text:
- Hans Rosling
- Stockholm
- Sweden
Director, Gapminder Foundation
This conversation is closed.
Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?
We face many environmental challenges, but the foremost is the risk for a severe climate change due to CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
I meet so many that think population growth is a major problem in regard to climate change. But the number of children born per year in the world has stopped growing since 1990. The total number of children below 15 years of age in the world are now relatively stable around 2 billion. The populations with an increasing amount of children born are fully compensated by other populations with a decreasing number of children born. A final increase of 2 billion people is expected until the world population peaks at about 9 billion in 2050. But the increase with 2 billion is comprised by already existing persons growing up to become adults, and old people like me (+60 years). So when I hear people saying that population growth has to be stopped before reaching 9 billion, I get really scared, because the only way to achieve that is by killing.
So the addition of another 2 billion in number constitutes a final increase of less than 30%, and it is inevitable. Beyond 2050 the world population may start to decrease if women across the world will have, on average, less than 2 children. But that decrease will be slow.
So the fact is that we have to plan for a common life on Earth with 7-9 billion fellow human beings, and the environmental challenge must be met by a more effective use of energy and a much more green production of energy.
The only thing that can change this is if the last 1-2 poorest billion do not get access to school, electricity, basic health services and family planning. Only if the horror of poverty remains will we become more than 9 billion.
So my question is: Are these facts known? If not, why?
It is important because placing emphasis on population diverts attention from what has to be done to limit the climate crisis.
Max Kennedy
Feb 16 2011: Whether population growth continues or not is moot. The current population is unsustainable! Estimates to have a decent lifestyle for all indicate a need for between 5-10 earths of material. Reducing population is a major need to achieve a sustainable global economy, both financially and environmentally! By the time 2050 rolls around and your "maybe" seeing population reduction the damage will have been done and perpetuated! To try to take this out of the equation of climate crisis will inevitably doom any effort as it is a major player! Now if you are saying that population pressures can be effectively dealt with by increasing education, access to medical care, improved lifestyle I would agree to some extent. However it will take a concerted global effort to get rid of extremist populations, such as christian and muslim fundamentalists, that promote women as being here solely for the bearing of children and like in the former Afghanistan actively seek to exclude half the population from an education.
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It is a part of the problem that can be addressed effectively but it is such a huge part of the problem that not having an emphasis on it will promote the climate crisis. Indeed education is perhaps the most effective population growth counter. It would be easily done that education on other aspects, such as resource stripping, water conservation, loss of diversity, energy efficiency etc could be incorporated into the education process and help address those issues as well.
Seán Hayes
Feb 16 2011: The reason we don't have enough resources is:
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1. Lifestyles in the developed world are extremely wasteful.
2. Lifestyles in the developed world exceed what's needed to live and be happy.
If our existing habits were modified to be more efficient and if we stopped buying so much crap we don't even need, there's no reason it couldn't be scaled to 9 billion people.
"it will take a concerted global effort to get rid of extremist populations"
Absolutely, let's get rid of all the intolerant people.
Kait Kenel
Mar 13 2011: I would like to point out here, that we have also been relying on the same resources for a number of generations, and have known for a long time that they were not sustainable i.e. oil, trees, fresh water. So, there is also an aspect of the inability to see our errors in not only the consumption of resources, but also the lack of variety of types of resources we choose to consume...Feb 16 2011: How do you, Max Kennedy, propose to get rid of extremist populations? Please, notice that "extremist" Iran has managed a wonderful feat of family planning. Perhaps someone would call Fidel Castro an "extremist", but you can check that Cuba's population is not even replacing itself -which is amazing for a 3rd world country.
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I do agree with Seán Hayes that our lifestyles are wasteful and our consumption habits exceed what's needed to be happy; however, if we were really to consume only what we need, what would most of us do for a living?
Feb 16 2011: "if we were really to consume only what we need, what would most of us do for a living?"
My opinion...
