'Dissecting those "overpopulation" numbers', excerpt from "Too Many People?" by Ian Angus and Simon Butler

October 4, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist RenewalHaymarket Books has kindly given permission for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal to publish "Dissecting those 'overpopulation' numbers", an excerpt from the just published Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis by Ian Angus and Simon Butler. Links' readers are urged to purchase this essential book. You can order it directly from the publisher HERE; Australian readers can also purchase it at Resistance Bookshops in their city, or online at Resistancebooks.com.

Download "Dissecting those 'overpopulation' numbers" HERE (PDF), or read it on screen below.

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Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented and popularly written refutation of the idea that “overpopulation” is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions. No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for activists and environmental scholars alike.

Ian Angus is editor of Climate and Capitalism, an online journal focusing on capitalism, climate change and the ecosocialist alternative. His previous books include Canadian Bolsheviks and The Global Fight for Climate Justice.

Simon Butler, a climate justice activist based in Sydney, Australia, is co-editor of Green Left Weekly, the country’s leading source of anti-capitalist news, analysis, discussion and debate.

Reviews

“This excellent book is steadfast in its refutations of the flabby, misogynist and sometimes racist thinking that population growth catastrophists use to peddle their claims. It’s just the thing to send populationists scurrying back to their bunkers.”
—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

"How did apparently progressive greens and defenders of the underprivileged turn into people-haters, convinced of the evils of over-breeding among the world's poor? How did they come to believe the 200-year-old myths of a right-wing imperialist friend of Victorian mill-owners? It's a sorry story, told here with verve and anger."
Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake

“Ian Angus and Simon Butler are not ordinary environmentalists and Too Many People? is not an ordinary book on population and the environment. They demonstrate that by demolishing the notion that too many people (and too many consumers) are the source of our environmental ills we can get at the real problem: the system of accumulation and waste commonly known as capitalism.”
—John Bellamy Foster, coauthor (with Fred Magdoff) of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

“Sadly the population myth has been used to distract attention from the roots of ecological crisis in a destructive economic system and to shift the blame for problems such as climate change on to the poor. This splendid book is an essential read for all those of us concerned with creating an ecologically sustainable and just future. Buy it, read it and spread the word!”
—Derek Wall, author of The Rise of the Green Left

"Ian Angus and Simon Butler’s superb book challenges the “common sense” idea that there are too many people. Clearly and concisely they blame a system that puts profit before people and planet, refuting the arguments of the later day Malthusians. It is a book that should be read by every environmental campaigner, trade unionist and political activist."
— Martin Empson, author of Marxism and Ecology: Capitalism, Socialism and the Future of the Planet

“Angus and Butler have written a comprehensive dissection of the arguments surrounding over-population, It’s a vital and insightful socialist response to the debate and highly recommended to anyone interested in fighting for a better world and avoiding the pitfalls of false solutions.”
—Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism

“With clear prose and careful, cogent analysis, Angus and Butler provide the tools necessary to dismantle the myth of overpopulation step by step … [and] show the way to a more hopeful, justice-centered environmental and reproductive politics.”
—Betsy Hartmann, author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control

“This is an essential subject, and we are in Angus and Butler’s debt for treating it with such clarity and rigor.”
—Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature

Dissecting those 'overpopulation' numbers", excerpt from Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the E...
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Better (free) education for women does give women a better understanding of human rights, there rights.
With better (free) medical help, the need for large families subside.
I don't like to use the word experts, because they change there minds much to often, but 9.2 billion is not too great a number to live with. 14/15 billion may be more of a problem, again but, the arguements are within the capitalist sphere of opinion.
We have not used the land as good as we should, business is not interested whether we have enough to eat, its only interested in the profits generated from staple crops etc. As we now know many business interests bought major stocks of the staple foods we rely on. They warehoused it and the prices soared beyond millions of peoples ability to pay. This is the real reason that North Africa revolted, certainly in the case of Tunisia. It is estimated that 200 million people starved because of this.
We have all the tools and educated people to come up with a better way of living, again but, all so called left thinking has drifted into pacts with business to promote these ideas and make them more accessable and popular, but if these ideas do not make enough profit, business will pull out and these ideas slowly die. Capitalism is not the tool that benefits the majoriy. It is only interested in maximizeing profit. Again I would say that education is the key, with a new ethic and political thinking. Socialism fits nicely into this. It is the only real alternative. First world countries have a bigger problem with ageing populations. Post world war baby boomers are now old, those born in 1945 are now well into there sixties, better education and welfare has been a major factor in reduced numbers in families.

We could talk factually about how many people can subsist on the planet. We'd have to make assumptions about agricultural productivity, energy efficiency, amounts of resources and - this often gets forgotten - what quality of life each should have. We could also discuss how much subsistence we want to leave for non-human creatures.
Too many who are sanguine about human numbers, I'm afraid, approach the problem as one of engineering a functioning 'human feedlot'. But life quality, having room for sports fields, cinemas, flower beds and wilderness is perhaps worth an afterthought, no?
But what I really don't understand - in addition to the hate and the impugning of motives that accompanies criticism of worriers about over-population such as myself (a card-carrying green leftie) - is why the stupid assumption is made that there is ONLY ONE cause of our environmental problems, variously identified as overconsumption by the rich or the capitalist system. Whence the incapability to grasp that such socio-economic things are working ALONGSIDE sheer numbers to deprive posterity of natural resources and amenities?
The above reviewers of the Angus/Butler book have an either-or mindset. They think they have the silver bullet to solve THE cause of environmental problems. Some population-worriers are like that, too, but most of us aren't. We could also argue about which parts of the problems could be addressed first. But it would be a lot more humane, you guys, to bury the hatchet, and the nastiness.
Thanks.

