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[ I tried to summarize the 20 top reasons why population growth was abandoned by environmental groups and received little coverage in the news media the past 40 years. I highly recommend reading Beck and Kolankiewicz (2000) “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization” and Alan Weisman’s “Countdown: Our last, Best hope for a future on Earth?”. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com ]

“There is no need to decide whether to stop the population increase or not. There is no need to decide whether the population will be lowered or not. It will, it will! The only thing mankind has to decide is whether to let population decline be done in the old inhumane method that nature has always used, or to invent a new humane method of our own.” Isaac Asimov, 1974.

“Unlooked for but swift, we have come on like a swarm of locusts: a wide, thick, darkling cloud settling down like living snowflakes, smothering every stalk, every leaf, eating away every scrap of green down to raw, bare, wasting earth…There are too many men for Earth to harbor. At nearly seven billion we have overshot Earth’s carrying capacity”. Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First.

1) The Consumption of Wealthy Nations is the problem. Not the Poor.

It’s both, obviously. Not one or the other. The famous equation to describe this is I = P x A x T, which translates to Human Impact (I) on the environment = (P)opulation times (A)ffluence times (T)echnology.

It is certainly true that wealth nations consume too much. The United States uses 7 billion tons of minerals a year. Per capita that’s 47,769 pounds per American: 1400 pounds of copper, 9 tons of phosphate rock, 300 tons of coal, 16 tons of iron ore, 700 tons of stone, sand, and gravel, and so on.

But the poor also have a huge effect on the environment:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle

January 7, 2016

2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle

What is ahead for 2016? Most people don’t realize how tightly the following are linked:

Growth in debt
Growth in the economy
Growth in cheap-to-extract energy supplies
Inflation in the cost of producing commodities
Growth in asset prices, such as the price of shares of stock and of farmland
Growth in wages of non-elite workers
Population growth

It looks to me as though this linkage is about to cause a very substantial disruption to the economy, as oil limits, as well as other energy limits, cause a rapid shift from the benevolent version of the economic supercycle to the portion of the economic supercycle reflecting contraction. Many people have talked about Peak Oil, the Limits to Growth, and the Debt Supercycle without realizing that the underlying problem is really the same–the fact the we are reaching the limits of a finite world.

There are actually a number of different kinds of limits to a finite world, all leading toward the rising cost of commodity production. I will discuss these in more detail later. In the past, the contraction phase of the supercycle seems to have been caused primarily by too high population relative to resources. This time, depleting fossil fuels–particularly oil–plays a major role. Other limits contributing to the end of the current debt supercycle include rising pollution and depletion of resources other than fossil fuels.

The problem of reaching limits in a finite world manifests itself in an unexpected way: slowing wage growth for non-elite workers. Lower wages mean that these workers become less able to afford the output of the system. These problems first lead to commodity oversupply and very low commodity prices. Eventually these problems lead to falling asset prices and widespread debt defaults.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

$10 Trillion Investment Needed To Avoid Massive Oil Price Spike Says OPEC

December 29, 2015

$10 Trillion Investment Needed To Avoid Massive Oil Price Spike Says OPEC

The OPEC published its World Oil Outlook 2015 (WOO) in late December, which struck a much more pessimistic note on the state of oil markets than in the past. On the one hand, OPEC does not see oil prices returning to triple-digit territory within the next 25 years, a strikingly bearish conclusion. The group expects oil prices to rise by an average of about $5 per year over the course of this decade, only reaching $80 per barrel in 2020. From there, it sees oil prices rising slowly, hitting $95 per barrel in 2040.

Long-term projections are notoriously inaccurate, and oil prices are impossible to predict only a few years out, let alone a few decades from now. Priced modeling involves an array of variables, and slight alterations in certain assumptions – such as global GDP or the pace of population growth – can lead to dramatically different conclusions. So the estimates should be taken only as a reference case rather than a serious attempt at predicting crude prices in 25 years. Nevertheless, the conclusion suggests that OPEC believes there will be adequate supply for quite a long time, enough to prevent a return the price spikes seen in recent years.