Step 1. Clarify that in some instances what we need to be happy is very different from what we need to not be sad
Step 2. Change the culture so that we don't value wealth and the expression of wealth so highly
Step 3. Reduce hours worked per individual
Step 4. Increase gross number of hours spent socialising, thinking, learning, creating, exercising, and researching
Feb 17 2011: Couldn't agree more with you, Jonathon. Only step 2 is mighty difficult to achieve.
Somehow, the urge to consume seems a lot easier to awaken that contentment. Admittedly, the economy does spend a lot of money in advertising trying to persuade us to part with our hard earned cash... Perhaps if the same effort was put into persuading us to live more healthful lives something could be achieved.
Could I please interest you, and everyone here, on the work of Antonio Abreu whose remit is spreading the love of music to all children in Venezuela. I recently saw a documentary about his "sistema" and the kids really seemed enthused, all they wanted to do was to play their instruments and share music with their friends. President Chavez, perhaps not the most popular leader in the western media, has been the biggest patron of Abreu's work but the guy himself will work with anyone, left, right and centre.
I think Abreu is on TED
Alex Sprunt
Feb 16 2011: Hi Max, your comments reminded me of a 2050 Future Energy talk I attended some years ago and many people had similar concerns. What is difficult to actually understand is the "acceleration of ephemeralization (doing more with less)" because so much of it is invisible and the most people are kept very busy just earning a living and don't actually see the accelerating change.
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The development of solar powered electric cars for instance is happening very fast, much faster than I expected and yet I agree with you that vast environmental damage is occurring so there is a big job to be done. One of my mentors always said "Spend 10% of your time on the problem and 90% on the solution", and I feel that we are still spending way too much time on the problem, and need to focus much more on the solutions.
V K Madhavan
Feb 14 2011: At the risk of sounding cynical, one of the reasons why population growth attracts more attention is because it shifts the discourse away from more substantive issues of 'access to and ownership of assets by the poor' and distribution of resources.
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As Mark as had pointed out, investing in women - through education and health care - can lead to substantive reductions in family size but despite evidence to this effect the preference for male children and the patriarchal mind-set that is pervasive, inhibits adequate investment in women. We need to invest in young people and particularly young women - given the demographic transition in many countries - and we need to ensure property rights and access to commons for the poor.
Chris Berrie
Feb 22 2011: There is so much "information" available, much with little possiblity of confirmation. Studies are comissioned by vested interests to prove what they want proven. Those with financial resources have the ablity to influence popular opinion with any propaganda they want.
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For every apparently substantive "fact" offered, a counter fact is posited that seems just as reasonable. Within the threads of these very comments is much opinion and contradictory or obscure information. Amidst all of the noise and confusion, how does the average person make sense of it all? How can the "masses", who drive our conventional wisdom and common endeavor, make informed, socially responsible choices? How can they not be overwhelmed and paralyzed by indecision and fear?
Debate is critical, but how do we translate all of the debate into real world solutions?Feb 15 2011: I'm confused by Hans' statement, "But the increase with 2 billion is comprised by already existing persons growing up to become adults, and old people like me (+60 years)." How can the projected population increase be comprised by already existing persons?
While I agree with Hans to a degree, there remains an important link between population growth and climate change. In particular, WHERE will that population growth occur? 50% of green house gases can be attributed to three things (in almost equal parts): transportation, deforestation, and building energy consumption. Unfortunately, the building-design community's vision of sustainability is myopically focused on increasing the energy efficiency and reducing the embodied carbon of individual buildings. So-called "green" buildings are simply not sustainable if, for example:
- their occupants drive long distances every day
- the energy they consume is carbon-intensive
- their technology is too complicated to use or too difficult to maintain
- their impact stops at the property line
- they deny the use of pre-existing infrastructure or building fabric
- they are conceived in isolation from larger, systemic environmental change
"Green" buildings alone are not enough to divert our perilous course. A broader vision of sustainability is imperative to meet the challenge. We must decide if we are willing to change our behavior: to migrate toward more populated, more diverse, more sustainable cities. Ultimately, urbanity itself is the embodiment of sustainability.
