Category Archives: Sustainability and the Big picture

Conservation groups speak out on problem of economic growth, and you can too!

Posted on June 15, 2007 | 5 comments

This press release came to me via email:

British Columbia Field Ornithologists take a position on the fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation

At their Annual General Meeting in Lillooet on 26 May 2007, the BC Field Ornithologists (BCFO) adopted a position on the fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. The BCFO addresses the study and enjoyment of wild birds in British Columbia through research and conservation efforts to preserve birds and their habitats.

The timing of the vote was opportune as Birdlife International announced the previous week that 22% of the planet’s birds are now at increased risk of extinction. A total of 1,221 bird species are presently considered threatened with extinction and an additional 812 species are considered Near Threatened, an increase of 28 species from last year….

The British Columbia Field Ornithologists group is one of a growing number of conservation groups, ecological economics groups, and others which have adopted official positions stating that economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with environmental protection. They include the United States Society for Ecological Economics and the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section. (more…)

5 Comments

Posted in Biodiversity, Brian Czech, Ecological economics, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Steady state economy, Sustainability and the Big picture

Local breakthrough in addressing population and urban growth

Posted on June 10, 2007 | 3 comments

I received word last night from Bob Fireovid who maintains the site, Controlling Growth in Our Communities, that a group in the Charlottesville, Virginia area has had set aside by their county board of supervisors $25,000 in funding, with preliminary approval that it be applied toward a study to determine an optimal sustainable population for their community.

Though they have more steps to complete to secure this and more funding, this is a breakthrough with regard to urban growth control and the the need to recognize limits to growth. The group, Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population (ASAP), one of the most active and forward thinking local groups addressing urban growth, has been working toward this for some time.

According to the email forwarded to me, this may be the first time a local government in the US has voted to approve funds for such research.

In my view, other communities should follow ASAP’s and Albemarle County’s lead on this. And communities which have in place other measures to limit growth, might do well to add a population cap based on such research. (more…)

3 Comments

Posted in Carrying capacity, Ecology, Environment, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture, Urban growth

We must lose our arrogance

Posted on June 1, 2007 | 20 comments

A familiar poem, nearly 200 years old, may provide the theme for our future if we, as one among millions of species, do not soon let go of our sense of privilege, and grasp what “sustainability” means.

Ozymandias

by: Percy Bysshe Shelly, 1818

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

20 Comments

Posted in Ecological collapse, Economic growth, Ecosystem, Environment, Extinction, Globalization, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

Powerful population links

Posted on May 23, 2007 | 18 comments

If this site is to be of some help in the world, it will be by providing information, through essays and discussion, of which others make productive use. With that in mind, at one time or another you’ll be in a position to try to convince someone of the urgent need for action on the environmental crisis we face. One of the most contentious issues, of course, is population. In working on the “All Links” page I mention in the sidebar (It really is coming!), it occurred to me I should share right now a few population links you might find particularly useful in making the case for addressing population growth.

Their value is in their clout. They are all statements or more extensive resources on population from important scientific organizations or, in one case, from world leaders. If you’re talking with someone who denies the importance of population toss a couple of these references their way. (more…)

18 Comments

Posted in Ecology, Ecosystem, Environment, Organizations, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Population-environnment, Sustainability and the Big picture, World population

Just when you thought the cornucopians had all gone away, Redditors channel the spirit of Julian Simon

Posted on May 17, 2007 | 13 comments

Recently I submitted a link to an article on Trinifar to Reddit, one of the most active in a category loosely known as “social bookmarking” sites. These are sites where you can share with others links to websites or articles of interest. On Reddit, submissions are voted up or down. If one gets enough up-votes it moves to their front page and can send a lot of traffic to the site. [1] That happened with this one, driving a barrage of visits to Trinifar’s post. That was good as the article had a message concerning population and limits to growth which needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

But that’s not the end of it. On Reddit, users also comment on the links submitted. This one triggered a large and divided discussion on the question of limits to growth. Among the comments were some I found thoughtful and incisive. But there was also a range of arguments representing the “cornucopian” view popularized by the late economist Julian Simon. (Note: the Wikipedia entry is written, in large part, by devotees of Simon.) (more…)

13 Comments

Posted in Carrying capacity, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Ecosystem, Environment, Extinction, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Population solutions, Population-environnment, Sustainability and the Big picture

Brian Czech and the logic of the steady state economy

Posted on May 11, 2007 | 5 comments

Our physical growth will have to stop. It’s unsustainable. The earth is finite after all. That’s indisputable, isn’t it? Listen to Brian Czech talk about it in this radio interview. (You’ll need either to download it as an mp3, or to listen to it as a RealAudio file. For the latter, if you don’t have the RealOne player, just download Media Player Classic which is less problematic anyway and plays the same files.) Czech is the president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and author of Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train. He has established himself as an important figure in ecological economics, taking on the neoclassical economic model and macroeconomic theorists and their propaganda advocating limitless economic growth. (more…)

5 Comments

Posted in Brian Czech, Ecological economics, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Ecosystem, Environment, Steady state economy, Sustainability and the Big picture

Special guest: Dr. Russell Hopfenberg on food supply, carrying capacity, and population

Posted on May 3, 2007 | 72 comments

It’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Russ Hopfenberg to GIM. During the preceding weeks we’ve summarized and had the chance to discuss his work on the links between food supply, carrying capacity, and population growth, and to comment and ask questions. In this post, Russ generously responds to our questions and comments. Feel free to post additional comments and questions below, and Russ will return later in the month (update: make that next month) for one more round of follow-up comments (Update: here is the link to those comments). Thanks so much, Russ!

