I’ve been telling people this for decades, with little noticeable effect except to enrage some. One point I’ve used has been similar to this, though not as well explained or supported, so thank you.
But my main point has been that the groups still growing in numbers by population increase already have tiny per capita carbon footprints. They are either extremely poor, as in urban inhabitants of favellas, etc. or are fairly poor farmers who in order to survive must put at least as much carbon back into the soil as they take out. The people with large carbon footprints—the richest few percent—are either not growing in numbers through reproduction, or are actually shrinking already, like Japan, where the rate of decline is a financial and labor demographic problem.
The point is well-illustrated by Oxfam’s mushroom-shaped graph showing percent of emissions by decile group. (“Before You Eat the Rich, Check the Menu: Assigning Blame for Climate Catastrophe” This Is Not Cool, June 16, 2023)
The richest 10% emit as much as the poorest 50% or so, and wealth and therefore emissions are increasingly concentrated among an ever tinier group.* For example, about a decade ago, the richest 10 people in the world together owned as much as the poorest 50 countries together; now it’s 3 people. A lot of what’s owned emits carbon and other pollution and in a civilization based on too many non-renewable resources, uses up resources.
As George Monbiot has said, ”The rich can relax. We just need the poor world to cut emissions. By 125%.”
* Chancel and Piketty agree:
Kevin Anderson, “A succinct account of my view on individual and collective action”
“It’s a consumption issue, not a population issue. Population is a complete red herring in regards to 2°C budgets.” Prof. Kevin Anderson
Going Beyond "Dangerous" Climate Change London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 43:50
“Wealthier people produce more carbon pollution — even the “green” ones:
Good environmental intentions are swamped by the effects of money.”
Certainly we should do the things mentioned that reduce population—for climate, other ecological and many other social and political reasons. The only non-tyrannical, non-traumatizing ways to reduce population growth, and population itself, faster & more controlled & fairly than it's already happening, are to emphasize equality, empowerment, and education for all, especially women; and ensure security for all in sickness, old age and hard times, along with free access to contraception and all family planning services. IOW, the progressive agenda, here and abroad. All of which conservatives fanatically oppose.
This is true and it also makes me wish that for a blockhead like myself that someone would put together a model that, as an improvement over the one above, looked at not two variables but three. The two here are overall global population and emissions. But maybe (maybe) we actually need the richer half (or 20%, etc.) of the population, and all the rest of the population, and emissions. You could imagine scenarios where population is doing all sorts of things because of that bottom half, but the bottom half also means nothing in terms of emissions.
The issue is that prosperity as it is currently defined requires much more energy 24/7 ...
As resources of any kind starts to near depletion or reach unaffordable cost humans adapt or innovate away from the problem.... same with energy.... we will find ways to meet the demand as we have already done ….a good example is with food even while the population increased 5 fold since I was born!.....
Reducing waste in all forms is a noble emotion but its best undertaken with resource or cost constraints.
The other issue is that for most of the population and some experts Climate change is a non problem and the facts do support that position. Also, mitigation costs to meet NetZero are huge in comparison with some focused adaption so its clear we wont be following that direction in most economies.
And to highlight the first comment; the places where the population is growing are those who have a tiny carbon footprint (here, education would be key).
Obviously, NO ONE is saying population should be zero.
Obviously, the population is aging now but we have lots of money to invest, and lots invested. Unfortunately the priority of the rich is to increase their riches, which involves prisons, police, armies, war, control of politics in order to stifle the desires of the vast majority, and lots of other problem-causing expenses and investments.
Since population is neither the cause nor solution to the climate and larger psycho-ecological crisis, let’s concentrate on what are.
One problem with the paper is the assumption that the population uniformly produce 4.5 tons CO2 per year. This is manifestly not the case. The urban population produce far more as do those in the wealthy global North. Increasing population increases the per capita energy use and general resource use as resources become more difficult to obtain then energy use increases again per capita. Climate change is anthropogenic ergo more people more climate change. I do not disagree that other measures are needed in the short term however population of humans already exceeds the earth’s capacity to the detriment of all other species.
Why would increasing population increase the per capita energy use? At the very least, I think it would depend on whether the people having more children are themselves using more or less energy that the global per capita amount.
Also you say
"Climate change is anthropogenic ergo more people more climate change."
The whole point of this post was to argue against this argument! It's very intuitive, but the paper gives many compelling reasons against it. Where do you think the paper is wrong? Just about per capita energy use?
It is simply wrong in using a single figure and not assessing how that will change for different groups as time goes on. As we are already at point where resources required to maintain current lifestyles require exponentially increasing energy and material costs to extract, increasing population, many demanding better living conditions inevitably increases demands on resources.
There needs to be a detailed analysis of how the demands for an existing population will increase through more urbanisation and improvements to conditions in the poor south. That then needs to be extrapolated for an increasing population on current trends.
This paper looks like it has been written specifically to support the argument that human population growth is just ok avoiding realities of behaviour and resource exhaustion.
You make a bunch of assumptions that are not true, so your conclusions are misleading. First you say we don’t all have the same impact, which is obviously correct, with your last statement you assume we do have the same impact. It’s not about the numbers of people it’s about the total impact given the technologies used. The carrying capacity is vastly larger for a population using only renewable energy with each person eating little or no meat.
I am trying to imply that everyone does have an impact and as the population increases there is a non linear increase in that impact. Much as I agree that renewable energy is the way to go that only helps up to a point. At present we can achieve something around 80% renewable after that the total environmental impact of the last 20% to maintain supplies is environmentally less impactful
If supplied by nuclear or fuel based generation. The environmental impacts of the necessary oversupply of wind solar and batteries exceeds the impact of fuel based generation. “Just Have A Think” on YouTube explains this more elegantly.
Vegetarianism is also a feel good blind alley. Humans are omnivores and need meat. Why do you think there are so many wildly overprocessed “fake meat” products in the vegan and vegetarian sections of supermarkets? Largely to support natural meat cravings brought about by poorly nutritionally balanced vegan and vegetarian diets. Again I am not saying that I agree with or support the intensive farming for meat or grain necessitated by the overpopulation of humans that will only get worse!
In every case you are going by either grossly outdated or just completely wrong information. You should stop now.
Renewables are always almost infinitely better than nukes or fossils.
Humans do not need meat. I’ve been a vegetarian for 45 years and have always been far more fit and healthy than almost everyone around me, especially the meat-eaters, usually in direct proportion to the percentage of meat and animal products in their diet.
Fake meat has absolutely nothing to do with nutritional needs; that is an offensively ridiculous and stupid argument based on ideas that were held by some but known to be wrong 50 years ago. Apologize and delete it.
You’ve provided absolutely no evidence or even theory about why per capita energy use might go up with increasing population. It doesn’t.
I’ll watch the video but as far as I know from a lifetime of study, there is no evidence that renewables cost more or cause more damage than nukes or fossils at any time. Ever. A locally and globally optimal mix of renewable energy sources spread out in a well-connected distributed generation grid can provide 100% of the energy the world needs—cheaper, cleaner, healthier, more ecologically, more reliably, more democratically, and more water conservationally than any combination of fuels. (Assigning what would otherwise be excess and curtailed RE generation to non-time-dependent tasks (storage, EV charging, desalination, water pumping, etc) completely negates the argument I expect.
I am entitled to express my understanding of evidence that I have come across. I do not believe my information is out of date at all!
See if you understand the argument about energy in the video, you need to remember that electricity generation is a commercial activity and marginal costs determine levels of capital investment. The problem about generation is marginal and brought about by short term meteorological conditions such as low wind for several days , persistent heavy overcast and high winter demand. Might only happen 2 or 3 times a year so no incentive to invest in additional battery capacity and wind or solar to charge it. We already have commercial problems when wind is oversupplying should we really increase this capacity for a few hours or days a year? But should we accept blackouts when these situations when we are increasingly pushing for electricity to be sole energy source domestically and industrially there will need to be short term fast acting generating capacity.
Vegetarianism seems to be akin to a religious belief amongst adherents. That does not change the reality that humans are genetically omnivores.
As to why per capita energy use will increase with population growth, more people competing for declining resources results in higher resource costs for getting these additional materials whether they are vegetable animal or mineral!
You rather sidestepped the question as to why there are so many fake meat products marketed very successfully to vegans and vegetarians. You say we don’t need meat why do vegans and vegitarians buy these products? By the way other religions who have dietary restrictions also indulge in similar fakery, turkey bacon anyone?
Love your conclusion. Educating girls and empowering women to make their own choices is excellent, in and of itself. Indeed, it might be the single best thing that is within our control - funding efforts that advance the freedom of girls and women. Each of us can help with that.
Hannah, hello. I keep following your blog, and thanks for your Interesting posts. This is one of them! Excellent post, but excuse me if I disagree with you about your conclusions. You are missing something, just like the authors of the papers you cite. Population decline cannot be seen in isolation. It generates a series of negative feedbacks that reinforce each other. The final result is not the slowly declining curves you are showing. It is what I call the "Seneca Effect" which takes these feedbacks into account to show that the decline is much faster than growth. Several dynamic studies show exactly this effect, I discuss this in my upcoming book "The End of Population Growth." In short, population decline will have a much stronger effect on emissions than what the scenarios assuming a slow decline predict. That may be good for climate, but not good for us. The decline may be harsh and painful. Long story, some of my thoughts can be read in a post of mine.
