Climate change and the limits of growth

It's called "capitalism," Jerry.  Don't be afraid to identify it by its proper name.

Capitalism can't survive without growth. That's why it has to be replaced if growth is to be curtailed.

David Harvey has some good ideas on how to go about this process: 

Harvey goes on in this article to propose how we should be preparing for the transition to a new society.

M, you are right about capitalism, but it is not only capitalism, it is any system that is predicated on growth or refuses to accept that there are limits to growth or exploits its resource base beyond its ability to regenerate at least 100% on average.

Thanks for the Harvey reference.

After many years of research, I have come to several conclusions.

1. Cunsumerism and capitalism can only survive with a growing population.

2. The planet can only support 4.5 billion people because humans are extremely destructive and chop down trees to build houses, create paper, etc and it is only a matter of time before there are not enough trees to cool the planet and creat oxygen.

3. Human waste created by the consumer society is destroying the oceans and contaminatiing our fields and rivers.

4. More people means less fish, meat and vegetables for everyone.

5. All our medicines are created from natural remedies found in plants that are fast disappearing. So disease is likeley to overcome the human race and act as a great leveller.

6. The food and herbs from developing countries, primarily India and China, are full of toxins such as arsenic and mercury because the streams and rivers are used as open sewers for human and industrial waste. Even the fish are toxic.

7. Survival of the human race depends upon a major reduction in poulation, which will probably be achieved by disease and war.

8. Consumerism must be replaced by conservationism. No more production for the sake of creating jobs.

9. Party politics have failed.

10. Education in conservation and morality must start at kindergarden, in order to create a sustainable society.

11. Big problem is that the educators have become so corrupt, it will be difficult to find good teachers.

12. We have almost run out of time. Marginal changes to what we do in order to maintain a healthy planet is not enough. We must stop everything and start again, with green technologies, minimal waste and clean water for all. The alternative is too terrible to imagine.

Some pretty good observations, Archiemac . The 4.5 billion population figure is debatable. What size population that the planet can support is dependent on what level of consumption is permitted. The higher the average per capita level of consumption that there is, the smaller the population must be and vice versa.

Maintaining societies at a level considerably less than the current Canadian level of consumption might mean a global population quite a bit smaller than 4.5 billion.

Some interesting reading:

http://ronaldwright.com/books/a-short-history-of-progress/

http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3994 [11]

http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_repo... [12]

The ‘New' Population Control Craze: Retro, Racist, Wrong Way to Go
by Betsy Hartmann

Betsy Hartmann needs to go back to class and learn more about the environment.

The critique by Laurie Mazur was better

What is not fully considered is that the planet can not now comfortably support, at least in any but a more primative style, 7 billion people, never mind 9 billion or more.  Even 3 billion will be a burden unless we accept a much different ecology than the one that has sustained us for tens of thousands of years.

There are lots of deniers out there, denying a population problem is in the same boat as denying climate change.  The arguments fall apart under careful scrutinty.

Which completely undercuts your "population control" position. Because no matter how small you shrink the world's population, it doesn't begin to address the problem of environmental destruction in the absence of worldwide revolutionary social change.

It's a social and political problem, not a biological one.

It is both.  You can not seriously believe that the world can expand its population infinitely, and unless you do then you have to settle for what an optimum population is, and what that is depends on how much per capita consumption is, which means the smaller the population to a point, the higher the standard of living can be.

Also, even though our social system has led us to our environmental problem, you can not credibly say that with a different social system we could have unlimited population growth without an environmental problem.  No matter what the system there are limits to growth, and even the most destructive system is sustainable if its population is so small that no matter what they do they can not physically consume beyond the sustainable limit.

Those who say that there is no population problem are saying that consumption levels need to drop for about 2/3 of the worlds population if the other 1/3 is brought up to the sustainable level.  That means Canadians reducing their consumption by about 80%.  It means people in Turkey, Mexico, Malaysia and Serbia, among many places, reducing their consumption.  And Mexico, which is over consuming can not produce all that it needs by about a third, and Cuba, which is under consuming marginally is still consuming about a third more than it can produce.

The point of view that there is no population problem is not a scientific one, at least if it is coupled with the idea that equal consumption at the sustainable level would be consumption higher than the average enjoyed by people in Jordan or Uzbekistan.  And, that is on a global average.  There are a number of places in the world that can not sustain their population even with that average, Cuba being one of them.

Then we get to the problem of bio-diversity, something that our society depends on for survival, but how and how much is not well understood.  Repairing our bio-deiversity problem may require reducing the amount of agricultural land and other development, which will reduce the amount of food produced.  Can one argue that we can have unlimited numbers of people while reducing food supplies, or at a minimum, not increasing them?

Your position is simply a recipe for inaction and justification of the status quo. There is nothing we can do collectively about the size of the population of the Earth, besides make war, spead disease, restrict food and water supplies, and force sterilization on people. So if we don't find any of those options palatable, there's essentially nothing we can do; the problems of humanity are out of our hands, because we can't change the human biological imperative to reproduce, etc. You have admitted defeat.

Indeed it is, and it was a religious, unscientific statement that I was presenting as a summary of your position.

You continue with your religious, unscientific (and apolitical) position by asserting that our only alternatives are either to "control" our biological imperatives or die off. Since there is nothing we can do about the former, the only alternative you offer to political activists is to fold our tents and wait for the inevitable die-off of our species.

You have admitted defeat.

Defeatist?

Maybe you'd like to share with us your plan for "controlling" the biological imperatives of the human race.

I don't have a "plan."  That of course does not make the facts any less the facts or the problem any less of a problem.  The fact is we can do things about our biological urges, what and how, and how effective any might be is up for discussion.  Saying that there is nothing we can do is the ultimate surrender.

