Population and the Environment Fernando Riosmena Department of Geography GEOG 2412 Our time on Earth in a cosmic scale Big Bang January 1 Origin of life on Earth September 25 December 31st First humans 10 30 p m Invention of agriculture 11 59 20 p m Hammurabic legal codes in Babylon Middle Kingdom in Egypt 11 59 52 p m Bronze metallurgy Mycenaean culture Trojan War Olmec culture invention of the compass 11 59 53 p m Iron metallurgy First Assyrian Empire Kingdom of Israel founding of Carthage by Phoenicia 11 59 54 p m Asokan India Ch in Dynasty China Periclean Athens birth of Buddha 11 59 55 p m Euclidean geometry Archimedean physics Ptolemaic astronomy Roman Empire birth of Christ 11 59 56 p m Zero and decimals invented in Indian arithmetic Rome falls Moslem conquests 11 59 57 p m Mayan civilization Sung Dynasty China Byzantine empire Mongol invasion Crusades 11 59 58 p m Renaissance in Europe voyages of discovery from Europe and from Ming Dynasty China emergence of the experimental method in science 11 59 59 p m Widespread development of science and technology emergence of global culture acquisition of the means of self destruction of the human species first steps in spacecraft planetary exploration and the search of extraterrestrial intelligence Now The first second of New Year s Day Source Originally taken from Carl Sagan s The Dragons of Eden http admiralty pacific net hk paulchui cosmic html Unprecedented growth throughout history but few doublings Source McFalls J A 2007 Population A Lively Introduction Population Bulletin 62 1 1 31 1 The future of course may bring further challenges in terms of sustainability Source Weeks Fig 2 2 The Demographic Transition implies going from high to low mortality fertility In between sizable growth due to lag between mortality and fertility decline Many places still undergoing it Source Fig 3 2 in Weeks 2005 Population With better projections another doubling unlikely during this Century Source Lutz W W Sanderson and S Scherbov 1997 Doubling of Population Unlikely Letters to Nature 387 803 805 2 Asynchronous demographic change will imply shifts in the share of the World s population by region Source McFalls J A 2007 Population A Lively Introduction Population Bulletin 62 1 1 31 Impacts of population on the Environment Population as a cause of environmental change As opposed to environmental influence on population dynamics Obviously we have deeply transformed our environment Though not the only ones doing so our impact much deeper Interest in extent of past and future environmental changes Generally through the lens of IPAT or IPCT I PxAxT P may be size density etc T Tr x Tw x S environmental susceptibility Different population regime consumption patters and environmental footprint across different technological regimes 3 Understanding impacts through the pressure stateresponse model SOCIETAL RESPONSE PRESSURE Population Consumption Technology STATE OF ENVIRONMENT Pollution Degradation Depletion Resource use Waste output FEEDBACK Scarcity Hazard Loss of amenity Price shift Changes in Behavior Culture Technology Resource management Policy measures Regulation Taxation Subsidy FILTERS Science Monitoring Political legal systems Market property systems For instance Urban Heat Island Effect http earthobservatory nasa gov Features GreenRoof UIH effect creates sizable variation in temperature across space particularly at night What kind of prevention mitigation strategies are out there http www climatechangefacts info Today Global Climate Change Status and Trends html 4 Views on population and the environment Malthusian Neo malthusian Cornucopian Market response Paul Ehrlich s Population Bomb Degradation resource loss if business as usual in pop growth Plenty of negative externalities in population growth Julian Simon Market mechanisms have will help us adjust behavior Distributionist view a third middle view Marxist origins Less attention in many policy circles The original Malthusian reasoning was tied to the idea that food production or other resources could not grow at the same pace as the population Malthusian Cornucopian views may dominate depending on the resource Source Harrison P and F Pearce 2000 AAAS atlas of population environment Univ of California Press 5 Grim scenarios re P x A x T and greenhouse gas emissions but do not conflate P x A x T with P Source Harrison P and F Pearce 2000 AAAS atlas of population environment Univ of California Press Population vs affluence consumption United States Source Menzal P Material World Population vs affluence consumption Thailand Mali Source Menzal P Material World 6 World Population in 2006 The size of each territory shows the relative proportion of the world s population living there Energy consumption in 2006 Population trends and various estimates of carrying capacity under a variety of assumptions illustrating the impact of all P A C T Source Cohen J E 1997 Population Economics Environment and Culture an Introduction to Human Carrying Capacity Journal of Applied Ecology 34 1325 1333 7 LOG10 population density no km 2 Carrying capacity with near zero technological expertise well below today s population Which illustrates the relevance of technological progress LOG10 body mass kg Source Cohen J E 1997 Population Economics Environment and Culture an Introduction to Human Carrying Capacity Journal of Applied Ecology 34 1325 1333 8