Hi Ugo, I agree with you that the authors of the article did not take into account the feedback loops between population, resources and pollution. However, I still think the conclusions are valid. It's true that a larger population means greater energy consumption and emissions, but for human societies, the primary stock that determines resource extraction is physical capital. As you modelled, capital is what actually depletes natural resources. Therefore, the trajectory of fossil energy extraction and emissions should be largely determined by the growth of capital, technological advancement, and the size of the initial resource stock, mostly independent of population. As Malthus suggested, population growth is actually driven by resource availability. In short, I think decarbonization will be largely the result of resource depletion. The contribution of human population to current trajectories has always been marginal and will continue to be so in the future.
Thanks for your contributions to the Oil Drum and elsewhere, Prof. Bardi. You and I are of an age. As a Club of Rome member, you'll be familiar with "I=PAT". For those not acquainted with it, IIRC it was originally meant to be a level-0, KISS, heuristic model of humanity's total impact on the global environment, not an actual identity. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT) suggests "I = f(P,A,T)" is more useful, allowing for subsequent expansion of interdependencies amongst the three explicit factors. Knock yourselves out!
For example, we can use I = f(P,A,T) to examine specific impacts over time 't': let 'I(t)' represent the rate of global heat accumulation (GHA); then *per-capita* impact over time is a function of income 'A(t)'; while energy production technology 'T(t)' can be <1 per-capita, depending on the rate at which fossil energy is replaced with carbon-neutral sources. Resource depletion (accounted for within 'T(t)'), as the previous commenter observed, will also drive the global economy toward carbon-neutrality. Once nobody buys fossil carbon because it's more expensive than the available alternatives on the market, T(t) falls to 0, and GHA largely decouples from P and A. Global mean surface temperature (GMST), an imperfect proxy for GHA, is expected to stabilize at whatever value it has reached by then (https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached/).
Note that the countless other externalized costs of the modern "Western" lifestyle do not vary solely with greenhouse emissions, or population. With global decarbonization accomplished, all the other impacts on the biosphere of 50ky of human economic, technological, and population growth will continue unabated, but in a stable, albeit hotter, climate!
Some definitions would be good for what short-term, medium-term and long-term are in this context.
I can accept everything about the core premise of the article: that population decrease will be too small in the short term to impact climate change. But population decrease in general is possible within the medium term, say 30-50 years. I would argue that long-term thinking is lacking in western governments. A bug of democratic systems is that we think in election cycles. That's a problem.
I don't want my daughter to live in an overpopulated world, and it is already overpopulated. It's got nothing to do with climate. Repeat. Nothing to do with climate. Incentivising gradual population shrinkage is important not because of carbon, but of consumption - the rate at which we're consuming oil, minerals, water. The fact that it's a zero sum contest for space.
Our species is one out of around 8,700,000. One out of 6.5 million land species. We make up around 0.01% of the world's biomass, point zero one percent of life in crude terms. And we take up, conservatively, 38.5% of land area. More if you exclude Antarctica and permanent deserts.
We are hoarding the planet to an egregious extent. It's so weird and frustrating that detractors have learned to sling the label "misanthrope" at anyone who points this out. Humans are cool. I don't want to kill masses of people. But we're not under threat. Everything else is. And the natural world is beautiful, but more than that it keeps our human world functioning properly in more ways than we can count; it will be for the better if our descendants have plenty of it to enjoy. For that to happen there will need to be fewer of them.
There's not a city in the world that isn't struggling to provide one or more of the following: adequate public services, water supply, energy or housing. Some are just crumbling.
Technology and automation makes a lot possible. Low population, high standard of living. That's the future, and I think we should pursue it regardless of climate impact.
For a long time I agreed with everything in your comment. Now I stumble a little at "But we're not under threat. Everything else is. " The problem is that some people are in fact under threat, both from climate change and from specific *heavy-handed* collective abatement measures that might be taken, whether democratically agreed upon or imposed by a global superpower.
Despite opportunity, I, for one, have chosen not to reproduce, hence my pseudonym. All other people currently alive are independent agents, not attentive to my agenda by default! Empathy complicates my opinions about what democratically-chosen "environmental" policies to agree to. At the last, however, I'm bound to regard those peer-reviewed *Nature* reports I cited as authoritative: the costs of global warming to date already far exceed the estimated costs of achieving carbon-neutrality by now; and until fossil carbon emissions cease, the cumulative net cost of global warming in money and grief is open-ended. Our choice to collectively decarbonize or not is clear, but that doesn't mean it's easy!
The world is maybe overpopulated; maybe not. That’s a judgement call. What it certainly is is overconsumed. And that’s almost entirely the fault of the rich.
It certainly is all about climate catastrophe; that’s the only problem that threatens the existence of civilization and most life on Earth in the short term. (And it has to be fixed in the even shorter term.) Some might say nuclear war threatens our existence, too, but the main thing making nuclear war more likely is climate catastrophe.
Go to Skeptical Science to read about whatever us fooling you into thinking climate catastrophe is not a problem.
I think my comment came across as implying I don't believe in climate change. I do. What I was saying is that I don't even need to invoke climate change to make cases both for population decrease and environmental conservation. As for climate change, of course I hope effective mitigatory and remedial measures can be implemented, but I also agree with Hannah here that population decrease specifically would not be among the effective measures to counter climate change because of the reasonably slow rate of change. In short, climate change necessitates remedial measures. Population decrease won't be one of those measures. But we should do it anyway because the longer term matters too, and it helps in other areas.
Point taken on footnote 3 but it still inclines me not to get caught up in the fertility fear-mongering. There will downsides to a naturally declining human population but huge upsides to land use and animal welfare.
Poverty has been steadily falling as surely as CO₂ and temperatures have been rising, so those appear to be inversely related, whereas birth rates have been steadily falling, so I don’t believe your “fix”.
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, of course. AFAICT, it's why we have science. I, for one, am a comprehensive non-expert, and nobody ought to believe any factual claims I make without links to peer-reviewed investigation. So let's have a look at the published evidence.
"...We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life..."
"...we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (*relative to a baseline without climate impacts*, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter *diverge strongly dependent on emission choices*..."
The reality-based conclusion is left as an exercise for the student.
Wow… I think you need to get back on that medication…
Firstly…. deaths and other impacts of weather events has dropped by 98% since 1900 and will stay down due to technology and the power of our existing energy systems that has also provided prosperity.
These report on impact of so-called climate change are biased as they like to load normal weather patterns and call it climate change.. as well as not looking at it from a per population base.
Then reports like to project a massive impact of another degree of warming.. Look.. we have already had a 1 deg increase and it has coincided with more CO2 that has actually improved human flourishing and improved the food supply…
Then we have the extreme and horrible impact of NetZero that will create negative prosperity by increasing the cost and reliability of energy and for sure we will see much more deaths in both developed and emerging economies if we let that foolish idea take place.
You need to go back and do more research matey..
Here is some material… the last item summarizes all these links..
Hmm, what has greater credibility with scientifically meta-literate readers on this pro-science blog? Denialist comments by one "Nigel Southway"? Or scientific findings published in *Nature* by trained, professional skeptics under the unsparing scrutiny of equally trained, mutually skeptical peers? A dogged culture warrior like Mr. Southway will succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Sure, he might be right and the experts wrong, but as a comprehensive non-expert myself, I won't be investing in large, sturdy umbrellas (please don't make me explain).
You are a real thought plonker .... Look at the material I provided ... from other experts... If you don’t see how the climate narrative has been politized and helps sell media I feel sorry for how gullible you are.
Mike Berners-Lee in "There is no Planet B" says "A bit more growth can be tolerated provided we distribute it properly. Since the impact that each person has depends so much on how they live, it is clear that 1 billion reckless people would trash the planet in no time whilst 15 billion very careful people could live in harmony with a thriving environment. The more people there are, the more careful each one needs to be. [But] we will need to distribute the resources to the people. So, either the people are going to need to move to where there is sufficient food and energy production, or those resources are going to have to flow to them. Specifically, we have seen that existing agricultural production can feed the projected 9.7 billion people in 2050, but that only works if a lot of food grown in North and South America flows to Africa"
Thank you, Gary, that's the key question. I sustain a sliver of hope for collective decarbonization of the US and global economies under popular sovereignty and the rule of law: G. Hardin's "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". I have no hope whatsoever for mutual agreement to redistribute income globally.
Nigel, you are dead right. There will be day when FF will be unable to meet demand and will be expensive but that day is 100+ years in the future and W&S will be 10x more efficient (and a better replacement). In the meantime we are wasting valuable FF resources on RE deployment (when they are not ready for prime time). The main issue being that we must run two grids as DEFRs are not available. Batteries are unaffordable and prone to spontaneous combustion.
W&S have only one job and that’s to reduce co2 per kWhr, and they do not manage that from a mining to recycle aspect (life cycle).
Co2 is also not proven to be the cause of atmospheric warming, nor is rising co2 proven to be man made, and nor is co2 proven to make bad weather worse. Makes the whole RE concept pointless and detrimental to poor people as they increase costs (connections, grid stiffening, VAR control, opex etc adding to cost). You are wasting your breath here with these ideologues. Note that Hannah’s comments regrading population and energy require a number of unlikely assumptions. Clearly it is the 1st world populations that are shrinking alarmingly and that this will end up with all of us living “African levels” of energy use as we lose our engineers and technicians capable of supporting existing power and installing/operating new power.