What is important at this time is to gain wider recognition of the problem.  Once that is done no doubt there will be ample discussion on what to do about it.  Working on what to do about it is far more progressive and productive than denying it.

There is nothing you can do about my biological urges, nor I about yours, unless you are prepared to use coercion or bribery.

Unless and until you are able to come up with a plan to control the world's biological urges, I am entitled to assume that you have none.

What I can do, however, is join in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a society and an economic system based on human needs, not private profit. Nothing less than that can create the conditions for free human beings to be able to make intelligent and informed choices as to their reproductive behaviour.

Arguing for population control under capitalism is arguing for coercion, oppression, selfishness, and greed - the only tools in the capitalist toolbox for influencing human behaviour.

At least now you admit that there is something that can be done.

Bribery and coercion are just forms of incentive, and not exclusive to capitalism.  Civilized society is based on these incentives.  Control of urges is what helps make us civilized.

Whether I have a plan or not is irrelevant.  What is relevant is acknowledgement of the problem.

Except that the argument is not for population control under capitalism or any other system, but simply for population control, regardless of the system.  In fact, any system based on growth requires population increases.  Also, coercion, oppression and etc. are not unique to capitalism.  One might even argue that they are some of those basic human urges we need to control.

So now we see that you do indeed have some sort of plan. And as I suspected, you are prepared to use bribery and coercion. I wonder what else?

It's no surprise you're reluctant to let us all in on it.

"Acknowledging" an alleged problem without offering a solution is alarmism, pure and simple.

Regardless of the system, is right! This accurately represents your apolitical approach to what you perceive as a freestanding problem, unrelated to the socio-economic system that brought it about.

It also underlines that you place a higher priority on population control than on political change.

There's nothing progressive about your position, which puts you in some very nasty company.

Check your vision.  It looks like my plan exists only in your imagination.

Since over population and over consumption can occur under any number of systems, it is a problem regardless of the system.  This of course does not exclude the system from being a part of the dynamic that causes the problem.  Over consumption in a socialist system, or any other non-capitalist system would still be a problem.  Growth is certainly a feature of capitalism, but it can happen elsewhere, too, unless checked by some sort of control or other.  You really can not, at least within the bounds of logic and reason, reduce everything to political systems.

Just like a firefighter in a fire puts a higher priority on putting out the fire than on redesigning the fire department. 

If you do not consider a concern for saving human society in any but the most primative and depressed form progressive, then so be it.  The fact that someone might agree with facts presented by others does not automatically mean that they agree with how to deal with the facts.  Using your logic vegetarians may claim that people who eat meat are in some very nasty company, would that mean all meat eaters are nasty?  Of course considering some of history's vegetarians, they might not be in very good company, either.

Canada has a million children living in poverty. 150,000 Canadians are homeless, while 1.5 million homes are "substandard" by CMHC standards. In Toronto alone 65,000 people are on a waiting list for affordable housing. Canada has 1.5 million unemployed persons. Canada has the worst record for greenhouse gas emissions in the G8.

Is Canada overpopulated? Only the most craven apologist for capitalism would say that there are obviously too many people in Canada, that we have obviously exceeded the carrying capacity of our country. Canada in fact has negative population growth; we need immigration just to maintain population levels. We are one of the most sparsely-populated countries in the world.

And yet, that is exactly the false perspective advanced by the would-be population controllers with respect to the world in general. To them, Haiti, for example, is "obviously" overpopulated because there is so much poverty, so little food, and such great environmental devastation. Centuries of exploitation, corruption, and "free-market" piracy don't count for anything with these "theorists". Even if we got rid of capitalism, Haiti would still be overpopulated, they bleat, as if the real problem is population, and the socio-economic system has no effect on levels of wealth, consumption, health, or birth and death rates.

It's no wonder the population control movement is supported by the most reactionary defenders of the existing order.

Yes, but irrelevant to my point, and I am not quite sure what yours is anymore, at least in relationship to mine, although I do agree that you are pointing out a number of problems that need to be dealt with.  Of course equalizing cosumption globally would put Canada's rich and poor on an even footing with everyone else in the world, consuming about 80% than the average Canadian does now.

Actually Canada's high rate of consumption is less than half of what it can sustainably produce, so if we sealed off all borders and ended all trade, Canada would one of the few self sufficient countries.  Of course the issue is not whether Canada or any other country is over populated, but that the planet in total is over consuming its ability to replenish itself.  Overall global consumption is the problem, population is a factor in that, how much we consume is the another.  The world is not over populated if we consider living at the consumption rate of Jordanians or Uzbekis as the optimum level of consumption.

What is your point in regards to what I have been saying?  The issue is the planet in total, not Canada, so whether Canada is over populated or not is immaterial.  Also, capitalism as we have it is based on continuous growth, which means an increasing population, so any capitalist argument for population reduction would be selective, which mine is not.  Again, the planet, not Canada, is exceeding its carrying capacity.

Now you sound like a capitalist, got to keep up the supply of cheap labour and consumers.  I might point out that the First Nations people did alright here before they were overrun by immigration, did they need that?

It doesn't matter what they say, it is not pertinent to the issue, and if they say this as you report it, they are off base.  There are multiple problems, population is one of them, and it can be a problem regardless of the socio-economic system.  However, the system can contribute to the population problem. No matter how much you want to ignore that fact and bundle all evil into the box of capitalism, it is still there.

It is also supported by a number of progressive opponents.  The difference is in how it is to best dealt with.  Of course I can think of a number of reactionary defenders of the existing order that oppose population control, does that make all in opposition to it reactionary?  By your logic in this argument it might.

MS, thought that you might enjoy this article defending an increase in population:

Our Vanishing Ultimate Resource

And this one:

Food and Population [30]

and this one:

Bottleneck Century [31]