So, to the extent the addtional 2 billion contribute to horizontal acceleration of development, they are a significant, negative factor.
John Mardlin
Feb 14 2011: I don't think anyone is scared of the numbers themselves, we're more afraid of the consumption and general "per capita havoc" on the environment.
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In the developed world, I believe the statistics claim that 7 earths would be needed to support our lifestyles. The worry is about the extention of this lifestyle, to a total of 9 billion individuals. Though I believe that they have as much right to these luxuries as we do, we don't yet know how we are going to sustainably supply a 9 billion person world with meat, cars and air conditioning.
I also question the idea that we may see a decrease in population in the future, since life expectancies will likely begin to increase dramatically. Just ask Ray Kurzweil.
Leslie Scott
Feb 22 2011: There are over 7 billion people on the plant now... one hiccup in food production, even before CO2 changes climate, for ANY reason and we are all in trouble. As long as the stores have supplies no one will feel it but when that runs out.. I agree with Alice Tromm in as much as the numbers are huge and fairly recent in human history, we have never before faced this and we should be dealing with it now! It will create more deadly, immediate pressure, faster than warming.
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Mar 5 2011: Great point Leslie.
I think the issue is the other way around. The environment is an issue for our population and its growth. Leslie has pointed this out well as does some recent environmental or natural disasters. Floods in AU, earthquakes in NZ, drought in China, volcano in Iceland, severe winter in EU, highest recorded summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere and the list goes on. Each of these interrupt food production locally which put more pressure on global food production.
The environment and our population are very connected and the more reactive and unpredictable the environment becomes, the more at risk our population is.
Feb 21 2011: Hans, what you seem to overlook is LOCAL ecological carrying capacity. Over-population is a local issue on a global scale. Global population numbers are meaningless because not all ecosystems support population equally. If you recall Thomas Malthus's theory of how "every species will reproduce until it exceeds the limits of its food supply," every ecosystem can only support a limited population size. Industrialization (intensive agriculture and infrastructure) allows humanity to expand an ecosystem's local carrying capacity, but since it depends upon unsustainable energy sources, a sharp drop in population is inevitable. Climate change further exacerbates the issue by degrading the load capacity of each ecosystem. We need data that evaluates the carrying capacities of each ecosystem including their likely medium and long-term rates of degradation. Ideally each ecosystem should maintain a population margin below full capacity to give their people higher standards of living.
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It's true that violence might occur, especially in an ecological collapse scenario. Easter Island gives a stark illustration. We know that we need to realign our economic and political systems to reflect ecological reality. The smaller the time-frame in which this realignment occurs, the worse will be the violence. Over the long-term we need to achieve economic and ecological sustainability by having populations constrain their size to local carrying capacities (or projected 25-50 year level), constrain food trade in terms of nutrition parity (grains for grains, meat for meat, and fruit for fruit), and only permit parity-based immigration (prevents moral hazards and the externalization of population-related ecological impacts). If we bolster this long-term strategy with gradual short-term increases and public education, it'll have a lower probability for violence.
Policies need to be aligned with reality or nature will mercilessly do it for us.Feb 16 2011: Global demographics can get pretty complicated. I recently curated a link suite on an aggregator I edit that riffed off of Ted Fishman's new book, "A Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation" (overview post: bit.ly/eHkpWS) Clearly, it isn't only a matter of numbers, but of skews as well.