Your paranoia is showing. Do you fear popular sovereignty and the rule of law? Are there communists under your bed? JFC, not all collective action is "communism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)! Alas, you'll clearly a dogged culture warrior, who will never be dissuaded. My subsequent responses, if any, will be intended for hypothetical other readers.
Well as long as its democratic.... but good luck with getting the US voters to agree to significantly lower prosperity..... or anyone elsewhere for that matter.
Why Climate Fanaticism Is Killing Us | Lord Matthew Ridley - YouTube
In fact, the progressive agenda would significantly RAISE living standards for 99% of humanity and otherwise improve life for the rest, while reducing the harm humanity does to the rest of the biosphere.
Solar and wind are, eg, the cheapest and also by far the most benign energy sources and are getting better every year while fossil fuels and nukes get steadily worse.
Stacey Collins : So....Is agreeing with and quoting a statement by a brilliant man from a brilliant family your justification for DISRUPTING and REORGANISING THE WORLD in what can only be described as an Extremely Socialist way ? Sounds very familiar ! "The phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx, particularly in his Critique of the Gotha Program. It outlines a core principle of communist ideology, envisioning a society where individuals contribute based on their capabilities and receive resources based on their requirements. This ideal is predicated on the belief that a communist system, with its advanced productive forces, would generate enough abundance to satisfy everyone's needs"............AND LOOK HOW THAT HAS TURNED OUT IN RUSSIA , CHINA , CUBA , NORTH KOREA and lately , VENEZUELA !
True : It pleased a lot of Malthusianists in that it reduced population numbers by 100 or 200 million people along the way ......AND YET IT STILL FAILED THE PEOPLE.......poverty and misery and failure at every level EXCEPT THE MILITARY AND THE POLITICIANS !
Economically it's a joke and socially it imprisons everyone in a grey-world devoid of hope and freedom and real-life ! BUT HEY ! IDEOLOGICALLY IT'S SHARING and SUCH A "CHRISTIAN THING TO DO "....except of course...... that's also panned by the athiests !
Is THAT what YOU actually WANT FOR AFRICA and AFRICANS ??????
Suppress their development [ Mustn't use coal , oil or gas to develop and power their nations and their industries !!! ] and MASS IMMIGRATION to productive Countries where they have used these same "dreadful resources" to become wealthy and wise !????
.
As Gary politely asks :"A bit more growth can be tolerated provided we distribute it properly.” Who gets to determine what is “proper?”
and "good-ol'-Motormouth" replies "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". !!
REALLY STACEY , Is THAT what YOU WANT FOR THE "WESTERN COUNTRIES" ???????
.
If not....then take a bit of time to RESEARCH THESE IDEOLOGIES along with their PROPONENTS ........because these 'elites' always envision a world where THEY THRIVE and enjoy all the dreams of wealth and power with none of the adverse consequences they are quite willing to inflict on others ! How tolerant they all are ! All the suffering will be confined to the "less-than-elite-class".........which is somehow ....the majority ! GROW UP !
It’s ridiculous to talk about elites who want socialism, especially democratic socialism. By definition, people pushing for hierarchies, ie, conservatives and capitalists, are proponents of elitism.
Where is your evidence for that preposterous remark !
It was Conservatives and Capitalists who established the institutions and order and education that facilitated the Industrial and the Agricultural revolutions that have "set-up" the modern world with it's highest-ever standard of living , safety , prosperity and wealth and freedom.....and it's just getting better all the time.
Poverty is rapidly declining and life is getting easier and more enjoyable .......and yet there is a "regressive bunch of hypocrites" who , in typical socialist mantra
call themselves by the opposite name to what they intend , "the progressives" ,
who are elitist , ivory-tower academics and the like , usually adherents to Marx and the French philosophers policies and ideologies , intent on disrupting and wrecking this current system for no good reason other than to satisfy their bloated egos , their resentment for their lack of recognition and financial reward [ which they feel they rightly deserve !!! ] and their insatiable desire for POWER.
[ Read George Orwell's books : Animal Farm , Road to Wigan Pier , "1984" with it's "Ministries : "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation,"....... highlighting the manipulation of language and reality to maintain control. .........like ALL COMMUNIST REGIMES ! ]
.
I have provided PLENTY OF EXAMPLES of where "progressives" have wrought nothing but pain , death , suffering , misery , poverty and bondage [ "RUSSIA , CHINA , CUBA , NORTH KOREA and lately , VENEZUELA ! ] and you respond with that ridiculous and pathetic assertion the "hierarchies" are elitist , and somehow , a bad thing !......"Hierarchies, both in organizations and in social settings, can be beneficial by providing clear structure, promoting accountability, and facilitating efficient resource allocation. They establish clear lines of authority and reporting, define roles and responsibilities, and offer opportunities for specialization and career development"......and in a FREE SOCIETY LIKE OURS , they work wonders producing excellence and abundantly rewarding merit and innovation !
What you seem to be advocating is the Socialist State where the hierarchies stifle creativity and innovation and they become too rigid when communication is restricted. .....like they build "A Berlin Wall" or "An Iron Curtain" or "A Bamboo Curtain" .....preferably described by them as a "Belt and Road Initiative" where they indebt economically weaker countries to them and then use that POWER to extort benefits for themselves ! It's all about DOMINANCE and POWER !
Nothing to do with Free-Enterprise , Free-Trade and Personal Freedom is it !??
We missed our first deadline. Unfortunately, missing means that the poorest people on the planet are going to die unnecessarily. If we had responded justly 60 years ago when we discovered the climate problem. …
There is still hope. At least for the projected survivors, until the next deadline. In any event, there are going to be some changes around here.
I believe the Olys are building lifeboats. If I was a selfish, paranoid mega-man, I would. I would not spare a single thought to any one who could not demonstrate their allegiance to me.
We would have acted responsibly, if we had slowed and reversed birth rate through natural attrition and birthing fewer babies.
I was right with you until the last paragraph. Whether responsibly or not, we have in fact slowed future birth rates by reducing total fertility, as Dr. Ritchie points out in her OP. If by "natural attrition" you mean without coercion, well, there was some coercion during the 58-yr decline of TFR from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 today (https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate), but AFAIK no current coercive anti-natalist policies are operating. But doesn't reducing total fertility mean "birthing fewer babies" for any reason?
Looking at the long view. 200 years? Trying to think of a way to do it more or less naturally. I also think lower population will reduce the pressure on the environment in a lot of ways. Chances? Close to zero. Have you read Sarah Conly’s book on whether people have a right to have a child?
Well, I probably don't need to read a book about it, but thanks for the recommendation. I don't believe rights exist independently of human wants. I do know many, though not all, people *want* children. In the USA, those people assert a political right to have them. Generally speaking, all people everywhere are independent agents, who act without knowledge or regard for my subjective opinions on their rights. Drat!
I'm not quite convinced that per-capita emissions will be independent of population—even approximately.
One could argue, for instance, that a region with limited renewable resources could supply all its energy from renewables if its population is low, but would supplement those with fossil fuels if its population is higher. One could also argue that once a certain amount of renewable infrastructure is in place, a declining population would allow a region to phase out fossil fuels more quickly.
Or there could be effects pushing in the other direction. Maybe with a high population density, more people would live in urban settings where per-capita energy consumption is lower. Or maybe older people use more energy per capita than younger people, so per-capita energy use is higher when there's an inverted demographic profile due to low birth rates.
None of this matters much in the short term. I just find it very difficult to speculate with any confidence about the 22nd century.
Theoretically maybe, but read the Sky’s the Limit study. Germany, eg, is the 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize based on its land, population, and energy use, but its grid is already 60% renewable and increasing fast, even as it also rapidly electrifies primary energy (EVs, eg).
Every country in the world can either produce all the energy it needs domestically with renewables, or it can buy it. (People objecting to consideration of buying it should write a letter to every single country in the world, because all buy either fossil fuels or fissile fuel energy or both.)
When I said "limited" renewable resources, I meant limited not just by physical constraints but also by economic and political realities. Putting it all together is complicated, and every part of the world is a little different.
I've never been to Germany, but I know it has long been in the vanguard of the energy transition, despite being far enough north that heavy reliance on solar is challenging. According to Ember, Germany's electricity mix in 2024 was 42.2% fossil, 43.3% wind+solar, and 14.5% bio+hydro. The bio and hydro aren't going to grow much, so to squeeze out fossil, wind+solar needs to double. Then to electrify the rest of the energy system, total electricity needs to grow by a factor of 2 or 3; let's say 2.5. For wind+solar to accommodate all that electricity growth, they'll have to grow by more than another factor of 2.5 (again because the bio and hydro aren't growing), but let's be generous and say that the total growth of wind+solar only needs to be by a factor of 5, relative to today. Now consider seasonality. Germany's electricity demand peaks in winter, and the peak will probably sharpen as more heating is electrified. Given Germany's latitude, this means it's probably not practical to increase its share of solar relative to wind, so wind alone needs to increase approximately five-fold. Again, I've never been to Germany, so I don't really know whether that's feasible, but I wouldn't automatically assume it is. You don't want to put hundred-meter-tall wind turbines too close to where people live, and you can't pack them arbitrarily close together without lowering their capacity factor. Maybe you can just put all the new turbines offshore, though that's more expensive, and contrary to what it says in that study, the cost of wind energy is no longer coming down. Add in the cost of storage to handle dunkelflaute events.
Now the question is, Would all this be any easier or harder if Germany's population were half what it is today, or double what it is today? I think more people probably make it harder, because then you need more wind turbines, yet you have more people living in places where you'd like to put them.