Part of that has to do with what OPEC sees as a gradual shift towards efficiency and alternatives to oil. The report issued estimates for demand growth five years at a time, with demand decelerating gradually. For example, the world will consume an extra 6.1 million barrels of oil per day between now and 2020. But demand growth slows thereafter: 3.5 mb/d between 2020 and 2025, 3.3 mb/d for 2025 to 2030; 3 mb/d for 2030 to 2035; and finally, 2.5 mb/d for 2035 to 2040.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Extinction, the New Environmentalism and the Cancer in the Wilderness

October 31, 2015

Extinction, the New Environmentalism and the Cancer in the Wilderness

The word is in from the wildlife biologists. Say goodbye in North America to the gray wolf, the cougar, the grizzly bear. They are destined for extinction sometime in the next 40 years. Say goodbye to the Red wolf and the Mexican wolf and the Florida panther. Gone the jaguar, the ocelot, the wood bison, the buffalo, the California condor, the North Atlantic right whale, the Stellar sea lion, the hammerhead shark, the leatherback sea turtle. That’s just North America. Worldwide, the largest and most charismatic animals, the last of the megafauna, our most ecologically important predators and big ungulates, the wildest wild things, will be the first to go in the anthropogenic extinction event of the Holocene Era. The tiger and leopard and the elephant and lion in Africa and Asia. The primates, the great apes, our wild cousins. The polar bears in the Arctic Sea. The shark and killer whale in every ocean. “Extinction is now proceeding thousands of times faster than the production of new species,” biologist E.O. Wilson writes. Between 30 and 50 percent of all known species are expected to go extinct by 2050, if current trends hold. There are five other mass extinction events in the geologic record, stretching back 500 million years. But none were the result of a single species’ overreach.

I’ve found conversation with my biologist sources to be terribly dispiriting. The conversation goes like this: Homo sapiens are out of control, a bacteria boiling in the petri dish; the more of us, demanding more resources, means less space for every other life form; the solution is less of us, consuming fewer resources, but that isn’t happening. It can’t happen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

October 27, 2015

To feed growing cities we need to stop urban sprawl eating up our food supply

New season asparagus from farmland on Melbourne’s city fringe. Matthew Carey

If you’ve eaten any of the new season’s asparagus recently, it probably came from Koo Wee Rup, a small town 60 kilometres to the south east of Melbourne. Koo Wee Rup produces over 90% of Australia’s asparagus. The region has perfect conditions for asparagus growing, and its ancient peaty soils have a reputation for producing some of the best asparagus in the world.

Koo Wee Rup is just one of many food growing areas on the urban fringe of Australia’s state capitals that make an important contribution to the nation’s fresh food supply. The foodbowls on the fringe of cities like Sydney and Melbourne are some of the most highly productive agricultural regions in Australia.

But as these cities expand to accommodate rapidly growing populations, fertile farmland on the city fringe is at risk due to urban sprawl.

Melbourne Foodbowl at 7 million infographicFoodprint Melbourne project

Melbourne’s foodprint

Early findings from a new study of food production on Melbourne’s city fringe highlight the impact that continued urban sprawl could have on the supply of fresh, local foods in Australia’s cities. The Foodprint Melbourne project is investigating the capacity of Melbourne’s city fringe foodbowl to feed the population of Greater Melbourne.

The research explores the capacity of Melbourne’s foodbowl to feed the current population of 4.4 million and the predicted future population of around 7 million in 2050. The project also investigates the city’s “foodprint” – the amount of land, water and energy required to feed the city, as well as associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Early project findings indicate that Melbourne’s foodbowl currently has the capacity to supply a significant proportion of Greater Melbourne’s food needs across a wide variety of foods, including poultry, eggs, red meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables. The city’s foodbowl can supply just over 40% of the food needed to feed Greater Melbourne, including over 80% of the fresh vegetables consumed and around 13% of fruit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One True Measure of Stagnation: Not in the Labor Force

October 6, 2015

One True Measure of Stagnation: Not in the Labor Force

This is a stark depiction of underlying stagnation: paid work is not being created as population expands.

Heroic efforts are being made to cloak the stagnation of the U.S. economy. One of these is to shift the unemployed work force from the negative-sounding joblesscategory to the benign-sounding Not in the Labor Force (NILF) category.