— John

__________________________________________________________

By Russell Hopfenberg:

I’d like to extend my thanks to John Feeney and Steve Salmony for inviting me to participate in this forum. I’d also like to express my appreciation to them for hand-holding me through the blogging process.

Question 1. The observation that individual countries’ food supplies don’t seem to correlate with their fertility rates as described by your hypothesis: I’ve read that one criticism of your work involves the observation that the countries with the lowest fertility rates tend to be the developed countries, and those with the highest tend to be those more deprived of food. (which would seem to contradict your hypothesis that more food means more population growth).

Response 1 – This is a very important question. It speaks to the complexity of understanding our global population difficulties. It seems that, in order to fully address the food-population issue, your question requires a thorough answer.

First, there is a biological fantasy imbedded in this question. The end of the question states “those with the highest (fertility rates) tend to be those more deprived of food.” I don’t think that this is biologically or physically possible as people are made from nothing but food. This kind of statement reveals the deeply held cultural position that humans are not subject to the same biological laws as the rest of the living community. I don’t think the questioner would ever make such a statement about another species’ population. If news came out that armadillos at the zoo had an elevated birth rate and now thousands were starving, I think the questioner would understand without hesitation that food supplies had first been elevated and then cut off. If the armadillo fertility rate continued to remain high, the questioner would understand that more food was being supplied. (more…)

72 Comments

Posted in Carrying capacity, Ecology, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Population solutions, Russell Hopfenberg, Sustainability and the Big picture, World population

We interrupt this programming for a moment of faddish blogosphere stuff: Thinking Blogger Award and Why I Blog

Posted on May 1, 2007 | 11 comments

On Thursday, the Russ Hopfenberg post will be featured.

In the meantime, there are these things called “memes” going around the blogosphere. “Meme” is a real word, though it shouldn’t be. It refers to a “unit of cultural information” which can spread from person to person or generation to generation. Spreading little themes and calling them “memes” has become a kind of blogosphere fad. (more…)

11 Comments

Posted in Blogs, Climate change, Ecology, Environment, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

Environmental writers, what does the opposition want you to do?

Posted on April 26, 2007 | 3 comments

In the previous article here, I called environmental writers to task for actively ignoring the subject of population growth. I responded to David Roberts who, in a piece on Grist, provided his own reasons for avoiding the subject. A fair number of other environmental writers seem to share those reasons. They’re afraid people associate responding to population growth with such things as eugenics and various draconian and totalitarian measures. They believe critics have effectively marginalized environmentalists by drawing such associations.

I rebutted that argument, I hope convincingly, and suggested the avoidance strategy had been a setback to the environmental movement. I urged environmental writers to embrace truth rather than avoidance. It should go without saying that truth is the more effective option, clearly superior to the alternative, now usually pursued, of creating an impression that florescent light bulbs, ethanol, or the latest green building material, deserves more attention than one of the fundamental drivers of our ecological crisis.

Two secondary but still important considerations are worth another quick post. (more…)

3 Comments

Posted in Betsy Hartmann, Ecology, Environment, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

Coming May 3rd: Discussion with Russell Hopfenberg

Posted on April 15, 2007 | 26 comments

On Thursday, May 3rd, we will have Dr. Russell Hopfenberg here to discuss his work on the links between food supply, carrying capacity, and population growth. In two peer reviewed journal articles, one coauthored by David Pimentel, Russ has analyzed and investigated the relationship between between human population and food supply. His conclusion is that global food supply is the variable which best accounts for human carrying capacity, and that human population will continue to grow as long as food supply increases.

The first of those articles is available here, the second here. (update 10/04/07, the latter became unavailable online, except for the abstract. I’ll try to provide a PDF in the future. As an alternative, see the slideshow here.)
(more…)

26 Comments

Posted in Carrying capacity, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Russell Hopfenberg, Sustainability and the Big picture, World population

A different feminist take on population

Posted on April 11, 2007 | 22 comments

A couple of days ago I spotted something rare — an article from the mainstream press looking squarely at the population issue. Reprinted on Alternet with the title, It’s Time to Fight Population Growth, Which Exacerbates Global Warming and Sprawl, Katha Pollitt’s piece appeared originally in The Nation, as Europeans do it Better.