Similar considerations apply in the northeastern US. The seasonality isn't as bad, so the solar/wind ratio can be higher, but you still need wind in the winter, and good wind sites are few and far between, and electricity prices are lower so people are reluctant to pay for offshore wind (and for storage). They could import more electricity from the Midwest or Canada, but trying to build more transmission capacity is a political hornet's nest. Again, I think these problems would get harder if the region's population were to double, and would be easier if the region's population were only half as large. Gas in the US is cheap and abundant.
Meanwhile there are places like Oahu and Taiwan and Java where you'd like to rely almost entirely on solar but nearly all the land is either protected or devoted to high-intensity uses that aren't easily displaced. Population density really can matter, though of course there are also many places (like Utah, my home) where for now, to a first approximation, it doesn't.
There's no silver bullet or 'the issue' to solve climate change, and we need to prioritise short, medium and long term actions of course. Ideally we need to do them all.
Ultimately this conversation is all about the empowerment of women and girls to make their own choices for their future, so looking at it from there is more helpful.
Project Drawdown did some helpful work on the numbers too ...
And yes, of course consumption is a massive connected driver. Even the IPCC consistently cite GDP Growth & Population Growth as the 2 key drivers of climate change ...
Rosling did some good work, although on this issue, he seemed to ignore the impact on the natural world that many more billions of us would create.
We need to more thoroughly consider the compound benefits this 'solution' comes with, which are many.
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people.” - David Attenborough
In my field, medically targeting the biology of aging to address age-related ill health, people often consider the extreme of indefinite healthy lifespan and assume the population would explode with devastating effects on climate. This post is very pertinent to that, and it relates to how surprisingly small of an effect the extreme of even indefinitely healthy lifespan would have on population. Andrew Steele made a good video looking at estimates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Ve0fYuZO8&t=275s
Thank you for publishing this. I wrote a letter to ERDA about energy use back in the 1970's, when energy-efficient appliances were the vogue, but our older, more inefficient appliances were still being exported. I made the point that energy use per capita would grow faster than population as more countries modernized, expanding their use of electricity. I suggested that to reduce pollution (I lumped carbon in with all the other airbornes) we needed to help other countries to leapfrog transitional technologies so that the whole world would more quickly be able to reduce its use of carbon-based fuels. Needless to say, the leapfrogging hasn't happened very often, and the US has not slowed its per capita use of carbon-based fuels.
Switching to renewable electricity (with some direct use—clothesline paradox energy, things like Odeillo Furnace) would reduce global energy use by 50-60%, so no.
ICEVs, eg, are 5% efficient, well to wheel, ie, the whole chain wastes 95% of the energy in oil and EROEI continues to get worse. EVs are 40-60% efficient and getting better, fast.
The headline is correct, but there is a related issue of prosperity per capita.
Just raising electricity consumption in developing nations to EU levels will double world power demand of 3,000 GW, or ~30,000,000 MW-hours per year. At 1 t-CO2 emitted per MW-hour, that's another 30 Gt-CO2 (gigatonnes) emitted per year.
That's why we need full-time low-cost nuclear power to help poor nations while checking CO2 emissions. The prosperity of electrification cuts birth rates, dropping in many areas but not poorest Africa. See ThorconPower.com about nuclear power in SE Asia.
"Renewables" ....!!!...............Total HOAX based on LIES and CORRUPTION !
There is no good reason to replace CARBONACEOUS FUELS with anything other than NUCLEAR FISSION REACTORS which work well ....and perhaps , NUCLEAR FUSION REACTORS once they are perfected !
India, Nigeria, and Pakistan top list of child air pollution deaths
Of the 700,000 child deaths are due to air pollution, and almost half a million are due to household pollution. [ so ,500,000 die as a result of HOUSE-HOLD-COOKING and HEATING POLLUTION .......but not due to oil , coal or gas ! ]
The air pollution-linked death rate in children under the age of five in East, West, Central and southern Africa is over 100 times higher than their counterparts in high-income countries. There are two deaths per 100,000 of the population in rich countries, but the death rate in Africa’s children is 210/100,000.
The highest number of children dying of air pollution is in India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
NOTE WELL !!!! The reason is largely pollution within households burning polluting fuels such as coal/charcoal, wood, animal dung, agricultural residue etc.
Using WHAT more every month ??????? Surely NOT the 1 fusion reactor !!!?
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"There is climate catastrophe"..............NAME ONE !
..
"And the 10 million people fossil fuels kill every year.".......You exaggerate !
"Approximately 5.13 million to 10.2 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution from fossil fuel use. This estimate is based on studies that link fossil fuel combustion to increased levels of particulate matter and other pollutants, which contribute to respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, and other health problems." IT'S AN ESTIMATE ....NOT A FACT !
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About 70 million people DIE each year and about 130 to 140 million people are BORN each year . Of these , a continuous and reliable electricity supply is possibly responsible for ensuring that most of them LIVE ON and survive infancy , probably many tens of millions ! WORLD-WIDE , APPROXIMATELY
80% OF ELECTRICITY COMES FROM BURNING CARBONACEOUS FUELS !!!
"While it's difficult to pinpoint an exact number, reliable electricity supplies contribute to saving lives in numerous ways, including preventing deaths from extreme weather, improving healthcare, and enhancing sanitation and food safety. Specifically, access to electricity allows for better heating and cooling, leading to fewer deaths during heat waves and cold spells. It also powers medical equipment and facilitates proper hygiene, both crucial for reducing mortality rates, especially among vulnerable populations."
Given the infant-mortality rate BEFORE adequate electricity became available I would say that your 10 million pales by comparison....even if ALL the deaths you quote can be attributed solely to coal , oil and gas !
It is hard to attribute ALL AIR POLLUTION and particulate material to coal , oil and gas used to generate electricity since there are so many sources of "particulate matter".......Particulate matter (PM), a major component of air pollution, can come from both human-made and natural sources :
Human-Made Sources:
Industrial Processes: Many industrial activities, such as electricity generation, mining, and manufacturing, release particulate matter.
Vehicle Emissions: Exhaust from cars, trucks, and other vehicles, especially those with diesel engines, contributes significantly to PM pollution.
Combustion Processes: Burning fuels like animal-dung , wood, coal, and oil for heating, cooking, and power generation releases PM.
Construction and Demolition: These activities generate dust and debris that can become airborne.
Agricultural Activities: Tilling, harvesting, and livestock operations can release PM into the air.
Waste Disposal: Incineration of waste and improper waste management can contribute to PM pollution.
Consumer Products: Some products, like talc or other powders, may contain particulate matter.
Natural Sources:
Bushfires and Wildfires: These events release large amounts of PM into the atmosphere.
Dust Storms: Wind-blown dust from arid regions can travel long distances and contribute to PM pollution.
Volcanic Eruptions: Volcanic ash and gases can release PM.
Sea Spray: Ocean waves breaking can release salt particles into the air.
Pollen: Pollen grains from plants are a natural source of PM.
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I REGARD YOU AS AN UNRELIABLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION BECAUSE YOU DO TEND TO CHERRY-PICK YOUR "FACTS" and YOU EXAGGERATE !
You’re a climate denying delayalist! Nothing more needs to be said about who’s credible here. You’re mentally ill and I tell the truth. You make grossly wrong assumptions, refuse to live in reality, let your disturbed ideology determine what you accept and reject from the reality most of us share.
Yes, it’s 10 million.
(Katharine Hayhoe, IMF)
No, it’s 60%. In the us it’s less than half, it will be in the world, too, probably in 4 years. (Would be <5% in the us now but the rulers share your affliction. Folie a plusiers, Wetiko disease, (malignant egophrenia), nihilistic narcissistic psychotic psychopathy, civilizational autism, emotional plague… call it what you want. A complex stew of attachment disorders, personality disorders, trauma, addiction, and other problems. Go get yours treated, please.
I’ve been telling people this for decades, with little noticeable effect except to enrage some. One point I’ve used has been similar to this, though not as well explained or supported, so thank you.
But my main point has been that the groups still growing in numbers by population increase already have tiny per capita carbon footprints. They are either extremely poor, as in urban inhabitants of favellas, etc. or are fairly poor farmers who in order to survive must put at least as much carbon back into the soil as they take out. The people with large carbon footprints—the richest few percent—are either not growing in numbers through reproduction, or are actually shrinking already, like Japan, where the rate of decline is a financial and labor demographic problem.
The point is well-illustrated by Oxfam’s mushroom-shaped graph showing percent of emissions by decile group. (“Before You Eat the Rich, Check the Menu: Assigning Blame for Climate Catastrophe” This Is Not Cool, June 16, 2023)
The richest 10% emit as much as the poorest 50% or so, and wealth and therefore emissions are increasingly concentrated among an ever tinier group.* For example, about a decade ago, the richest 10 people in the world together owned as much as the poorest 50 countries together; now it’s 3 people. A lot of what’s owned emits carbon and other pollution and in a civilization based on too many non-renewable resources, uses up resources.
As George Monbiot has said, ”The rich can relax. We just need the poor world to cut emissions. By 125%.”
* Chancel and Piketty agree:
Kevin Anderson, “A succinct account of my view on individual and collective action”
“It’s a consumption issue, not a population issue. Population is a complete red herring in regards to 2°C budgets.” Prof. Kevin Anderson
Going Beyond "Dangerous" Climate Change London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 43:50
“Wealthier people produce more carbon pollution — even the “green” ones:
Good environmental intentions are swamped by the effects of money.”
