Is population explosion responsible for Environment degrade?
Almost 1200 people will be added to our global population by the time one reads this article. Breathing the same oxygen, sharing the same space and creating more and more greenhouse gases! Worries about overpopulation must be addressed more aggressively. If we keep ignoring this exponential population rise, nature will reduce will reduce human population for us.” – Is this actually true?
There are a lot of misconceptions about the nature of population growth and not understood the way it should be. How many is too many and what does the answer have to do with frozen food?
What lead to the increase in population?
Lets start at the very beginning when more people around meant security in an insecure world. On the Indian subcontinent for example, Chanakya, the philosopher, suggested that widows quickly find new husbands and during the Mughal rule, the increase in population was celebrated, as it meant more people could work on a farm and produce more food. The Roman emperors were no different – in some cases passing laws to promote early marriage and frequent childbirth so their armies could stay up to strength. Life was mostly about popping babies and setting up new colonies until the number of people started becoming a visible problem. In the 18th century, British economist Thomas Malthus started ringing alarm bells. Ok ancient history lesson done.
In the modern times, fear exploded with the publication of the book called the “The Population Bomb”. Its author a American biologist, warned the western world of the conditions he had seen in New Delhi. Overpopulation was soon blamed from everything from poverty and poor resource management to destroying the environment. Some countries began experimenting with morality and politically dubious methods of population control. China became the poster child – and its one child policy resulted in a disastrous gender imbalance. And like other control measures in Asia, it was eventually repealed. But the enemy had been identified as overpopulation.
How do we define over population?
Overpopulation is defined by carrying capacity, which basically means: the number of individuals and ecosystem resources – like food, water and space – can sustain indefinitely. But demographers have consistently got it wrong. The early calculation says, only 4 billion is the carrying capacity of the earth. But today we are almost feeding more than 7 billion population. Because we have supplemented our natural resources with technological resources and have been able to produce resources to sustain the population. So we are not quite sure what the Earth’s carrying capacity is, because the variables are constantly changing. One thing for sure : Its not the population element that’s going to be the problem.
Already, in the developed world, the population has largely stabilized or begun to decline. And the developing world is on track to follow. Education and access to contraception are driving the numbers down – even if cities don’t look like it yet. People get this perception that these cities are overcrowded, and are really busy. Actually, what is happening is that planners haven’t really taken into account the population growth. And then the second point, which is kind of bigger – impacts on the environment linked with consumption. As seen around the world: Consumption unlike population, is on an exponential rise. If we look at the levels of consumption across different contexts – globally, across cities they are unequal.
Research done till now
So lets factor in the consumption into our equation. Every year researchers look into the Earth’s annual resource budget and calculate at what point we will use it up. If we look this up by country, the differences are startling. Many nations in the middle east and the west exhaust their budget in the first quarter. While a few countries like India don’t overshoot yet. The average American consumes 16 times higher resources than an average Indian. And correspondingly how much carbon dioxide we emit around the world is different too. In 2018 an Indian family of 4 had a carbon footprint of less than 8 tons. An American family of 4, in the same year came in at almost a 70. So shouldn’t we been looking at who is consuming and how much – instead of simply counting the number of people?
Cold storage the real culprit
One of the first studies to compare global emissions involved over 200 diverse researchers and policy makers. The result, called Project Drawdown, published a definitive list on reducing our impact. The biggest problem they found out was the way we keeps our things cool. The way we keep things cool is one of the worst offences against our planet. Our air conditioners and refrigerators still largely emit greenhouse gases much stronger than carbon dioxide. The project estimates that changing to more efficient cooling can save 5 times more emissions than if all cars became electric. Another big one on the list is something we can all individually do something about it. Food is huge, about a third of all the global emissions are due to the food system. The food that goes to waste decomposes and emits green house gases. So we must waste nothing as much as possible.
No one can really deny that the human population has an impact on the environment. But right now, wealthier countries emit so much carbon that even adding three or four billion people in the global south won’t significantly impact the rate of climate change. Also – lowering consumption sounds way easier than deciding whether that many people should or shouldn’t exist. Its time to change the narrative . Away from the easy to blame visual problem of population. To the more hidden and dangerous concerns of waste and overconsumption.
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