However, there is a related question I have wanted to ask you for some time, so will seize the moment... Your wonderful data visualizations show an optimistic trend for global public health. However, although the lot of the human species overall has improved over the last few hundred years, we are in the midst of what has been termed the "Sixth Great Extinction." Thousands of other species have either gone extinct or are on the edge either as a direct or indirect result of human action, including population growth (background: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/28/species-extinction-hotspots-australia)
Both ethically and from a "one health" perspective, this is an extraordinarily troubling development, one that greening up the energy supply and slowing global warming doesn't begin to address. Focusing on the human-centric public health component, the loss of a these species, both plant and animal, means a loss of bio-filters that keep pathogens in check. Even without extinction, habitat loss can have direct human health consequences (see deforestation & malaria: bit.ly/aPMRuB)
I would be really interested in seeing data visualizations on public health that looked at the larger fabric / context. I suspect it would reveal significant vulnerabilities. At what cost have the improved metrics of human health come? And given big picture trends, are we at risk for a dramatic reversal?
Thank you...
Feb 17 2011: Janet - that's a good point. Maybe it's hard to shed this sense of impending doom because so many living species do face genuine doom.Feb 18 2011: Janet, but what could have been made different during the last 40 years. The number of births have come down, only in the last billion, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa are we still waiting for the 2 child family to become norm, That is already norm in 80% of world population. From now on the growth will mainly be the already adults growing older.
And if all of Africa follow in the global trend we can see human population start decreasing from 2050 but that will not be so fast we will most probably be at least 7 billions by the end of 2100. And most of the big threats to biodiversity and climate will happen before 2100. And yes active and successful poverty alleviation and family planing can make us peak at 1/2 billion less . I can not understand what else can be done to reduce the number of humans, except th unthinkable, a mega holocaust! I do not here any realistic suggestion from those concerned by human numbers.
Feb 18 2011: Hans, thank you for your response. I think we may be talking past each other though. I am focused not so much on what could have been different over the last 40 years, but more on the implications for human health over the next 40. Although your data visualizations are very compelling, the focus is on a set number of public health metrics. I am suggesting that those be placed within larger contexts to analyze vulnerabilities.
Much has been written about the emergence and re-emergence of dozens of zoonotic infectious diseases over the last 30 years . These illnesses not only have potentially significant direct impact on human health, but indirect impact vis a vis livestock. Meanwhile, plant crops are facing a resurgence of traditional scourges, including wheat rust, the original Green Revolution's public enemy #1.. GMO crops are starting to experience resistant "superweeds." Deforestation, urbanization and increased trade/travel have all worked in favor of spreading pathogens far, wide and fast. Now, two new studies suggest a link between wacky weather and man-mediated climate change (by no means definitive but part of a growing chorus: ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/02/17/new-studies-show-that-climate-change-is-the-culprit-in-extreme-rain/). Recent weather—floods & droughts—whether or not climate-related, have taken such a toll on commodity crops that we're seeing food cost price hikes in the neighborhood of 30%.
So what does all this mean going forward for global public health?
Beyond the appalling truth that one species can cause the extinction of so many others—we're right up there with meteors in the extinction-event derby—what do all these trends mean in terms of human health /population growth?
Some new data visualizations, please...
thank you...
Feb 18 2011: I agree with Janet, loss in biodiversity, land degradation and encroachment have increased the number of emerging infectious diseases (75% of which are zoonotic). Further, the impact of livestock and crop production increases the risk of food insecurity as well as decrease in individual economic development.
As far as the demographics go, I would be interested in more focus on regional data, instead of overall global rates. Are the areas where population (i.e. births) increasing, also areas of limited/degraded land, decreased animal/crop production, poor nutrition, etc. What are the public health infrastructures like in these areas? Many of these regions are also hotspots for emerging diseases. In other words, the total global population density might not be the issue; instead, it might be more enlightening to look at regions of population growth and whether they also suffer other factors (e.g. food shortages, decreased production, poor public health infrastructure, education, etc.) that would make them significant to the global community.Feb 18 2011: H'mmm, I can't "reply" to Craig's comment directly, but wanted to include a link to a map he flagged to my attention that was published in "Nature" a couple of years ago, charting emerging disease hot spots. The focus is on the twin plagues of infectious diseases and drug resistance. www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2033
It is intriguing to think how this sort of data might be woven into public health data to create predictive models.Feb 15 2011: Thank you Hans for this reality check. The recent Time cover story about population makes some equally balanced comments about population. Yes it is still growing, but the reality is that in every developed country, without the need for any government-mandated population control mechanisms, the birth rate has dropped very close to or below the replacement rate of approximately 2.1 children per couple. What we need more than population control is development and education -- they are the most effective forms of population growth imaginable! And development will eventually solve the carbon problem too as developed societies move towards renewable non-polluting energy and sustainable built environments. The answer to every global-scale problem is to help lift the rest of the world out of poverty and into educated, developed society as quickly as possible.