By David Roberts Dec 26, 2017
Certainly we should do the things mentioned that reduce population—for climate, other ecological and many other social and political reasons. The only non-tyrannical, non-traumatizing ways to reduce population growth, and population itself, faster & more controlled & fairly than it's already happening, are to emphasize equality, empowerment, and education for all, especially women; and ensure security for all in sickness, old age and hard times, along with free access to contraception and all family planning services. IOW, the progressive agenda, here and abroad. All of which conservatives fanatically oppose.
This is true and it also makes me wish that for a blockhead like myself that someone would put together a model that, as an improvement over the one above, looked at not two variables but three. The two here are overall global population and emissions. But maybe (maybe) we actually need the richer half (or 20%, etc.) of the population, and all the rest of the population, and emissions. You could imagine scenarios where population is doing all sorts of things because of that bottom half, but the bottom half also means nothing in terms of emissions.
The issue is that prosperity as it is currently defined requires much more energy 24/7 ...
As resources of any kind starts to near depletion or reach unaffordable cost humans adapt or innovate away from the problem.... same with energy.... we will find ways to meet the demand as we have already done ….a good example is with food even while the population increased 5 fold since I was born!.....
Reducing waste in all forms is a noble emotion but its best undertaken with resource or cost constraints.
The other issue is that for most of the population and some experts Climate change is a non problem and the facts do support that position. Also, mitigation costs to meet NetZero are huge in comparison with some focused adaption so its clear we wont be following that direction in most economies.
The point of decarbonisation is to leave a habitable world to our descendants.
To do that, we must *have* descendants.
An aging world, besides, is one that has no money to invest in decarbonisation. All of its money will go into pensions and healthcare for the elderly.
Well said and to the point!
And to highlight the first comment; the places where the population is growing are those who have a tiny carbon footprint (here, education would be key).
Only way out is much more prosperity
Obviously, NO ONE is saying population should be zero.
Obviously, the population is aging now but we have lots of money to invest, and lots invested. Unfortunately the priority of the rich is to increase their riches, which involves prisons, police, armies, war, control of politics in order to stifle the desires of the vast majority, and lots of other problem-causing expenses and investments.
Since population is neither the cause nor solution to the climate and larger psycho-ecological crisis, let’s concentrate on what are.
One problem with the paper is the assumption that the population uniformly produce 4.5 tons CO2 per year. This is manifestly not the case. The urban population produce far more as do those in the wealthy global North. Increasing population increases the per capita energy use and general resource use as resources become more difficult to obtain then energy use increases again per capita. Climate change is anthropogenic ergo more people more climate change. I do not disagree that other measures are needed in the short term however population of humans already exceeds the earth’s capacity to the detriment of all other species.
Why would increasing population increase the per capita energy use? At the very least, I think it would depend on whether the people having more children are themselves using more or less energy that the global per capita amount.
Also you say
"Climate change is anthropogenic ergo more people more climate change."
The whole point of this post was to argue against this argument! It's very intuitive, but the paper gives many compelling reasons against it. Where do you think the paper is wrong? Just about per capita energy use?
It is simply wrong in using a single figure and not assessing how that will change for different groups as time goes on. As we are already at point where resources required to maintain current lifestyles require exponentially increasing energy and material costs to extract, increasing population, many demanding better living conditions inevitably increases demands on resources.
There needs to be a detailed analysis of how the demands for an existing population will increase through more urbanisation and improvements to conditions in the poor south. That then needs to be extrapolated for an increasing population on current trends.
This paper looks like it has been written specifically to support the argument that human population growth is just ok avoiding realities of behaviour and resource exhaustion.
You make a bunch of assumptions that are not true, so your conclusions are misleading. First you say we don’t all have the same impact, which is obviously correct, with your last statement you assume we do have the same impact. It’s not about the numbers of people it’s about the total impact given the technologies used. The carrying capacity is vastly larger for a population using only renewable energy with each person eating little or no meat.
I am trying to imply that everyone does have an impact and as the population increases there is a non linear increase in that impact. Much as I agree that renewable energy is the way to go that only helps up to a point. At present we can achieve something around 80% renewable after that the total environmental impact of the last 20% to maintain supplies is environmentally less impactful
If supplied by nuclear or fuel based generation. The environmental impacts of the necessary oversupply of wind solar and batteries exceeds the impact of fuel based generation. “Just Have A Think” on YouTube explains this more elegantly.
Vegetarianism is also a feel good blind alley. Humans are omnivores and need meat. Why do you think there are so many wildly overprocessed “fake meat” products in the vegan and vegetarian sections of supermarkets? Largely to support natural meat cravings brought about by poorly nutritionally balanced vegan and vegetarian diets. Again I am not saying that I agree with or support the intensive farming for meat or grain necessitated by the overpopulation of humans that will only get worse!
It’s just as likely if not virtually certain that population will go down soon as the effects of climate catastrophe worsen.
In every case you are going by either grossly outdated or just completely wrong information. You should stop now.
Renewables are always almost infinitely better than nukes or fossils.
Humans do not need meat. I’ve been a vegetarian for 45 years and have always been far more fit and healthy than almost everyone around me, especially the meat-eaters, usually in direct proportion to the percentage of meat and animal products in their diet.
Fake meat has absolutely nothing to do with nutritional needs; that is an offensively ridiculous and stupid argument based on ideas that were held by some but known to be wrong 50 years ago. Apologize and delete it.
You’ve provided absolutely no evidence or even theory about why per capita energy use might go up with increasing population. It doesn’t.
I’ll watch the video but as far as I know from a lifetime of study, there is no evidence that renewables cost more or cause more damage than nukes or fossils at any time. Ever. A locally and globally optimal mix of renewable energy sources spread out in a well-connected distributed generation grid can provide 100% of the energy the world needs—cheaper, cleaner, healthier, more ecologically, more reliably, more democratically, and more water conservationally than any combination of fuels. (Assigning what would otherwise be excess and curtailed RE generation to non-time-dependent tasks (storage, EV charging, desalination, water pumping, etc) completely negates the argument I expect.
I am entitled to express my understanding of evidence that I have come across. I do not believe my information is out of date at all!
See if you understand the argument about energy in the video, you need to remember that electricity generation is a commercial activity and marginal costs determine levels of capital investment. The problem about generation is marginal and brought about by short term meteorological conditions such as low wind for several days , persistent heavy overcast and high winter demand. Might only happen 2 or 3 times a year so no incentive to invest in additional battery capacity and wind or solar to charge it. We already have commercial problems when wind is oversupplying should we really increase this capacity for a few hours or days a year? But should we accept blackouts when these situations when we are increasingly pushing for electricity to be sole energy source domestically and industrially there will need to be short term fast acting generating capacity.
Vegetarianism seems to be akin to a religious belief amongst adherents. That does not change the reality that humans are genetically omnivores.
As to why per capita energy use will increase with population growth, more people competing for declining resources results in higher resource costs for getting these additional materials whether they are vegetable animal or mineral!
You rather sidestepped the question as to why there are so many fake meat products marketed very successfully to vegans and vegetarians. You say we don’t need meat why do vegans and vegitarians buy these products? By the way other religions who have dietary restrictions also indulge in similar fakery, turkey bacon anyone?
Love your conclusion. Educating girls and empowering women to make their own choices is excellent, in and of itself. Indeed, it might be the single best thing that is within our control - funding efforts that advance the freedom of girls and women. Each of us can help with that.
Hannah, hello. I keep following your blog, and thanks for your Interesting posts. This is one of them! Excellent post, but excuse me if I disagree with you about your conclusions. You are missing something, just like the authors of the papers you cite. Population decline cannot be seen in isolation. It generates a series of negative feedbacks that reinforce each other. The final result is not the slowly declining curves you are showing. It is what I call the "Seneca Effect" which takes these feedbacks into account to show that the decline is much faster than growth. Several dynamic studies show exactly this effect, I discuss this in my upcoming book "The End of Population Growth." In short, population decline will have a much stronger effect on emissions than what the scenarios assuming a slow decline predict. That may be good for climate, but not good for us. The decline may be harsh and painful. Long story, some of my thoughts can be read in a post of mine.
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/the-coming-population-collapse.
Thanks again for your excellent work!
Hi Ugo, I agree with you that the authors of the article did not take into account the feedback loops between population, resources and pollution. However, I still think the conclusions are valid. It's true that a larger population means greater energy consumption and emissions, but for human societies, the primary stock that determines resource extraction is physical capital. As you modelled, capital is what actually depletes natural resources. Therefore, the trajectory of fossil energy extraction and emissions should be largely determined by the growth of capital, technological advancement, and the size of the initial resource stock, mostly independent of population. As Malthus suggested, population growth is actually driven by resource availability. In short, I think decarbonization will be largely the result of resource depletion. The contribution of human population to current trajectories has always been marginal and will continue to be so in the future.
Thanks for your contributions to the Oil Drum and elsewhere, Prof. Bardi. You and I are of an age. As a Club of Rome member, you'll be familiar with "I=PAT". For those not acquainted with it, IIRC it was originally meant to be a level-0, KISS, heuristic model of humanity's total impact on the global environment, not an actual identity. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT) suggests "I = f(P,A,T)" is more useful, allowing for subsequent expansion of interdependencies amongst the three explicit factors. Knock yourselves out!
