The problem with population

1. The problem with population Berkhamsted Geographical Association 20 September 2012 Population Matters 135-137 Station Road, London E4 6AG +44(0)20 8123 9116 www.populationmatters.org enquiries@populationmatters.org Patrons: Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE ● Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta ● Professor Paul Ehrlich ● Baroness Shreela Flather ● Dr Jane Goodall DBE ● Professor John Guillebaud ● Susan Hampshire OBE ● Dr James Lovelock CBE ● Professor Aubrey Manning OBE ● Professor Norman Myers CMG ● Chris Packham ● Sara Parkin OBE ● Jonathon Pomitt CBE ● Lionel Shriver ● Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO Population Matters is the working name of the Optimum Population Trust. Regd. company no. 3019081. Regd. charity no. 1114109. Regd. office as above.

2. Introducing Population Matters • Population Matters is the leading population charity in the UK. Our vision is of a global population size providing a good standard of living for all, a healthy environment and environmental sustainability. • Our activities are based on our charitable aims of advancing: • the education of the public in issues relating to human population worldwide and its impact on environmental sustainability; • researchto determine optimum and ecologically sustainable human population levels and to publicise the results of such research; and • environmental protection by promoting policiesin the United Kingdom and other parts of the world that will lead or contribute to the achievement of stable human population levels which allow environmental sustainability. • We have over 3000 members from some 30 countries

3. Introducing the speaker • Simon Ross, Chief executive • Simon has been managing for and advising on improved performance for leading public, private and third sector organisations for almost thirty years. His experience in management consulting, marketing and marketing research has been on both the client and agency side and he has post graduate qualifications in marketing and market research. • He became involved in Population Matters through a conviction that population growth underlies many of the problems of today’s world.

4. Do you have? • No other siblings (brothers and sisters) • One other sibling (there are two of you) • Two other siblings (there are three of you) • Three or more other siblings (there are four or more of you)

5. Key points • Is population a problem? • If so, should we do something about it? • If we should, what should we do about it? • What do you think?

6. What do British people think? • Proposition: Are the world and UK populations too high? • Result: 80% said yes. • YouGov poll for OPT in 2011

7. Is this a new concern (BC)? • Stasinos – poet 776 – 580 BC“There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed Earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing Earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.” • Confucius – philosopher 551 – 479 BC“Excessive (population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.” • Aristotle – philosopher 384 – 322 BC“One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property…The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”

8. Is this a new concern (CE)? • Tertullian – writer and theologian 160 – 220“The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs.” • Nicolas Machiavelli – writer 1469 – 1527“When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere… the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways (floods, plague and famine).” • Thomas Malthus – clergyman and scholar 1766 – 1832“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”

9. What affects animal population size? • Food availability • Disease prevalence • Predation • Procreation level

10. In other words, • The population of a species grows until: • The food runs out; e.g. seasonal die off • Disease spreads in overcrowded conditions • Predators increase • Breeding reduces. • Usually, things tend to balance out.

11. Which country is this?

12. Imbalance - lack of predators • Rabbits introduced to Australia • Plenty of food • No natural predators • High birth rate • Result – enormous and sometimes permanent ecological destruction • Human response - Introduction of disease - myxamotosis

13. On the other side of the world

14. What’s the problem?

15. Overshoot – lack of food • Reindeer in St. Matthew Island, Alaska • 29 individual animals introduced • No predators • Population rose to a peak of 6,000 • Lichen eliminated through overgrazing • Population fell back to 50 over 20 years

16. Are humans different? • Are we subject to the same constraints • Food availability • Disease prevalence • Predation • Procreation level? • Or can we rise above these limits through human ingenuity? • It is a bit of both

17. Human population historically Fairly flat

18. Famine victims in India

19. Food - deaths from starvation • Between 108 BC and 1911 AD there were no fewer than 1,828 major famines in China or one nearly every year in one or another province. • There were 95 famines in Britain during the Middle Ages.