But re-labeling stagnation does not magically transform a stagnant economy.To get a sense of long-term stagnation, let’s look at the data going back 45 years, to 1977.

NOT IN LABOR FORCE (NILF) 1976 to 2015

I’ve selected data from three representative eras:

— The 20-year period from 1977 to 1997, as this encompasses a variety of macro-economic conditions: five years of stagflation and two back-to-back recessions (1977 – 1982), strong growth from 1983 to 1990, a mild recession in 1991, and growth from 1993 to 1997.

— The period of broad-based expansion from 1982 to 2000

— The period 2000 to 2015, an era characterized by bubbles, post-bubble crises and low-growth “recovery”

In all cases, I list the Not in Labor Force (NILF) data and the population of the U.S.

1977-01-01: 61.491 million NILF population 220 million

1997-01-01 67.968 million NILF population 272 million

Population rose 52 million 23.6%

NILF rose 6.477 million 10.5%

1982-07-01 59.838 million NILF (start of boom) population 232 million

2000-07-01 68.880 million NILF (end of boom) population 282 million

Population rose 50 million 22.4%

NILF rose 9.042 million 15.1%

2000-07-01 68.880 million NILF population 282 million

2015-09-01 94.718 million NILF (“recovery”) population 322 million

Population rose 40 million 14.2%

NILF rose 25.838 million 37.5%

Notice how population growth was 23.6% 1977-1997 while growth of NILF was a mere 10.5% As the population grew, job growth kept NILF to a low rate of expansion. While the population soared by 52 million, only 6.5 million people were added to NILF.

In the golden era of 1982 – 2000, population rose 22.4% while NILF expanded by 15%. Job growth was still strong enough to limit NILF expansion. The population grew by 50 million while NILF expanded by 9 million.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pope’s climate push is ‘raving nonsense’ without population control, says top US scientist

September 26, 2015

Pope’s climate push is ‘raving nonsense’ without population control, says top US scientist

Paul Ehrlich writes in Nature Climate Change that Francis is wrong to fight climate change without also addressing the strain from population growth on resources

One of America’s leading scientists has dismissed as “raving nonsense” the pope’s call for action on climate change – so long as the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics rejects the need for population control.

In a commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change, Paul Ehrlich, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, argues that Pope Francis is simply wrong in trying to fight climate change without also addressing the additional strain on global resources from population rise. “That’s raving nonsense,” Ehrlich told the Guardian. “He is right on some things but he is just dead wrong on that.”

The critique in “Society and the Pope’s encyclical”, part of a special package from scientists on the encyclical, marked a rare note of dissent from scientists and campaigners. Many hope that the pope will drive home his call to action on poverty and the environment in his speech to Congress on Thursday.

Ehrlich, in his Nature Climate Change commentary, accuses Francis of a dangerous flaw in his indictment of consumerism and its effects on the poor and the environment. The pope had fallen for the usual clerical “obsession” with contraception and abortion – when he could have instead broken new ground on the Catholic church’s approaches to women’s reproductive rights and family planning.

The broadside exposes some of the difficulties of embracing a figure such as the pope – for those on the left as well as the right.

Conservative allies of the pope, on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, have balked at his denunciation of capitalism and call to action on climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Leveling the Playing Field of Death

August 11, 2015

Leveling the Playing Field of Death

In April 2015, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as two million. However, Nafeez Ahmed begs to differ, writing that western wars have killed four million or more Muslims since 1990.

It seems that the Empire is exterminating Muslims at a higher rate than those of other confessions. Why might that be? There seem to be two competing philosophies at work within the throbbing brain of the Empire: the environmentally hostile, infinite growth-oriented, natalistic view of economists, and the eco-friendly, Malthusian, population-control view of ecologists.

Neoclassical economists are infinite growth advocates, and many of them are natalists, wholeheartedly promoting ever-faster reproduction of everything. They dominate all the university economics programs in the US, as well as the Wall Street financial institutions who operate the US government as a wholly owned subsidiary. So you might think they would dominate the Empire too, in which case you might be right. But natalism and population control are just different sides of the same coin—not!—so how do we reconcile this?