For example, we can use I = f(P,A,T) to examine specific impacts over time 't': let 'I(t)' represent the rate of global heat accumulation (GHA); then *per-capita* impact over time is a function of income 'A(t)'; while energy production technology 'T(t)' can be <1 per-capita, depending on the rate at which fossil energy is replaced with carbon-neutral sources. Resource depletion (accounted for within 'T(t)'), as the previous commenter observed, will also drive the global economy toward carbon-neutrality. Once nobody buys fossil carbon because it's more expensive than the available alternatives on the market, T(t) falls to 0, and GHA largely decouples from P and A. Global mean surface temperature (GMST), an imperfect proxy for GHA, is expected to stabilize at whatever value it has reached by then (https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached/).
Note that the countless other externalized costs of the modern "Western" lifestyle do not vary solely with greenhouse emissions, or population. With global decarbonization accomplished, all the other impacts on the biosphere of 50ky of human economic, technological, and population growth will continue unabated, but in a stable, albeit hotter, climate!
Some definitions would be good for what short-term, medium-term and long-term are in this context.
I can accept everything about the core premise of the article: that population decrease will be too small in the short term to impact climate change. But population decrease in general is possible within the medium term, say 30-50 years. I would argue that long-term thinking is lacking in western governments. A bug of democratic systems is that we think in election cycles. That's a problem.
I don't want my daughter to live in an overpopulated world, and it is already overpopulated. It's got nothing to do with climate. Repeat. Nothing to do with climate. Incentivising gradual population shrinkage is important not because of carbon, but of consumption - the rate at which we're consuming oil, minerals, water. The fact that it's a zero sum contest for space.
Our species is one out of around 8,700,000. One out of 6.5 million land species. We make up around 0.01% of the world's biomass, point zero one percent of life in crude terms. And we take up, conservatively, 38.5% of land area. More if you exclude Antarctica and permanent deserts.
We are hoarding the planet to an egregious extent. It's so weird and frustrating that detractors have learned to sling the label "misanthrope" at anyone who points this out. Humans are cool. I don't want to kill masses of people. But we're not under threat. Everything else is. And the natural world is beautiful, but more than that it keeps our human world functioning properly in more ways than we can count; it will be for the better if our descendants have plenty of it to enjoy. For that to happen there will need to be fewer of them.
There's not a city in the world that isn't struggling to provide one or more of the following: adequate public services, water supply, energy or housing. Some are just crumbling.
Technology and automation makes a lot possible. Low population, high standard of living. That's the future, and I think we should pursue it regardless of climate impact.
For a long time I agreed with everything in your comment. Now I stumble a little at "But we're not under threat. Everything else is. " The problem is that some people are in fact under threat, both from climate change and from specific *heavy-handed* collective abatement measures that might be taken, whether democratically agreed upon or imposed by a global superpower.
Despite opportunity, I, for one, have chosen not to reproduce, hence my pseudonym. All other people currently alive are independent agents, not attentive to my agenda by default! Empathy complicates my opinions about what democratically-chosen "environmental" policies to agree to. At the last, however, I'm bound to regard those peer-reviewed *Nature* reports I cited as authoritative: the costs of global warming to date already far exceed the estimated costs of achieving carbon-neutrality by now; and until fossil carbon emissions cease, the cumulative net cost of global warming in money and grief is open-ended. Our choice to collectively decarbonize or not is clear, but that doesn't mean it's easy!
We ARE under threat, along with everybody else.
The world is maybe overpopulated; maybe not. That’s a judgement call. What it certainly is is overconsumed. And that’s almost entirely the fault of the rich.
It certainly is all about climate catastrophe; that’s the only problem that threatens the existence of civilization and most life on Earth in the short term. (And it has to be fixed in the even shorter term.) Some might say nuclear war threatens our existence, too, but the main thing making nuclear war more likely is climate catastrophe.
Go to Skeptical Science to read about whatever us fooling you into thinking climate catastrophe is not a problem.
I think my comment came across as implying I don't believe in climate change. I do. What I was saying is that I don't even need to invoke climate change to make cases both for population decrease and environmental conservation. As for climate change, of course I hope effective mitigatory and remedial measures can be implemented, but I also agree with Hannah here that population decrease specifically would not be among the effective measures to counter climate change because of the reasonably slow rate of change. In short, climate change necessitates remedial measures. Population decrease won't be one of those measures. But we should do it anyway because the longer term matters too, and it helps in other areas.
Should be “…whatever IS fooling you…”
Point taken on footnote 3 but it still inclines me not to get caught up in the fertility fear-mongering. There will downsides to a naturally declining human population but huge upsides to land use and animal welfare.
Its the reverse... NetZero will lower prosperity or slow it and this will drive population decline.
"[Open-ended global warming] will lower prosperity or slow it and this will drive population decline."
FIFY.
But trying to mitigate it will be 10 times worse for populations and prosperity.. some focused adaption is all that is needed.
Poverty has been steadily falling as surely as CO₂ and temperatures have been rising, so those appear to be inversely related, whereas birth rates have been steadily falling, so I don’t believe your “fix”.
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, of course. AFAICT, it's why we have science. I, for one, am a comprehensive non-expert, and nobody ought to believe any factual claims I make without links to peer-reviewed investigation. So let's have a look at the published evidence.
First, let's compare current *death* and per-capita income rates against what they would be without climate change (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). From the abstract:
"...We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life..."
Next, let's estimate the impact of emissions *to date* on future prosperity (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0). From the abstract (my emphasis):
"...we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (*relative to a baseline without climate impacts*, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter *diverge strongly dependent on emission choices*..."
The reality-based conclusion is left as an exercise for the student.
Wow… I think you need to get back on that medication…
Firstly…. deaths and other impacts of weather events has dropped by 98% since 1900 and will stay down due to technology and the power of our existing energy systems that has also provided prosperity.
These report on impact of so-called climate change are biased as they like to load normal weather patterns and call it climate change.. as well as not looking at it from a per population base.
Then reports like to project a massive impact of another degree of warming.. Look.. we have already had a 1 deg increase and it has coincided with more CO2 that has actually improved human flourishing and improved the food supply…
Then we have the extreme and horrible impact of NetZero that will create negative prosperity by increasing the cost and reliability of energy and for sure we will see much more deaths in both developed and emerging economies if we let that foolish idea take place.
You need to go back and do more research matey..
Here is some material… the last item summarizes all these links..
Why there is no 'climate crisis'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmdBbs3O1g4&t=1171s
John Christy: Climate Change is Not a Crisis | Tom Nelson Pod #260
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwYVyU_q9Uo&t=242s
Rising CO2 Levels Greening Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOwHT8yS1XI
Our climate policies cant save the environment. So what will? | Bjorn Lomborg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN_ARfPY9rY
Why renewables can’t save the planet | Michael Shellenberger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w&t=4s
Gerard Holland lays out the staggering cost of renewable energy at ARC Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRhNOv1Uo4M&t=4s
Why Climate Fanaticism Is Killing Us | Lord Matthew Ridley - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdWP2KywAQU
Climate Change… The Truth? - by Nigel Southway
https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/p/climate-change-the-truth
Every 1 of your citations is a ludicrous anti-scientific right wing lie.
Get into psychotherapy then read all of the Skeptical Science site to get straightened out on your psycho-ideological blindness.
I will get you a mirror
Hmm, what has greater credibility with scientifically meta-literate readers on this pro-science blog? Denialist comments by one "Nigel Southway"? Or scientific findings published in *Nature* by trained, professional skeptics under the unsparing scrutiny of equally trained, mutually skeptical peers? A dogged culture warrior like Mr. Southway will succumb to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Sure, he might be right and the experts wrong, but as a comprehensive non-expert myself, I won't be investing in large, sturdy umbrellas (please don't make me explain).
You are a real thought plonker .... Look at the material I provided ... from other experts... If you don’t see how the climate narrative has been politized and helps sell media I feel sorry for how gullible you are.
Mike Berners-Lee in "There is no Planet B" says "A bit more growth can be tolerated provided we distribute it properly. Since the impact that each person has depends so much on how they live, it is clear that 1 billion reckless people would trash the planet in no time whilst 15 billion very careful people could live in harmony with a thriving environment. The more people there are, the more careful each one needs to be. [But] we will need to distribute the resources to the people. So, either the people are going to need to move to where there is sufficient food and energy production, or those resources are going to have to flow to them. Specifically, we have seen that existing agricultural production can feed the projected 9.7 billion people in 2050, but that only works if a lot of food grown in North and South America flows to Africa"
"A bit more growth can be tolerated provided we distribute it properly.” Who gets to determine what is “proper?”
Thank you, Gary, that's the key question. I sustain a sliver of hope for collective decarbonization of the US and global economies under popular sovereignty and the rule of law: G. Hardin's "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". I have no hope whatsoever for mutual agreement to redistribute income globally.
Nigel, you are dead right. There will be day when FF will be unable to meet demand and will be expensive but that day is 100+ years in the future and W&S will be 10x more efficient (and a better replacement). In the meantime we are wasting valuable FF resources on RE deployment (when they are not ready for prime time). The main issue being that we must run two grids as DEFRs are not available. Batteries are unaffordable and prone to spontaneous combustion.
W&S have only one job and that’s to reduce co2 per kWhr, and they do not manage that from a mining to recycle aspect (life cycle).