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Published online 11 May 2011 | Nature 473, 125 (2011) | doi:10.1038/473125a

Column: World View

The United Nations says there could be 10 billion people on Earth by the end of the century. Fred Pearce finds problems in its analysis.

The latest global population projections, published by the United Nations last week, say that the world will be awash with 10.1 billion people by 2100, a billion more than previously supposed. Already, there is talk again of a ticking population time bomb.

But a closer look at the assumptions behind this scenario shows it to be perverse and contradictory. In fact, it looks more like a political construct than a scientific analysis.

The heart of the problem is this: the new UN estimates record that both world population and global fertility rates are currently slightly lower than presumed when the last projections were made two years ago. Yet, they project significantly higher growth rates than those estimated two years ago.

This paradox is created by a seemingly arbitrary change in assumptions about future fertility that requires a proper explanation. And quickly. Plans to cope with an increasing array of global challenges — not least climate change and food policy — are predicated on the UN's demographic projections. The past few years have seen a plethora of scientific papers asking 'can the world feed 9 billion?' It won't be long before the work is revisited to see whether we can feed 10 billion.

We are doing quite well at defusing the population bomb. Women today, on average, have half as many babies as their grandmothers did. World fertility has fallen from 4.9 children per woman in the early 1960s to an expected 2.45 between 2010 and 2015, a projection revised down from the 2.49 figure of two years ago.

The trend is near-universal. With childhood diseases such as measles and tetanus in retreat, for the first time in history most children get to grow up. Population quadrupled in the past century as this happened. But now women are learning to adjust to falling infant mortality and having fewer children. Other factors include urbanization. On a peasant farm in Africa, young children are an economic asset, minding the goats or fetching and carrying. Once families move to the cities, children are a liability, requiring years of education to get a job. Fertility rates are much lower in cities.

Falling fertility doesn't instantly translate into fewer babies. That is because of the huge demographic bulge of twentieth-century baby boomers — now adult and fertile. But as they age, and if fertility rates continue to fall, population growth must subside and could go into decline.

The key questions are how fast and how far fertility will fall. As the UN notes, "small variations in fertility can produce major differences in the size of populations over the long run". That is why the assumptions built into the new projections are so crucial.

The UN's previous 'medium variant' projection, published in 2008, concluded that world population would rise from the present 7 billion and peak in mid-century at around the 9.15 billion expected in 2050. The new projection finds no peak. Instead, world population reaches 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion in 2100, with further growth still in the works.

The UN has yet to publish its detailed reasoning, but a collection of frequently asked questions issued alongside the new projections says that most of the difference is due to an upward revision of its fertility forecasts — a revision unrelated to current trends.

There is history to this. For many years, demographers reckoned that world fertility was headed inexorably for the rich-world replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman. But in the past 30 years, this has looked increasingly like too high a number. In almost all developed countries, fertility rates have fallen to well below replacement levels. Despite a minor bounce-back in recent years, most of Europe remains below 1.5.

“In almost all developed countries, fertility rates have fallen to well below replacement levels.”

With much of Asia and Latin America on the same path, almost a decade ago the UN rethought the 2.1 end point. In 2003, its UN population division, under then-director Joseph Chamie, decided that its 'medium variant' projection should instead assume convergence at 1.85. It was a compromise, Chamie told me. Some argued for 1.6, whereas others wanted to retain 2.1. The latter group, he said, feared that a low estimate would send the 'wrong message' that our population worries were over.

The projections made in 2008 retained the figure of 1.85, but it has now reverted to 2.1 — the predominant reason for the leap from 9 billion to 10 billion. The assumption now is that countries with higher fertility rates will fall to the 2.1 figure and not below, while those below will rise to reach it.

Is this realistic? As Joel Cohen, a demographer at Columbia University in New York, put it in 2002: "No case is yet known of a population with fertility above replacement level that converged to replacement level and then stayed there." That remains the case. Chamie this week said he had seen "no compelling evidence" to justify a return to the 2.1 figure.

The UN boasts that its new projections have incorporated a more probabilistic approach into the model. That is good. But, as the UN makes clear, the model "incorporated the additional assumption that, over the long run, replacement-level fertility would be reached". In other words, the crucial new fertility end point of 2.1 did not emerge from the new probabilistic analysis. It was imposed on it, and the UN should explain why. 

Fred Pearce, environment consultant for New Scientist, is author of Peoplequake (Eden Project Books, 2010).
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1 excess environment destruction/ carbon diox is an extreme risk -

whatever the cause.

2 Extreme risks require URGENT ACTION BY ALL OF US.

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