Also I like your last comment about placing emphasis on population diverting attention away from the climate crisis. I completely agree. And, even more so, the climate crisis -- which today is almost 100% about CO2 -- is diverting attention away from extremely important environmental issues like non-CO2 pollution. The Great Pacific Plastic Patch. Endocrine disruptors in the water systems giving rise to frogs being born with ambiguous genitalia (with humans to follow). Children burning insulation off of wires in China to harvest the copper. Pollutants seeping from electronic junk in landfills. Huge epidemics of bowel and colon cancer in China from polluted water sources. Hundreds (thousands?) of species going extinct per day. We don't hear much about these environmental issues anymore because everybody is so focused on CO2. And I suspect there will come a time that we'll regret losing a decade or two of sleep over CO2 while we were diverted from what may turn out to be much bigger problems.
Max Wedding
Feb 17 2011: "And development will eventually solve the carbon problem too as developed societies move towards renewable non-polluting energy and sustainable built environments."
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What is your definition of "development"? Because if "development" means "widespread infrastucture and modernization", from where do we extract the raw materials necessary to develop the entire world?
Communities living in poverty, whether in developed countries or not, have drastically lower carbon emission and waste product than the affluent ruling-class. A self-sustaining agrarian community produces far less waste and far fewer emissions than Chicago, for instance. "[lifting] the rest of the world out of poverty and into educated, developed society as quickly as possible" just sounds way too white-man's-burden for me to get behind. I'm all for education so long as it's both factual and self-administered as opposed to an ignorant colonial force missionizing "truth", which comes to mean "worldview".
I'm certainly not arguing that we return to isolated farming communities, but I also don't believe large-scale development is the be-all, end-all solution to basically anything. My apologies if I drastically misunderstood your argument, and I very much agree with the ideas in the second portion, though I'm just saying that don't polluted water sources come from areas with access to things like fossil fuels and synthetic materials?
I suppose I'm trying to understand your angle here. Feel free to key me into the parts that I'm sure I'm missing.
Hans Rosling
Feb 18 2011: Do not worry max, brown man is carrying the burden now. >Not to mention brown women. They study harder and Asia is in many ways more serious than US and West Europe when it comes to acting upon climate change. But EU respond by putting import tariffs on Chinese solar panels!!
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White man is not crying even his own burden. He is asking Bangladesh to carry it for him. I just listen to a talk by the Minister of Environment of Bangladesh, I was so impressed by his wisdom.
Feb 18 2011: It is interesting that in spite of my being a reasonably well informed citizen (BBC, Channel 4, and the broadsheed papers) I haven't come accross any of those two items: The EU putting import tariffs on Chinese solar panels nor the Bangladeshi Minister of Environment speech on the iniquities of the world system. Things will not change until a critical mass of people are aware of what goes on and until the elites feel watched by the people. The media elites are the gatekeepers preventing information from flowing freely. It is very discouraging!Feb 19 2011: Hans, I'd love to hear the Bangladeshi Minister of Environment's speech -- is it online somewhere that you're aware of?Feb 17 2011: Agree with you one hundred percent that bringing basic education and water / land management skills to underdeveloped countries will help stabilize populations faster than government mandates. Additionally, thanks for bringing up the other environmental issues that need to be addressed. All the talk of clean energy and such has been a thin veil used by too many corporations that literally trash our lands and seas.