Co2 is also not proven to be the cause of atmospheric warming, nor is rising co2 proven to be man made, and nor is co2 proven to make bad weather worse. Makes the whole RE concept pointless and detrimental to poor people as they increase costs (connections, grid stiffening, VAR control, opex etc adding to cost). You are wasting your breath here with these ideologues. Note that Hannah’s comments regrading population and energy require a number of unlikely assumptions. Clearly it is the 1st world populations that are shrinking alarmingly and that this will end up with all of us living “African levels” of energy use as we lose our engineers and technicians capable of supporting existing power and installing/operating new power.
is this communism?... if so good luck with that.
Your paranoia is showing. Do you fear popular sovereignty and the rule of law? Are there communists under your bed? JFC, not all collective action is "communism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)! Alas, you'll clearly a dogged culture warrior, who will never be dissuaded. My subsequent responses, if any, will be intended for hypothetical other readers.
Well as long as its democratic.... but good luck with getting the US voters to agree to significantly lower prosperity..... or anyone elsewhere for that matter.
Why Climate Fanaticism Is Killing Us | Lord Matthew Ridley - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdWP2KywAQU
In fact, the progressive agenda would significantly RAISE living standards for 99% of humanity and otherwise improve life for the rest, while reducing the harm humanity does to the rest of the biosphere.
Solar and wind are, eg, the cheapest and also by far the most benign energy sources and are getting better every year while fossil fuels and nukes get steadily worse.
Stacey Collins : So....Is agreeing with and quoting a statement by a brilliant man from a brilliant family your justification for DISRUPTING and REORGANISING THE WORLD in what can only be described as an Extremely Socialist way ? Sounds very familiar ! "The phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx, particularly in his Critique of the Gotha Program. It outlines a core principle of communist ideology, envisioning a society where individuals contribute based on their capabilities and receive resources based on their requirements. This ideal is predicated on the belief that a communist system, with its advanced productive forces, would generate enough abundance to satisfy everyone's needs"............AND LOOK HOW THAT HAS TURNED OUT IN RUSSIA , CHINA , CUBA , NORTH KOREA and lately , VENEZUELA !
True : It pleased a lot of Malthusianists in that it reduced population numbers by 100 or 200 million people along the way ......AND YET IT STILL FAILED THE PEOPLE.......poverty and misery and failure at every level EXCEPT THE MILITARY AND THE POLITICIANS !
Economically it's a joke and socially it imprisons everyone in a grey-world devoid of hope and freedom and real-life ! BUT HEY ! IDEOLOGICALLY IT'S SHARING and SUCH A "CHRISTIAN THING TO DO "....except of course...... that's also panned by the athiests !
Is THAT what YOU actually WANT FOR AFRICA and AFRICANS ??????
Suppress their development [ Mustn't use coal , oil or gas to develop and power their nations and their industries !!! ] and MASS IMMIGRATION to productive Countries where they have used these same "dreadful resources" to become wealthy and wise !????
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As Gary politely asks :"A bit more growth can be tolerated provided we distribute it properly.” Who gets to determine what is “proper?”
and "good-ol'-Motormouth" replies "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". !!
REALLY STACEY , Is THAT what YOU WANT FOR THE "WESTERN COUNTRIES" ???????
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If not....then take a bit of time to RESEARCH THESE IDEOLOGIES along with their PROPONENTS ........because these 'elites' always envision a world where THEY THRIVE and enjoy all the dreams of wealth and power with none of the adverse consequences they are quite willing to inflict on others ! How tolerant they all are ! All the suffering will be confined to the "less-than-elite-class".........which is somehow ....the majority ! GROW UP !
It’s ridiculous to talk about elites who want socialism, especially democratic socialism. By definition, people pushing for hierarchies, ie, conservatives and capitalists, are proponents of elitism.
Jeff Cope : What an obnoxious comment !
Where is your evidence for that preposterous remark !
It was Conservatives and Capitalists who established the institutions and order and education that facilitated the Industrial and the Agricultural revolutions that have "set-up" the modern world with it's highest-ever standard of living , safety , prosperity and wealth and freedom.....and it's just getting better all the time.
Poverty is rapidly declining and life is getting easier and more enjoyable .......and yet there is a "regressive bunch of hypocrites" who , in typical socialist mantra
call themselves by the opposite name to what they intend , "the progressives" ,
who are elitist , ivory-tower academics and the like , usually adherents to Marx and the French philosophers policies and ideologies , intent on disrupting and wrecking this current system for no good reason other than to satisfy their bloated egos , their resentment for their lack of recognition and financial reward [ which they feel they rightly deserve !!! ] and their insatiable desire for POWER.
[ Read George Orwell's books : Animal Farm , Road to Wigan Pier , "1984" with it's "Ministries : "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation,"....... highlighting the manipulation of language and reality to maintain control. .........like ALL COMMUNIST REGIMES ! ]
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I have provided PLENTY OF EXAMPLES of where "progressives" have wrought nothing but pain , death , suffering , misery , poverty and bondage [ "RUSSIA , CHINA , CUBA , NORTH KOREA and lately , VENEZUELA ! ] and you respond with that ridiculous and pathetic assertion the "hierarchies" are elitist , and somehow , a bad thing !......"Hierarchies, both in organizations and in social settings, can be beneficial by providing clear structure, promoting accountability, and facilitating efficient resource allocation. They establish clear lines of authority and reporting, define roles and responsibilities, and offer opportunities for specialization and career development"......and in a FREE SOCIETY LIKE OURS , they work wonders producing excellence and abundantly rewarding merit and innovation !
What you seem to be advocating is the Socialist State where the hierarchies stifle creativity and innovation and they become too rigid when communication is restricted. .....like they build "A Berlin Wall" or "An Iron Curtain" or "A Bamboo Curtain" .....preferably described by them as a "Belt and Road Initiative" where they indebt economically weaker countries to them and then use that POWER to extort benefits for themselves ! It's all about DOMINANCE and POWER !
Nothing to do with Free-Enterprise , Free-Trade and Personal Freedom is it !??
We missed our first deadline. Unfortunately, missing means that the poorest people on the planet are going to die unnecessarily. If we had responded justly 60 years ago when we discovered the climate problem. …
There is still hope. At least for the projected survivors, until the next deadline. In any event, there are going to be some changes around here.
I believe the Olys are building lifeboats. If I was a selfish, paranoid mega-man, I would. I would not spare a single thought to any one who could not demonstrate their allegiance to me.
We would have acted responsibly, if we had slowed and reversed birth rate through natural attrition and birthing fewer babies.
I was right with you until the last paragraph. Whether responsibly or not, we have in fact slowed future birth rates by reducing total fertility, as Dr. Ritchie points out in her OP. If by "natural attrition" you mean without coercion, well, there was some coercion during the 58-yr decline of TFR from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 today (https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate), but AFAIK no current coercive anti-natalist policies are operating. But doesn't reducing total fertility mean "birthing fewer babies" for any reason?
Looking at the long view. 200 years? Trying to think of a way to do it more or less naturally. I also think lower population will reduce the pressure on the environment in a lot of ways. Chances? Close to zero. Have you read Sarah Conly’s book on whether people have a right to have a child?
Well, I probably don't need to read a book about it, but thanks for the recommendation. I don't believe rights exist independently of human wants. I do know many, though not all, people *want* children. In the USA, those people assert a political right to have them. Generally speaking, all people everywhere are independent agents, who act without knowledge or regard for my subjective opinions on their rights. Drat!
Population growth isn't driving emissions, as most people born in the past decades are poor. Luxury is driving emissions.
I'm not quite convinced that per-capita emissions will be independent of population—even approximately.
One could argue, for instance, that a region with limited renewable resources could supply all its energy from renewables if its population is low, but would supplement those with fossil fuels if its population is higher. One could also argue that once a certain amount of renewable infrastructure is in place, a declining population would allow a region to phase out fossil fuels more quickly.
Or there could be effects pushing in the other direction. Maybe with a high population density, more people would live in urban settings where per-capita energy consumption is lower. Or maybe older people use more energy per capita than younger people, so per-capita energy use is higher when there's an inverted demographic profile due to low birth rates.
None of this matters much in the short term. I just find it very difficult to speculate with any confidence about the 22nd century.
Theoretically maybe, but read the Sky’s the Limit study. Germany, eg, is the 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize based on its land, population, and energy use, but its grid is already 60% renewable and increasing fast, even as it also rapidly electrifies primary energy (EVs, eg).
Every country in the world can either produce all the energy it needs domestically with renewables, or it can buy it. (People objecting to consideration of buying it should write a letter to every single country in the world, because all buy either fossil fuels or fissile fuel energy or both.)
When I said "limited" renewable resources, I meant limited not just by physical constraints but also by economic and political realities. Putting it all together is complicated, and every part of the world is a little different.
I've never been to Germany, but I know it has long been in the vanguard of the energy transition, despite being far enough north that heavy reliance on solar is challenging. According to Ember, Germany's electricity mix in 2024 was 42.2% fossil, 43.3% wind+solar, and 14.5% bio+hydro. The bio and hydro aren't going to grow much, so to squeeze out fossil, wind+solar needs to double. Then to electrify the rest of the energy system, total electricity needs to grow by a factor of 2 or 3; let's say 2.5. For wind+solar to accommodate all that electricity growth, they'll have to grow by more than another factor of 2.5 (again because the bio and hydro aren't growing), but let's be generous and say that the total growth of wind+solar only needs to be by a factor of 5, relative to today. Now consider seasonality. Germany's electricity demand peaks in winter, and the peak will probably sharpen as more heating is electrified. Given Germany's latitude, this means it's probably not practical to increase its share of solar relative to wind, so wind alone needs to increase approximately five-fold. Again, I've never been to Germany, so I don't really know whether that's feasible, but I wouldn't automatically assume it is. You don't want to put hundred-meter-tall wind turbines too close to where people live, and you can't pack them arbitrarily close together without lowering their capacity factor. Maybe you can just put all the new turbines offshore, though that's more expensive, and contrary to what it says in that study, the cost of wind energy is no longer coming down. Add in the cost of storage to handle dunkelflaute events.
