelock who is being ignorant and irrational.
A paper published on Monday in the journal Environment and Urbanization shows that the places where population has been growing fastest are those in which carbon dioxide has been growing most slowly, and vice versa. Between 1980 and 2005, for instance, sub-Saharan Africa produced 18.5 percent of the world’s population growth and just 2.4 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide. North America turned out only 4 percent of the extra people, but 14 percent of the extra emissions. Sixty-three percent of the world’s population growth happened in places with very low emissions.
Even this does not capture it. The paper points out that about one-sixth of the world’s population is so poor that it produces no significant emissions at all. This is also the group whose growth rate is likely to be highest. Households in India earning less than 3,000 rupees (US$63) a month use a fifth of the electricity per head and one-seventh of the transport fuel of households earning 30,000 rupees or more. Street sleepers use almost nothing. Those who live by processing waste — a large part of the urban underclass — often save more greenhouse gases than they produce.
Many of the emissions for which poorer countries are blamed should in fairness belong to the developed nations. Gas flaring by companies exporting oil from Nigeria, for instance, has produced more greenhouse gases than all other sources in sub-Saharan Africa put together. Even deforestation in poor countries is driven mostly by commercial operations delivering timber, meat and animal feed to rich consumers. The rural poor do far less harm.
The paper’s author, David Satterthwaite, points out that the old formula taught to students of development — that total impact equals population times affluence times technology (I = PAT) — is wrong. Total impact should be measured as I = CAT: consumers times affluence times technology. Many of the world’s people use so little that they wouldn’t figure in this equation. They are the ones who have most children.
WEAK CORRELATION
While there’s a weak correlation between global warming and population growth, there’s a strong correlation between global warming and wealth.
I’ve been taking a look at a few super-yachts, as I’ll need somewhere to entertain government ministers in the style to which they are accustomed. First I went through the plans for Royal Falcon Fleet’s RFF135, but when I discovered that it burns only 750 liters of fuel per hour I realized that it wasn’t going to impress Lord Mandelson. I might raise half an eyebrow with the Overmarine Mangusta 105, which sucks up 850 liters per hour. But the raft that’s really caught my eye is made by Wally Yachts in Monaco. The WallyPower 118 (which gives total wallies a sensation of power) consumes 3,400 liters per hour when traveling at 60 knots. That’s nearly a liter per second. Another way of putting it is 31 liters per kilometer.
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