Population Growth, Sustainability, and Renewable Energy
Here’s a comment on a post I just read from a fellow named Grant Schreiber that struck me, as it addresses my oft-made point about the issues of population growth and sustainability. He writes:
The planet has too many First World people. If you’re scratching out a living on a dirt farm somewhere in South Asia, it hardly matters if you have one kid or ten. If you’re living in the U.S., your only child is far more damaging to the planet than entire villages. Consumerism, not population, is the threat. The poor kids that work in the factories that make the toys the rich kids play with for twenty minutes before breaking are not the problem. The magical thinking is that there can be infinite growth on a finite planet. The religion is Mammon, the worship of greed.
I added the link above when I just found a reference to “Mammon”; to my shame, I had to look it up — see artist’s rendering.
This concept of “infinite growth on a finite planet” is what the environmentalists have been telling us since the days of Donella Meadows 50 years ago.
Readers will recall that my most strongly endorsed clean energy projects are those that bring electrification to the rural regions of the third world, primarily because such efforts bring education, which itself brings productivity and prosperity – and, along the way, stronger and smaller families. Educated women don’t have 15 children.
There are numerous benefits to rural electrification that affect the denizens of those areas: better health, cleaner drinking water, less suffering – and there is critically important benefit that accrues to those of us who are lucky enough to live in developed countries: less deforestation from gathering fuel for lighting, heating, and cooking means a stronger ecosystem with more CO2 absorption.
There is a great deal of validity to this gentleman’s comment, but I would point out that our religion does not always have to be Mammon. It’s not inconceivable the people of the world can somehow come to understand that the new “living large” can be “living small.” I have many extremely “well-off” friends who pride themselves on their minuscule carbon footprints.
Is it possible that there is a quiet revolution coming, where people of wisdom and peace put the brakes on runaway, mindless consumerism?
Craig,
It matters a great deal that a “dirt farmer living in South Asia” has 10 kids, because that “dirt farmer” very much WANTS more consumerism for his/her children. Where we were in the 50’s is where most of the people in industrializing nations are now – completely dependent on coal with very poor emissions controls and regulation. It’s only through prosperity that the nation can pass through that period of extreme pollution and begin “luxury” purchases such as efficiency upgrades, cleaner energy, and emissions controls.
The greater the population of the youngest generation, the longer the nation takes to work its way through the period of very high pollution. In 30 years, America will have less than half of its current pollution/person. In 30 years, Afghanistan will have ~15-20 times its current pollution/person. How many children born today in Afganistan will have a great impact on the planet over the next century. The gentleman in question has no valid point… he’s wrong and he’s foolish.
I see your point. Thanks.
I believe, however, that you are too pessimistic about our migration away from coal, and, in particular that the future will not look like the past. 30 years is an eternity in terms of the evolution of energy-related technology and the reduction of costs.