Now the question is, Would all this be any easier or harder if Germany's population were half what it is today, or double what it is today? I think more people probably make it harder, because then you need more wind turbines, yet you have more people living in places where you'd like to put them.
Similar considerations apply in the northeastern US. The seasonality isn't as bad, so the solar/wind ratio can be higher, but you still need wind in the winter, and good wind sites are few and far between, and electricity prices are lower so people are reluctant to pay for offshore wind (and for storage). They could import more electricity from the Midwest or Canada, but trying to build more transmission capacity is a political hornet's nest. Again, I think these problems would get harder if the region's population were to double, and would be easier if the region's population were only half as large. Gas in the US is cheap and abundant.
Meanwhile there are places like Oahu and Taiwan and Java where you'd like to rely almost entirely on solar but nearly all the land is either protected or devoted to high-intensity uses that aren't easily displaced. Population density really can matter, though of course there are also many places (like Utah, my home) where for now, to a first approximation, it doesn't.
There's no silver bullet or 'the issue' to solve climate change, and we need to prioritise short, medium and long term actions of course. Ideally we need to do them all.
Ultimately this conversation is all about the empowerment of women and girls to make their own choices for their future, so looking at it from there is more helpful.
Project Drawdown did some helpful work on the numbers too ...
https://drawdown.org/solutions/family-planning-and-education
Their top few ...
1 - Cutting food waste @ 88.30 Gigatons CO2 equiv.
2 - Moving to mainly plant based diets @ 78.3Gt
3 - Family Planning + Education @ 68.9Gt
4 - Onshore & Offshore Wind turbines @ 56 Gt
Full table of Drawdown's work here - https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
And yes, of course consumption is a massive connected driver. Even the IPCC consistently cite GDP Growth & Population Growth as the 2 key drivers of climate change ...
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/chapter/chapter-2/
Rosling did some good work, although on this issue, he seemed to ignore the impact on the natural world that many more billions of us would create.
We need to more thoroughly consider the compound benefits this 'solution' comes with, which are many.
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people.” - David Attenborough
In my field, medically targeting the biology of aging to address age-related ill health, people often consider the extreme of indefinite healthy lifespan and assume the population would explode with devastating effects on climate. This post is very pertinent to that, and it relates to how surprisingly small of an effect the extreme of even indefinitely healthy lifespan would have on population. Andrew Steele made a good video looking at estimates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Ve0fYuZO8&t=275s
Thank you for publishing this. I wrote a letter to ERDA about energy use back in the 1970's, when energy-efficient appliances were the vogue, but our older, more inefficient appliances were still being exported. I made the point that energy use per capita would grow faster than population as more countries modernized, expanding their use of electricity. I suggested that to reduce pollution (I lumped carbon in with all the other airbornes) we needed to help other countries to leapfrog transitional technologies so that the whole world would more quickly be able to reduce its use of carbon-based fuels. Needless to say, the leapfrogging hasn't happened very often, and the US has not slowed its per capita use of carbon-based fuels.
Switching to renewable electricity (with some direct use—clothesline paradox energy, things like Odeillo Furnace) would reduce global energy use by 50-60%, so no.
ICEVs, eg, are 5% efficient, well to wheel, ie, the whole chain wastes 95% of the energy in oil and EROEI continues to get worse. EVs are 40-60% efficient and getting better, fast.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=line&time=earliest..2024&country=~USA&mapSelect=~USA&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Per+capita+consumption&Select+a+source=Fossil+fuels
The headline is correct, but there is a related issue of prosperity per capita.
Just raising electricity consumption in developing nations to EU levels will double world power demand of 3,000 GW, or ~30,000,000 MW-hours per year. At 1 t-CO2 emitted per MW-hour, that's another 30 Gt-CO2 (gigatonnes) emitted per year.
That's why we need full-time low-cost nuclear power to help poor nations while checking CO2 emissions. The prosperity of electrification cuts birth rates, dropping in many areas but not poorest Africa. See ThorconPower.com about nuclear power in SE Asia.
What we need are renewable sources. Better in every way.
"Renewables" ....!!!...............Total HOAX based on LIES and CORRUPTION !
There is no good reason to replace CARBONACEOUS FUELS with anything other than NUCLEAR FISSION REACTORS which work well ....and perhaps , NUCLEAR FUSION REACTORS once they are perfected !
India, Nigeria, and Pakistan top list of child air pollution deaths
Of the 700,000 child deaths are due to air pollution, and almost half a million are due to household pollution. [ so ,500,000 die as a result of HOUSE-HOLD-COOKING and HEATING POLLUTION .......but not due to oil , coal or gas ! ]
The air pollution-linked death rate in children under the age of five in East, West, Central and southern Africa is over 100 times higher than their counterparts in high-income countries. There are two deaths per 100,000 of the population in rich countries, but the death rate in Africa’s children is 210/100,000.
The highest number of children dying of air pollution is in India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
NOTE WELL !!!! The reason is largely pollution within households burning polluting fuels such as coal/charcoal, wood, animal dung, agricultural residue etc.
There is climate catastrophe.
And the 10 million people fossil fuels kill every year. There’s autocracy, inequality, oppression, repression, caused by the resource curse.
There’s only one fusion reactor in existence and we’re using it more every month.
".........and we’re using it more every month."
Using WHAT more every month ??????? Surely NOT the 1 fusion reactor !!!?
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"There is climate catastrophe"..............NAME ONE !
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"And the 10 million people fossil fuels kill every year.".......You exaggerate !
"Approximately 5.13 million to 10.2 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution from fossil fuel use. This estimate is based on studies that link fossil fuel combustion to increased levels of particulate matter and other pollutants, which contribute to respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, and other health problems." IT'S AN ESTIMATE ....NOT A FACT !
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About 70 million people DIE each year and about 130 to 140 million people are BORN each year . Of these , a continuous and reliable electricity supply is possibly responsible for ensuring that most of them LIVE ON and survive infancy , probably many tens of millions ! WORLD-WIDE , APPROXIMATELY
80% OF ELECTRICITY COMES FROM BURNING CARBONACEOUS FUELS !!!
"While it's difficult to pinpoint an exact number, reliable electricity supplies contribute to saving lives in numerous ways, including preventing deaths from extreme weather, improving healthcare, and enhancing sanitation and food safety. Specifically, access to electricity allows for better heating and cooling, leading to fewer deaths during heat waves and cold spells. It also powers medical equipment and facilitates proper hygiene, both crucial for reducing mortality rates, especially among vulnerable populations."
Given the infant-mortality rate BEFORE adequate electricity became available I would say that your 10 million pales by comparison....even if ALL the deaths you quote can be attributed solely to coal , oil and gas !
It is hard to attribute ALL AIR POLLUTION and particulate material to coal , oil and gas used to generate electricity since there are so many sources of "particulate matter".......Particulate matter (PM), a major component of air pollution, can come from both human-made and natural sources :
Human-Made Sources:
Industrial Processes: Many industrial activities, such as electricity generation, mining, and manufacturing, release particulate matter.
Vehicle Emissions: Exhaust from cars, trucks, and other vehicles, especially those with diesel engines, contributes significantly to PM pollution.
Combustion Processes: Burning fuels like animal-dung , wood, coal, and oil for heating, cooking, and power generation releases PM.
Construction and Demolition: These activities generate dust and debris that can become airborne.
Agricultural Activities: Tilling, harvesting, and livestock operations can release PM into the air.
Waste Disposal: Incineration of waste and improper waste management can contribute to PM pollution.
Consumer Products: Some products, like talc or other powders, may contain particulate matter.
Natural Sources:
Bushfires and Wildfires: These events release large amounts of PM into the atmosphere.
Dust Storms: Wind-blown dust from arid regions can travel long distances and contribute to PM pollution.
Volcanic Eruptions: Volcanic ash and gases can release PM.
Sea Spray: Ocean waves breaking can release salt particles into the air.
Pollen: Pollen grains from plants are a natural source of PM.
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I REGARD YOU AS AN UNRELIABLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION BECAUSE YOU DO TEND TO CHERRY-PICK YOUR "FACTS" and YOU EXAGGERATE !
YOU regard me…! LOL
You’re a climate denying delayalist! Nothing more needs to be said about who’s credible here. You’re mentally ill and I tell the truth. You make grossly wrong assumptions, refuse to live in reality, let your disturbed ideology determine what you accept and reject from the reality most of us share.
Yes, it’s 10 million.
(Katharine Hayhoe, IMF)
No, it’s 60%. In the us it’s less than half, it will be in the world, too, probably in 4 years. (Would be <5% in the us now but the rulers share your affliction. Folie a plusiers, Wetiko disease, (malignant egophrenia), nihilistic narcissistic psychotic psychopathy, civilizational autism, emotional plague… call it what you want. A complex stew of attachment disorders, personality disorders, trauma, addiction, and other problems. Go get yours treated, please.
Jeff........IT IS TIME THAT YOU CHANGED YOUR NAME......because it is obvious that YOU just can't COPE can you !
Invective instead of reason and fact ! What a miserable specimen you are !