Over-Population, Over-Consumption and Environmental problems

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Over-Population, Over-Consumption and
Environmental problems

• Alan Rudy
• ISS 310
• Spring 2002
• Thursday, February 21

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The general argument goes a little like this

• Too many people means too much consumption,
  depletion and/or pollution and this threatens the
  carrying capacity of a naturally resource-limited
  collection of global ecologies.
• What did we learn from Cronon that might modify
  this?

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Classic Graph
World Population North -- Slow South -- Fast
1800?1 Billion W. Europe 0.2 S.E. Asia 2.2
1930?2 Billion N. America 0.7 C.Amca 2.3
1960?3 Billion E. Europe 0.8 India/Pak. 2.4
1975?4 Billion Austrlia/NZ 0.8 M.East 2.8
1987?5 Billion China/Japan 1.0 Africa 2.8
1999?6 Billion ---------------------- -------------------
2015?7.5 Billion These days 0.4 These days 1.9
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Population Whats the Problem?

• More people no real problem perspective
  Julian Simon
• People-versus-resources perspective Ehrlich,
  Hardin, Brown
• The social perspective social relations and
  institutions are key
• The power-structures perspective

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A Power-Structures Perspective

• Our thesis is that antidemocratic power
  structures create and perpetuate conditions
  keeping fertility high. (Lappe and Schurmann 18)
• Power becomes the crucial variable without it,
  it is possible to describe conditions like
  poverty associated with high fertility, but not
  to understand them or to arrive at workable
  solutions. (20)

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Usual Approach, prev. Table, is Usually Tied to
Graph like this one
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Explanation of Graph

• The Industrial North has made the demographic
  transition
• Population/Environment equilibrium modern
  Technology/Medicine ? Economic/Population growth
  ? New Population/Environment equilibrium.
• The underdeveloped South is still dealing with
  the early stages of the process and, if
  modernization works properly, theyll get were we
  are eventually

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BUT

• Consumption continues to rise in the North and
  technological and economic growth in the south
  lags far behind population growth rates.
• This leads to, or so the claim goes,
• pollution in the north and
• depletion in the south.
• Therefore
• we are consuming too much and
• they are having too many children.

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Solution to the problem is then

• The North must consume less while
• transferring modern contraceptive technologies to
  the South so as to slow population growth and
• develop/transfer to the South
• new, appropriate, and efficient technologies to
• decrease energy use,
• increase recycling,
• increase agricultural productivity and
• stimulate sustainable (sometimes labor-intensive)
  development.

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Lets look at this model

• We have a simple model wherein population
  increase leads to increased consumption,
  depletion, and pollution.
• What do we now know?
• We know some facts and maybe correlations.
• What do we not know?
• Causation.
• What remains unexplained?

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We dont know about

• Southern womens means of population control or
  the state of their ecological relations
• The social forces behind population growth, or
  technological development
• Why it is/how it came to be that Northern
  consumers consume as much as they do
• Why it is/how it came to be that Southern folks
  reproduce so much

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Summarizing the Power-Structures Perspective
understanding is key

• If ones financial security depends entirely or
  largely on ones surviving children
• And many births are necessary to ensure that even
  several children live to maturity
• And health services, including birth control are
  generally unavailable to the poor
• And women have no choices other than marriage and
  no power w/o children/sons
• And few educational or employment opportunities
  exist for women outside the home
• Population and poverty will increase

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With the Demographic Transition model there is no
need to study

• Comparative history
• Are there Northern countries/regions w/ low
  consumption?
• Are there Southern countries/regions w/ low pop
  growth?
• Social relations
• is population growth socially/ecologically
  irrational? for whom?
• what about distribution?

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No Need to Study II

• Political Economy
• where does contemporary sci/tech/med come from?
• what interest does who have in consumption/populat
  ion growth?
• Cultural History
• whose normative interests are being served by
  this debate?
• what institutions foster these trajectories,
  whered they come from?

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In this sort of scientific model

• CRITICISM AND DEBATE ARE FORECLOSED BY THE HARSH
  REALITY, BY THE FACTS
• These positions assume that population, or
  technology, can be treated as an
  independent/causal variable, as a thing
  independent of its history and particular social
  relations or context.

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Lastly

• The initial equilibrium state between population
  and environment is assumed when it, and its
  disruption (if it is real), needs to be
  theoretically and historically explained.

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Lets compare El Salvador and Indonesia.

• Both are poor and have high population growth.
• The expectation would then be that environmental
  degradation would be about equivalent in each
  country.
• It hasnt been.

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El Salvador has serious food/ecological problems.

• Integrated raw material supplier to Northern
  industries.
• Has major class polarization, land concentration,
  and a highly monetized rural and urban economy.
• UK/US colony, import/export driven economic
  development.

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Indonesia has far fewer food-ecological problems.

• Integrated raw material supplier to Northern
  merchant/trade businesses.
• Far less class/land polarization, and low
  monetization of the rural economy
• It was a Dutch colony that sought to keep US/UK
  indsutrial goods out, and organized internal
  development grounded around subsistence.

