January 19, 2016
by Moisha Blechman
President Obama, Pope Francis, and the Paris COP21 climate conference all agree: we have a climate crisis. We all agree that it is the most pressing issue of our time, that it is more dangerous than any other issue confronting humanity.
The cause is understood. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an agency of the United Nations, states that the CO2 pollution warming the planet and acidifying the oceans is caused by human activity. We all know what activity that really means. It means burning fossil fuels, which have given us an unparalleled life of convenience and comfort, and our dependence on this delusionally “cheap” energy is deep in our culture.
At the same time, the by-product of burning — cumulative CO2 pollution — is changing every function on the planet. It is changing the average temperatures, the weather patterns, the sea levels, the rainfall frequency and intensity, animal distribution and plant growth. It is disengaging ecosystem synergy, leaving birds and animals starving. The additional heat on every square meter of the planet is sucking soils dry and killing the microbes that make soils productive. Agriculture itself is increasingly unreliable, due to drought and floods that are also caused by the changed climate. For all this, human activity, especially burning fossil fuels, is responsible.
If there were no human beings, none of these problems would exist. Fewer people would automatically diminish the impact. What a joyful prospect that would be for the plants and animals of the world! Given our population, is it possible to have a green economy? Can we convert to zero emissions by 2050 when we need to feed, clothe and shelter 7 to 9 billion people?
As the IPCC states, the root problem of climate change is people—their expectation of convenience, comfort, even luxury for those with money. For our way of life, the world is highly over-populated.
Here are some examples.
- When a baby is born in the U.S., we have a new consumer. He will use 10 disposable diapers every day which are made with oil-created plastic and synthetic material, which will immediately be trucked to a landfill where they will sit for the next 500 years before they finally disintegrate. A baby can be toilet trained as soon as he can walk, usually at one year of age. Today, disposable diapers are made to be so comfortable that the average child is not using a toilet until he is 3 years or older. That is 10,680 plastic diapers for every newborn, 7,000 of which are not necessary. If the child is not nursed for a few years, he will be fed formula that is highly processed with heat. In the fossil-fuel free life, no baby bottles are needed and formulas can be dispensed with. But corporate propaganda overwhelms the federal recommendation to nurse infants, even in non-industrialized nations.
- When I ride the New York subway in winter, I notice that almost every passenger is wearing what we could call quilted oil. The wool coat has been replaced with a coat made with oil. With the existing population, wool is no longer an option. It would require more sheep than the planet can support. I don’t think there is a green way to provide winter wear for the present population, much less an increasing one.
- No one has yet identified the misuse of oil for recreation in the form of motorized recreation, meaning motor boats and yachts, off-road vehicles, snow mobiles, snow making for ski slopes, car racing and so on. As the population increases the industry expands. It becomes harder to abandon and replace with green options.
- Today, a growing economy really means growing the consumer base (or increasing population), which grows the tax base, which in turn grows income available for the military. Fifty-two percent of our federal taxes go to the military. The U.S. military uses more oil than any other entity in the world. A diminishing population in the U.S. would shrink the money available for industrial military intervention, or any kind of war. If we are serious about saving life on Earth, we have to recognize that real security will shut off the oil spigot for military activity.
- The health of the American economy is often measured in housing starts. Yet the plumbing in new houses is made of plastic/oil. The wood needed for all housing deprives the planet of the forests that would otherwise be a CO2 sink. Driveways and new roads are made of asphalt, a petroleum derivative. The mechanical systems that make new houses work cost more CO2 emissions to manufacture and operate. A rising population base encourages new housing, but it is a huge planetary negative.
- The biggest CO2 cost to the planet is probably just feeding people. The entire system of growing food has morphed away from the family farm for local consumption to an industrial system that uses oil to plow, plant, fertilize, irrigate, spray with chemical herbicides, harvest, and finally ship all over the U.S. This includes importing food from and to distant nations on ships that burn especially dirty oil. China and India import American grain to feed their own overpopulated nations. California is a huge source of food grown on vast mechanized farms. Americans enjoy summer foods from South America all winter. Both California and South American produce arrives by fuel-expensive air freight every day.
- Each birth accelerates the growth of this system and is dependent on it for life. There other major challenges for increasing population numbers. One is having sheer space on which to settle and create a home. Increasingly, we either take away habitat from birds and animals, or we deform and reshape the land itself to create housing space.
Another challenge is the looming water crisis. Aquifers in China, Saudi Arabia, and the American Midwest are either gone or in the process of rapid depletion. Even water-rich regions have a housing limit for water use. These are major and universal trends.
A key step to meeting the climate crisis is to understand its underlying and fundamental cause: humanity is really mired in a population overshoot crisis. In the world of nature, overshoot is solved with starvation and disease. We want to avoid that.
When people realize that the American dream is evaporating primarily because there is less pie for everyone, they might choose to have fewer children. Otherwise, what will their future be?
The least we can do to build a sustainable future, including a safe climate, is to make all the benefits of Planned Parenthood freely available, and create a social environment that encourages families to take advantage of it. It is proven that education for women, and freedom for each and every woman to decide her own life, promotes rational choices when it comes to child bearing.
We all agree that we have a climate crisis. But we must also agree that a surging population will cancel every other measure to save our planet.