The cornucopian economist Julian Simon wrote a book called The Ultimate Resource, in which he advocated unlimited human population growth for the advantage of increasing the number of human minds, which he called “the ultimate resource.” He claimed that the earth could support population growth for another 4 billion years—the current age of the planet. But the Empire doesn’t seem to be following this plan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb

August 2, 2015

Paul Ehrlich: The Population Bomb

The master predicament that remains unaddressed

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich released his ground-breaking book The Population Bomb, which awoke the national consciousness to the collision-course world population growth is on with our planet’s finite resources. His work was reinforced several years later by the Limits To Growth report issued by the Club of Rome.

Fast-forward almost 50 years later, and Ehrlich’s book reads more like a ‘how to’ manual. Nearly all the predictions it made are coming to pass, if they haven’t already. Ehrlich admits that things are even more dire than he originally forecasted; not just from the size of the predicament, but because of the lack of social willingness and political courage to address or even acknowledge the situation:

The situation is much more grim because, of course, when the population bomb was written, there were 3.5 billion people on the planet. Now there are 7.3 billion people on the planet. And we are projected to have something on the order of 9.6 billion people 35 years from now. That means that we are scheduled to add to the population many more people than were alive when I was born in 1932. When I was born there were 2 billion people. The idea that, in 35 years when we already have billions of people hungry or micronutrient-malnourished, we are somehow going to have to take care of 2.5 billion more people is a daunting idea.

I think it’s going to get a lot worse for a lot more people. You’ve got to remember that each person we add disproportionately causes ecological damage. For example, human beings are smart. So human beings use the easiest to get to, the purest, the finest resources first.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can We Really Cut CO2 Levels By Leaving Fossil Fuels In The Ground?

April 7, 2015

Can We Really Cut CO2 Levels By Leaving Fossil Fuels In The Ground?

Population growth in the world’s developing economies, particularly Africa and Asia, has been and will continue to be a primary driver of demand for energy resources into the near and distant future. As more babies are delivered into the world, they will eventually crave consumer goods derived from mined commodities such as iron ore, copper, potash, uranium, nickel and rare earths. The babies grow up to buy homes, start businesses, and migrate to cities, all powered from energy, whether that energy is from hydro, wind, solar, natural gas, coal, nuclear or oil.

The International Energy Agency estimates that between 1990 and 2008, as world population increased 27 percent, energy use rocketed 39 percent. The Middle East was the biggest energy glutton, with an increase of 170 percent, followed by China at 146 percent, India at 91 percent, Africa 70 percent and Latin America 66 percent. 2009 was the first time in 30 years that world energy consumption declined, and that was only due to the financial crisis that killed growth across the entire global economy.

Unfortunately, as we all now know, the seemingly boundless demand for energy has put the earth’s inhabitants in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma with regards to how to meet the need for power, while at the same time stemming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, that most scientists say is among the man-made culprits causing the planet to warm inexorably.

The problem of rising emissions has created a polarized debate among policymakers, with one side calling for action to stem climate change through international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, and the other arguing that emissions limits are part of a liberal agenda to cripple the coal, oil and gas industries that have provided well-paying jobs and steady shareholder income and growth for decades.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

To feed the world in 2050 we have to change course | Ensia

November 16, 2014

To feed the world in 2050 we have to change course | Ensia.

November 12, 2014 — The 2008 global food price spikes were a wake-up call to global policy-makers, shaking them from the lethargic slumber of the overfed. The rhetorical responses were swift, but policies and practices have changed little. That is in part because they relied on the tried-and-failed solution of increasing commodity food production.

Agribusiness led the charge, with dire warnings about unsustainable population growth and looming resource constraints. How can we produce enough food to feed this growing population?

“Between now and 2050, we need to double the food supply,” said Robert Fraley, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Monsanto, during an interview with National Public Radio’s Takeaway host John Hockenberry. “That’s probably the greatest challenge facing mankind.”

Indeed, that was the theme of this year’s World Food Prize event, which took place October 15–17 in Des Moines, Iowa. The event promised more of the same solutions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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