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My point

• The key to determining the likelihood of
  environmental degradation/starvation, as we saw
  with Cronon, is the organization of society as
  much as it is the relatively high or low
  population in a certain area.
• Clearly, this is what makes it possible for New
  Jersey to be so densely settled w/ comparatively
  little hunger and ecodestruction (unless youve
  been there).

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Lets look at the equilibrium assumption

• In the context of the slave-mercantile-industrial
  triangle between Africa-The Americas-Europe
• The population of Africa was decimated (90 to 9
  million 1500-1650)
• As was that of the Americas (50 to 0.5 million
  1500-1999)
• Thats a loss of 126 million people in Africa and
  the Americas from disease and war alone.

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Equilibrium assumption II

• At the same time that the European peasantries,
  just then recovering their population numbers
  after The Plague, or Black Death, were kicked off
  the land and turned into the European working
  class.
• Wheres the nature, population equilibrium of
  that past now? What of 1 Billion in 1800?
• Recovering Europe decimated everyone else and
  now population scholars start after the
  recovery-decimation

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Reproduction insecurity ? Population Growth

• Early Capitalist Growth Enclosure of the
  Commons Landlessness ?
• inability of peasants to reproduce themselves and
  their family w/o wages to buy commodities they
  used to make ?
• population growth to bring in more wages-money
  esp. when business preferentially hires more
  pliable/cheaper women and children

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Urbanization

• Urbanization coincides with the displacement of
  rural people and the displacement of rural people
  coincides with population growth.
• So, as people are no longer able to produce to
  satisfy their own needs, they congregate in
  cities (where the jobs are).
• What does this seem to indicate about Third World
  urbanization recently?

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But what about consumption?

• How many folks in the North determine their
  needs, much less the available means of need
  satisfaction
• Or even the range of options within ones
  available means?
• Would you prefer more efficient appliances,
  homes, better food, entertainment, longer lasting
  goods?
• What about the urban or rural poor, what are
  their options?

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Overconsumption II

• If we overconsume, what is it that we overconsume
  and why?
• If our cars/homes/lifestyles are less
  efficient/pollute more than wed like, why?
• Because we are wastrels?
• Could poverty be inefficient?
• If poverty is inefficient is it economically so?
  fiscally so? ecologically so?
• If these things are different, how so?

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Lets consume less Julia Butterfly Hill

• What would the first thing that would happen were
  there to be a radical decrease in consumption in
  the U.S?
• What does business do under conditions of
  declining consumption?
• What happens to the coffers of the state under
  conditions of declining economy?
• What happens then?

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Remedies

• Note that ALL the traditional responses to
  over-population/consumption fail to address
  North-South, rich-poor, male-female hierarchies.
• In fact they usually blame those with less power
  and less power to productively affect change.

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Historical Remedies

• U.S. and International Population Policy
• Population concerns w/in broader development
  policies 40s-50s
• Security/cold war, development, famine and
  population 60s-70s
• Development, anti-abortion, domestic politics and
  population 80s
• Population, development and womens empowerment
  90s/21st C?

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But arent people hungry?

• If it isnt over-population or over-consumption
  that cause hunger and/or environmental
  degradation, what is the problem?
• Lets look at hunger

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Myth One There is not enough food and not enough
land.

• Untrue Measured globally, there is enough to
  feed everyone. For example there is enough grain
  being produced today to provide everybody in the
  world with enough protein and about 3000 calories
  a day, which is what the average American
  consumes. But the world's food supply is not
  evenly distributed.

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Myth Two There are too many people to feed.

• It's usually the other way around hunger is one
  of the real causes of overpopulation. The more
  children a poor family has the more likely some
  will survive to work in the fields or in the city
  to add to the family's small income and, later,
  to care for the parents in their old age.
• All this points to the disease that is at the
  root of both hunger and overpopulation High
  birth rates are symptoms of the failures of a
  social system - inadequate family income,
  inadequate nutrition and health care and old-age
  security.

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Myth Three Growing more food will mean less
hunger.

• But it doesn't seem to work that way. "More food"
  is what the last 30 years' War on Hunger has been
  about. Farming methods have been "modernized",
  ambitious irrigation plans carried out, "miracle"
  seeds, new pesticides, fertilizers and machinery
  have become available.
• But who has come out better off? Farmers who
  already have land. money and the ability to buy
  on credit - not the desperately poor and hungry.

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Myth Four Hunger is contest between rich and
poor countries.

• Rich or poor we are all part of the same global
  food system which is gradually coming under the
  control of a few huge corporations.
• Poor people in the Third World market pay food
  prices that are determined by what people in rich
  countries are willing to pay. This is direct
  cause of hunger in many poor countries.

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Myth Five Hunger can be solved by redistributing
food to the hungry.

• Neither "one less hamburger a week nor massive
  food aid programs will eventually solve
  widespread starvation and poverty in the poorest
  nation.
• People will only cease to be poor when they
  control the means of providing and /or producing
  food for themselves.

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Myth Six A strong military defense helps
provides food security.

• The security of countries both great and small,
  depends first of all in a population that has
  enough food, enough jobs, adequate energy and
  safe, comfortable housing. When a society cannot
  provide these basics, all the guns and bombs in
  the world cannot maintain peace.