20. Which disease is this?

21. Disease - deaths from disease • Antonine plague 5m • Plague of Justinian 25m • Black Death 100m • The American conquest 1.5m • Russian cholera pandemic 1m • Russian flu 1m • 1981 flu pandemic 75m • HIV/AIDS 25m

22. Which war is this?

23. Predator equivalent - deaths from wars • World War II 60-72m • An Shi rebellion 36m • Mongol conquests 30-60m • Qing conquest 25m • World War I 20m • Taiping rebellion 20m • Second Sino-Japanese war 20m • Dungan revolt 8-12m • Tamurlane conquests 10-20m • Russian civil war 5-9m

24. Limiting childbirth

25. Limiting procreation historically • Celibacy (religious orders) • Later marriages • Abstinence e.g. extended breastfeeding • Birth control methods • High child mortality • Infanticide • Geriatricide

26. Examples of overshoot • A society's adaptive capacity may be reduced by either a sharp increase in population or societal complexity, destabilizing its institutions and causing massive shifts in population and other social dynamics. • In cases of collapse civilizations tend to revert to less complex, less centralized socio-political forms using simpler technology. These are characteristics of a Dark Age. • Examples of such societal collapse are: the Hittite Empire, the Mycenaean civilization, the Western Roman Empire, the Mauryan and Gupta Empires in India, the Mayas, the Angkor in Cambodia and the Han and Tang dynasties in China.

27. What is this pile made of?

28. Imbalance – lack of predators • European migration to North America • Plenty of food • No natural predators • High birth rate • Result – Enormous ecological destruction • Bison almost wiped out • Carrier pigeons wiped out • Newfoundland cod wiped out • Many whale species almost wiped out

29. Where is this and what is missing?

30. Overshoot – lack of timber • Easter Island • The first-recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April 722 when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveenvisited and estimated there were 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island. • Archaeologists estimate the population may have been as high as 10,000 to 15,000 a few decades earlier. • Fossil pollen analysis shows that the main trees on the island had gone 72 years earlier in 1650.

31. What changed in the last 200 years?

32. What changed in the last 200 years? • Food availability rose – Agricultural revolution; Green Revolution • Disease prevalence fell – Modern medicine and public health • Predation fell – Deaths from war falling • Survival rate rose – Falling infant mortality • Made possible by exploiting fossil fuels

33. Did anyone notice? Albert Einstein Helen Keller John Maynard Keynes Jawaharlal Nehru Kenneth Boulding Jacques Cousteau Richard M. Nixon Norman Borlaug Robert McNamara Spike Milligan James Lovelock Digby McLaren Isaac Asimov Prince Philip James P. Grant Professor Albert Bartlett George H.W. Bush Gore Vidal Queen Elizabeth II Sir David Attenborough Maurice Strong Martin Luther King

34. Promoting responsible parenting

35. A couple considers their options

36. But many FP programmes lapsed • Opposition • Fundamentalist religions - fertility is God’s will • US religious right – opposition to abortion • Political right - the market will solve our problems • Political left – socialism will solve our problems • Some feminists/ civil rights advocates – top down target led population programmes led to undue pressure (China, Indian state of emergency) • HIV/AIDS need for funding

37. Birth rates fell but not by enough Children per woman 2.1 per woman = long term stability

38. Human impact is more than population Log scale

39. What are the consequences - I? • Falling: • water supplies in aquifers and glaciers • agricultural land area and fertility • freshwater fish and sea fish stocks • biodiversity and habitats worldwide • Oil, coal and gas reserves • mineral and plant resources • arctic and ocean health • Changing climate and weather

40. What are the consequences - II? • Growing • Demand for housing and overcrowding • Pressure on green belt and countryside • Infrastructure costs and disruption • Traffic congestion and transport crowding • Pollution: air, noise, light • Reliance on wind farms, nuclear, fracking, coal fired power stations, biofuels • Reliance on intensive farming and GM food

41. Berkhamsted size triples in 100 years

42. What does the future hold? Drivers of change • Population growth • Industrialization of global south • Meat based diet becomes more common Consequences of change • Urbanization,ageing, migration • Progressive elimination of wildlife • Will there be enough food for all?

43. Poverty currently extensive • 3 billion people have an income of less than U.S. $2.5/day • 1.5 billion people have an income of less than US$1.25/day • Almost a billion people lack access to sufficient food or clean drinking water

44. Where is the population going? 16 billion 10 billion 6 billion

45. What decides future growth? • Increasing longevity – living longer • Population momentum – youth cohort size • Falling birth rate – children per woman

46. Increasing longevity • Improved nutrition, public health and medicine • Infant and child survival still rising • People living longer worldwide • Trend slightly moderated by • Increasing obesity and lack of exercise • Virus developing resistance to drugs

47. Increasing longevity - world Will rise by seven years in next 55 years

48. Population momentum • There are more young people than ever before due to better infant survival and past high birth rates • Even if they each have no more children than their parents had, the result will be a higher population

49. Population momentum

50. Falling birth rate • The birth rate is falling in most countries • 40% of people live in countries with sub-replacement birth rates However, • Some countries still have high birth rates • Forecasts depend on access to family planning and a desire for smaller families