Over Population Over Consumption and Environmental problems Alan Rudy ISS 310 Spring 2002 Thursday February 21 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 Classic Graph World Population 1800 1 Billion 1930 2 Billion 1960 3 Billion 1975 4 Billion 1987 5 Billion 1999 6 Billion 2015 7 5 Billion North Slow W Europe 0 2 N America 0 7 E Europe 0 8 Austrlia NZ 0 8 China Japan 1 0 These days 0 4 South Fast S E Asia 2 2 C Am ca 2 3 India Pak 2 4 M East 2 8 Africa 2 8 These days 1 9 Population What s 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 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 w ithout 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 Usual Approach prev Table is Usually Tied to Graph like this one 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 they ll get were we are eventually 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 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 laborintensive development Let s look at this model We have a simple model wherein population increase leads to increased consumption depletion and pollution What do we now know What do we not know We know some facts and maybe correlations Causation What remains unexplained We don t 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 Summarizing the Power Structures Perspective understanding is key If one s financial security depends entirely or largely on one s 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 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 No Need to Study II Political Economy where does contemporary sci tech med come from what interest does who have in consumption population growth Cultural History whose normative interests are being served by this debate what institutions foster these trajectories where d they come from 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 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 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 hasn t been 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 Indonesia has far fewer foodecological 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 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 you ve been there Lets look at the equilibrium assumption In the context of the slave mercantileindustrial 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 That s a loss of 126 million people in Africa and the Americas from disease and war alone 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 Where s 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 Reproduction insecurity Population Growth Early Capitalist Growth