The Population Debate Is Screwed Up

By Laurie Mazur, AlterNet. Posted March 28, 2009.

Slowing population growth, then, is one of the things we must do to address the current environmental crisis. Take climate change, for example. An analysis of climate studies by Brian O'Neill at the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows that slower population growth could make a significant contribution to solving the climate problem.

Imagine a pie divided into slices -- each representing an action begun today that would eliminate 1 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050 -- for example, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Seven slices are needed to avert disastrous climate change. O'Neill estimates that stabilizing world population at 8 billion, rather than 9 billion or more, would provide one -- or even two -- slices of emissions reductions.

Of course, slowing population growth is not all we must do. Continued reliance on fossil fuels could easily overwhelm the carbon reductions from slower growth. Rapacious consumption in the affluent countries drives environmental destruction worldwide; changing our own systems of production and consumption must be the top priority if we are to preserve a habitable planet.

Slowing population growth won't eradicate poverty or feed the hungry, either; that will require a wholesale rethinking of development, trade and other economic policies.

But slower population growth could help give us a fighting chance to meet these challenges. It could reduce pressure on natural systems that are reeling from stress. And it could help give families and nations a chance to make essential investments in education, health care and sustainable economic development.

In the last half-century, we've learned a lot about why we should slow population growth, and we've also learned how. We now know that the best way to slow population growth is not with top-down "population control," but by ensuring that all people are able to make real choices about sexuality and reproduction.

That means access to voluntary family planning and other reproductive-health information and services. It means education and employment opportunities, especially for women. And it means tackling the deep inequities -- gender and economic -- that prevent people from making meaningful choices about childbearing. Each of these interventions is vitally important in its own right as a matter of human rights and social justice. Together, they will help shape a sustainable, equitable future.

Moreover, slowing population growth by the ethical means outlined above is surprisingly cost-effective. For example, the developed countries' share of the cost to provide reproductive health services for every woman on earth is $20 billion -- about what the bankers on Wall Street gave themselves in bonuses last year.

Today, we have an extraordinary opportunity to make progress on these issues. Climate change and other environmental crises have put population growth back on the table. And, after eight long years, we finally have a president -- and a secretary of state -- who are willing to make decisions about women's health and rights based on evidence, not moralistic ideology.

But that opportunity will pass us by if progressives remain stuck in the tired debates of the past. It's time to have a new conversation about population and the environment -- one that is grounded in a shared commitment to environmental sustainability, human rights and social justice.

See more stories tagged with: environment, population, global warming, climate change, population growth

Laurie Mazur is the editor of A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge (Island Press: forthcoming).

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »