The environmental problem we put aside: us

Sam Smith - A big environmental factor that we and the experts don't talk about much is us. Both in terms of population growth and growing life expectancy it clearly is a factor but you don't read much about it. I'm part of the latter problem having grown older than three generations of males in my family, save one grandfather, In my defense, we old dudes interfere with the environment far less than the young but it is still true that global life expectancy has doubled in the past century and half. And here is how population has grown:

From Canadian Broadcasting

 

I suspect that the failure to talk more about population and the environment is due to a number of factors such as not wanting to get into arguments over birth control, not telling women what to do, not challenging high growth but low income countries, and not appearing to disrespect the aging. But facts are facts and population is clearly more of a factor than either environmentalists or media have indicated. Here is just some of the story:

CBC - "It is a very complicated, multifaceted relationship. Population issues certainly are an important dimension of how society will unfold, how society will be able to cope with this crisis over the course of this century," said Kathleen Mogelgaard, a consultant on population dynamics and climate change and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.

"But it's not a silver bullet, and it's certainly not the main cause of climate change. And fully addressing population growth is not, on its own, going to be able to solve the climate crisis. But it is an important piece of the puzzle."....

Robert Engelman, a senior fellow at The Population Institute in Washington, D.C., agrees that battling climate change isn't just about slowing population growth.

"Is population an issue in climate change? Absolutely. Is it underreported, underrated, under-talked-about as an issue in climate change? Absolutely," Engelman said....

"The key to achieving slower population growth is best done through a rights-based approach that includes educating girls and providing universal access to family planning and reproductive health services," said Mogelgaard. "That is the best and most sustainable way to achieve reductions in fertility that leads to slower population growth."

But she says it's important that family-planning choices are left up to the woman — and that's not the norm in many countries of the world, though global access to contraception has improved in recent decades.

Center for Biological Diversity - Unsustainable population growth and lack of access to reproductive health care also puts pressure on human communities, exacerbating food and water shortages, reducing resilience in the face of climate change, and making it harder for the most vulnerable communities to rise out of intergenerational poverty.

We can reduce our own population and consumption to an ecologically sustainable level in ways that promote human rights; decrease poverty and overcrowding; raise our standard of living; and allow plants, animals and ecosystems to thrive.

The Center has been working to address the connection between rampant human population growth and the extinction crisis since 2009. Our innovative campaigns focus on common-sense solutions, including the empowerment of women and girls, the education of all people, universal access to birth control, sustainable consumer choices, and a societal commitment to giving all species a chance to live and thrive.

Human population growth is at the root of our most pressing environmental issues, yet it's often left out of the conversation. We can fight to curb climate change, stop habitat loss and clean up pollution, but if we don't address our unsustainable population, it'll stay an uphill battle that we can't win. The first step to solving a problem is getting people to talk about it.

The Center is working to put the spotlight back on human population growth. We're using creative media like our award-winning Endangered Species Condoms to start conversations on a person-to-person basis nationwide and using YouTube to explain those not quite so obvious connections between population growth and other environmental problems in short, entertaining but educational vlog videos. ....

Brookings Insttution, 2021 - Recently released official U.S. birth data for 2020 showed that births have been falling almost continuously for more than a decade. For every 1,000 women of childbearing age (15 to 44), 55.8 of them gave birth in 2020, compared to 69.5 in 2007, a 20 percent decline. The “total fertility rate,” which is a measure constructed from these data to estimate the average total number of children a woman will ever have, fell from 2.12 in 2007 to 1.64 in 2020. It is now well below 2.1, the value considered to be “replacement fertility,” which is the rate needed for the population to replace itself without immigration.

However, the total fertility rate calculated from annual birth data might be a misleading indicator of actual future fertility rates. It is only an appropriate indicator of the total number of children women will have, on average, if the age profile of childbearing is static. As some have pointed out, women today might just be delaying their births, but they could go on to ultimately have the same number of total children, on average, as women before them. If so, today’s low birth rates will rebound in future years, and the current decline will prove to be a temporary phenomenon. Alternatively, if women both delay childbearing and do not compensate with more births at later ages, the recent decline is likely to reflect a persistently lower level of births.

Guardian, 2021 - The climate crisis is an interesting case, because saving the planet is often the reason people give for deciding to have fewer or no children – rather than, say, improving living standards for their fellow humans more directly – but it’s not clear what impact such decisions will have on the climate. We know the climate crisis and human population growth are linked, but not exactly how. Six births per woman is demonstrably bad for the environment, but for anything up to two the evidence is far more ambiguous. Rather than deny yourself children if you want them, [Sarah Harper at Oxford University] says, better to have one or two and raise them as environmentally conscious consumers. Policies limiting carbon emissions and plastic waste would be far more effective and timely tools for undoing or at least mitigating the damage we’ve done to the planet.