Stop blaming the poor. It's the wally yachters who are burning the planet

[mimitabby]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/28/population-growth-super-rich

o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 21.00 BST


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, claimed last month 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 yesterday 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% of the world's population growth and just 2.4% of the growth in CO2. North America turned out only 4% of the extra people, but 14% of the extra emissions. Sixty-three percent of the world's population growth happened in places with very low emissions.

snip
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.

snip
But no one anticipates a consumption transition. People breed less as they become richer, but they don't consume less – they consume more. As the habits of the super-rich show, there are no limits to human extravagance. Consumption can be expected to rise with economic growth until the biosphere hits the buffers. Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, in Lovelock's words, "hiding from the truth". It is the worst kind of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.

[Hello_Kitty]

1. That doesn't mean that population isn't a problem

And it should be pointed out that it is also plutocrats and elites like the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church who have promoted population growth - so they can have more consumers and workers and followers.

[mimitabby]

2. HelloKitty I agree with you there

I have been recently called a misanthrope when I suggested that we can't feed all the people forever and not eliminate the rest of the inhabitants of the earth, like lions, tigers, etc.
But it was good to be reminded about who is doing the most damage.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. This is bullshit.

Population and global warming may not be directly linked at this point, but what happens as three billion people become as affluent as your typical poor American? And THAT is not an absurd proposition. The reason they have so little impact is because they are so poor, but they do not intend to stay poor. In fact, the deforestation of rain forests, the over-harvesting of fisheries, these are driven by the 3 billion wanting to make themselves as wealthy and comfortable as the rest of the world, where each family has a car, every farmer has a tractor, where famine is not a predictable prospect even in drought times.

If America's 5% of the world population is responsible for 25% of greenhouse emissions, what will happen when the impoverished 3 billion attain a standard of living equivalent to mine?

We can have western affluence only if we have a world population of 1 billion or fewer. Adding billions more to the already unbalanced world population does nothing to help the problem.

[mimitabby]

4. I don't think it's possible

One of the ways we've gotten so wealthy is by farming out less pleasant occupations to third world nations who will produce items for us at fractions of the cost to ourselves. There's no way the poorest 75% of the world can do this. The poor are getting poorer. While the poorest of the poor used to be able to step back into the wilderness and survive, less and less of that wilderness is available and life sustaining.

[Hello_Kitty]

5. But a smaller population won't be as easy to intimidate and control.

They'll have to be *gasp!* paid more and treated better.