Environment – Population Matters-USA

Image: Global Footprint Network, www.footprintnetwork.org The top of the blue columns indicates the day overshoot started. The red indicates the duration of overshoot.

I was driving up Main Avenue, listening to a book and glancing to the left to find the eye doctor where I had an appointment. I looked at the clock and realized that I was almost late—then I realized that I had overshot my destination and made a “U” turn.

Not all types of overshoot are so easily corrected with a “U” turn. We are in ecological overshoot, which is much more complex than driving past that office. Ecological overshoot occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. Globally, we have exceeded our planet’s ability to regenerate what we take by about 80%. To put it simply, we are using more of the planet’s resources than are available.

Ecological overshoot is a little like overspending your credit card. You can get away with overspending for a while, and many people do. The average per capita debt in the USA is over $100,000, and more than $6,000 of that debt is owed to credit cards. You can be assured that the card company or the bank will eventually get their money, however. Unfortunately, it is our progeny who will need to pay for our ecological overshoot. We have overpopulated the planet, and are consuming too much “stuff”.

How can global overshoot be measured? You must know the resources of the planet, and how much of those resources we, humanity, are using. The Global Footprint Network, www.footprintnetwork.org, does those complicated measurements on a routine basis. It is relatively easy for them to calculate our excess use of resources. They have an interesting way of expressing overshoot.

One might think of measuring overshoot as megatons of carbon emissions or perhaps global debt; however, both of these concepts are difficult to understand intuitively. Instead, they use information from every country to determine nature’s “budget”, what our planet can supply. Then they estimate the day when we have used up all of that budget. Back in the early 1970s, we fit in the global budget. There were enough resources to supply all human needs, although they were distributed very inequitably. Since then, however, we have increasingly overspent that budget. Global population has more than doubled, and consumption has quadrupled, plus. We are too many people, consuming too much.

This year Earth Overshoot Day came the earliest ever—on July 24th. That marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. It was August 1st last year, and next year will probably be earlier in July. We are overshooting nature’s budget as fast as we’re racking up our national debt!

There are ways to decrease, and perhaps eventually reverse, overshoot. I’m sure you are aware of some; but let’s look at what the experts are saying. The Footprint Network people took advantage of the work done by Project Drawdown and came up with a list of solutions for overshoot. You can learn more at: www.overshootday.org/pop. If we took full advantage of all 76 items on the list, we could move Overshoot Day more than a month later. Two of the most effective solutions, “Educating Girls” and “Family Planning”, are similar in the way they have their effect—by reducing population growth. They are combined at the linked website.

Voluntary family planning is probably the most effective, least expensive and most humane way to slow population growth. Although World Contraception Day was on September 26th, let’s keep this year’s theme in mind: “Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges—Contraceptive Access for All”!

Environmental groups are only treating the symptoms of overpopulation

Several years ago a friend asked if I would be interested in helping start a population interest group in what became the Sierra Club’s SW Colorado Group. Today the Group is going strong, including leading discussions about possible new mining in the La Plata mountains, learning about the pros and cons of beavers and introducing a local organization that advocates for giving legal status to features of nature.

I remember when the national Sierra Club (SC) had a large, energetic Population Issues Committee. There was an active chat group where we traded information back and forth. Before then, SC published Anne and Paul Ehrlich’s classic book The Population Bomb. Past SC president, Carl Pope, used the term “most overpopulated nation” to describe the USA, acknowledging the huge footprint Americans leave on the environment.

What happened that the SC no longer seems concerned about human population? Journalist and Durango native, Kathleene Parker, may have part of the answer. She wrote that a 2004 Los Angeles Times article gave a clue to this change in policy.

At the end of the 1990s there was a tug-of-war in the SC’s board. People such as Dave Foreman pushed for a strong policy to limit immigration and population growth. Other members had a laisse faire attitude; they won the dispute. They were perhaps helped by a rich donor, David Gelbaum, who gave over $100 million to the SC. He wrote: “…that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”

Personally, I am ambivalent about immigration, but passionate about slowing population growth voluntarily.

The current national SC Population Policy starts off stating: “The Sierra Club is a pro-choice organization that endorses comprehensive, voluntary reproductive health care for all. Sexual and reproductive health and rights are inalienable human rights that should be guaranteed for all people with no ulterior motive.”

This sounds pretty good. However, it further states: “This includes policies and positions made in the name of preventing ‘overpopulation’ by ideas and means that include, but are not limited to: zero-growth, population stabilization, family planning as climate mitigation, or promoting women’s empowerment or girls’ education as an indirect means to limit population growth.”

To me, this seems like an attempt to be politically correct by ignoring the basic cause of all the environmental problems that the SC tries to deal with. It is too late to “prevent” overpopulation; overpopulation is already attacking the integrity of our planet, our life support system. Three billion people, more or less, is the maximum human population that can be sustained without causing degradation of our environment. We are approaching 3 times that number!

In the USA we are consuming much more than is sustainable. Yes, consumption is a major factor; people often bring it up. I am tempted to ask these advocates of reduced consumption if their carbon footprint is 2 tons or less; this is what is considered to be sustainable. (The average carbon footprint of people in the US is 16 tons!) I know few people who are trying to consume less. However, I have met hundreds—no, thousands—of people who wish to have control over their family size. Slowing population growth is, indeed, the “low hanging fruit.”

The word “population” seems to be anathema to many people, perhaps because it goes against the biblical admonition “be fruitful and multiply”—and all the religious hang-ups about pronatalism and sexuality. Perhaps it brings up racial and genocidal disasters of the distant past—and also recent and near. We need to get over it and face up to the fact that “we have met the enemy and he is us”. And the more of us, the worse things will get.