Pollitt’s feminist perspective on population growth competes with, and arguably trumps that of Betsy Hartmann. Hartmann is so concerned that a focus on population will distract from such problems as women’s rights and class bias that she mostly refuses even to acknowledge that population growth is a problem. Pollitt though, judging from her article, chooses simply to see each set of problems for what it is. There are women’s and other social issues and there is population growth. Yes, they interact in important ways, but each must be acknowledged and examined in its own right to understand and approach it effectively.

Pollitt’s piece is important in part because it has a feminist writer bringing to a wider audience the recognition that the traditional drivers of population growth are disempowering to women. (That is why the need to address population growth should rightly be seen, in part, as a feminist cause.)

Isn’t it weird?

She explains that some European governments, concerned about the prospects of declining populations, have instituted policies aimed at increasing fertility rates. (more…)

22 Comments

Posted in Betsy Hartmann, Climate change, Ecology, Economics, Environment, Globalization, Hegemony, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

Tagged Katha Pollitt

Ecocide for a quick buck

Posted on March 31, 2007 | 48 comments

The push for continual economic growth is a serious problem. Such growth, as we know it, is unsustainable. In large part that’s because it has a physical component. From the extraction of substances from the earth, to the production of goods, through their disposal as waste, there is a depletion of resources, emission of pollutants, a build-up of “stuff,” and an accumulation of waste. When these activities are carried out at rates faster than the earth’s capacity to regenerate and absorb, they gradually destroy the ecosystem, our life support system. [1]

As if that weren’t bad enough, evidence suggests economic growth no longer correlates with much real progress or makes most citizens any happier. Why then, do our leaders continue to push for economic growth? Why do they continue to promote the illusion of endless growth as a good thing? (more…)

48 Comments

Posted in Anti-globalization, Corporatization, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Ecosystem, Environment, Globalization, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

You’re an ape, okay?

Posted on March 25, 2007 | 57 comments

For my own clarity of thought, I like to find ideas which are both simple and have lot of explanatory power. The notion of the trio of interacting problems, population growth, per capita consumption growth, and economic growth, is an example. It’s a relatively concise construct which helps us understand the causes of the ecological crisis we face. (Perhaps that is to galmorize what is merely a list of three exceptionally important, related phenomena. Still, it’s an important list.)

An idea to guide our actions?

Are there any similarly simple yet powerful ideas which can help us find ways to overcome the ecological mess we’re in? (more…)

57 Comments

Posted in Biocentrism, Biodiversity, Ecology, Ecosystem, Environment, Extinction, Sustainability and the Big picture

Now that growth is killing us…

Posted on March 21, 2007 | 19 comments

The article I discussed last time, by New Zealander Allen Cookson, was a brief gem with an emphasis on population growth and some mention of the flaws, as well, in our economic model of continual growth. The same day I came across it, occasional GIM commenter, Tim Delaney, sent me a link to an article in Mother Jones by Bill McKibben. Reversal of Fortune, drawn from McKibben’s new book, Deep Economy gives us a more thorough look at the problems with our growth-based economy. McKibben suggests that while a focus on growth did serve us well for some time, now “growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound—like climate change and peak oil—that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous.” It’s an important article. Here are the Cliff’s Notes plus a little commentary:

It wasn’t always this way

The growth which most of us have come to assume to be necessary and good has its earliest roots in the industrial revolution, but really got cranking in the middle of the 20th century, in the post war boom. Prior to that, Mckibben tells us, “even FDR routinely spoke of America’s economy as mature, with no further expansion anticipated.” (more…)

19 Comments

Posted in Bill Mckibben, Climate change, Consumption, Ecological economics, Ecological footprint, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Globalization, Growth, Peak oil, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture

A voice of sanity in New Zealand

Posted on March 16, 2007 | 18 comments

Those of us concerned about population growth and economic growth on a finite earth often feel we’re in a small, lonely minority. This feeling is intensified by the discussion of climate change. We hear plenty in that context about the need to reduce consumption. That tackling climate change will necessitate also stopping growth — both population growth and economic growth as we’ve come to know it — is the elephant in the room. It’s the huge topic we can’t avoid, but which, for now, the mainstream media hesitate to touch.

One cannot think about this without being troubled. It means the mainstream media, and in fact most of the alternative media as well, are avoiding coverage of the most destructive activity in which humans are now engaged. (No, I’m not discounting the destruction or tragedy of war at all.) So it’s always a pleasant surprise to come across an exception to this unofficial media ban on these topics.

Kiwi surprise

My most recent surprise of this sort comes from the New Zealand Herald. There, Allen Cookson, a retired science teacher, offers a guest column which reads like a condensed version of The Growth is Madness! Story. (more…)

18 Comments

Posted in Betsy Hartmann, Climate change, Consumption, Ecology, Economic growth, Economics, Ecosystem, Global warming, Overpopulation, Population, Population growth, Sustainability and the Big picture, World population