Feb 18 2011: Remember that most of the world population already reach 2 child families as a norm we are talking about the last billion that has to follow in the next decades, and they are with exception of the war torn low income countries. Vietnam, Iran and Brasil have 2 child families. Iran has less children per women than Sweden.
Debra Smith
Mar 13 2011: Dear Hans!Your talks have been a great and useful boon to me! I live in Canada and I am a statistical anomaly in that I have an education and 5 children. With all the misguided talk of world population explosion even my own children are embarassed by the fact that I had five kids (and in my defense that included a set of twins!). I guess it is just not cool to have a Mom (and Dad) who is so 'socially irresponsible'. They are all adults now and other than refer them to your talks- I just have to tell them that as I am not willing to cull the herd- they just have to get on with life! This is a bit tongue in cheek but I do thank you for the moral support and visual aids to make my points to my kids (and others) who sometimes asked me if I knew what caused pregnancy.Feb 23 2011: It's simple: I prefer a great world with few children instead of a miserable world with many children.
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Max Kennedy
Feb 17 2011: Don't get me wrong, excessive consumption is a tremendous part of the problem. McMansions, the disposable society etc contribute tremendously to the rape and pillage of the world. The reduction in lifestyle to manage with 1 earth would require giving up, conservatively, 4/5 of our current way of life in the west and more likely 9/10. The rest of the world is doing it's best to catch up thus recruiting more and more consumers. It is unrealistic to believe that addressing the "wasteful lifestyle" of the west will be either possible or effective on it's own. We also need to have less consumers! With respect to the extremist populations the only real way to get rid of them is through education of the peoples in those societies, not accepting products from those societies which unfortunately will make life worse for the common person but will lead eventually to internal revolution and to promote positive change that improves the equality of all the citizens within such a society (simplistic but there's only so much space here). So long as repressive regimes are supported in the name of "stability" and their product bought to the enrichment of the ruling elite we assist in the perpetuation of extremist thinking and increasing populations, the relatively few exceptions to this prove the rule in general. Alex, we can't count on some unseen deus ex machina solution to save us. Yes there is progress but the huge numbers of people as well as deliberate obfuscation by problem deniers and vested interests, such as the Republicans and oil companies, will ensure the solutions come neither fast enough nor achieve sufficient penetration to prevent global collapse. Hans states emphasizing population diverts attention whereas my assertion is that as a tremendous part of the problem, look at the deforestation of Haiti by the poor, not addressing population will cause any other solutions to fail. Population controls need to be part of the solution!
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Feb 18 2011: Yes but problem is something you can do something about. he fact that Netherlands is small and the Atlantic is big is not a problem for agricultural production.
And even if you start very actively and gradually become successful in promoting people to have only one child per couple the effect will be so slow on the numbers of humans so that it will be of almost negligible effect on the energy consumption.
Or how would you go about decreasing a world population that is presently set for an increase with 2 more billion before´a decrease may take place.
Feb 18 2011: But what will the effect on energy consumption be of raising all those Sub-Saharan Africaners (etc.) to having a good level of existence??
If the reduction in population through attrition is going to be slow, the net effect is going to be a continuing spiral up in energy consumption by the world which contributes to global climate change and the eventual destruction of the planet (yeah, I know, doom and gloom). The point here is that population has a direct impact on global climate change in the following two ways:
1. Increase in population causes increase in resource use which has effects on climate.
2. Increase in resource use by population also effect climate.
Either we begin looking into "Soylent Green" or we have to find means of resource usage that has *no* effect on climate.Feb 16 2011: I was aware of the trend of the figures Hans mentions, and I think he may be right in his way of thinking. The only thing that worries me (and I don't have figures to throw out here unfortunately), is that the world population has been able to reach 7 billion only by using a lot of finite fossil resources (e.g. ground water, minerals,oil, gas, coal, etc.). Sustaining the current population would deplete some of these reserves by 2050 or soon after. Any kind of population increase would only speed up the process, unless humanity manages in the same time span to decrease not only its energy use, but also resource consumption by considerable amounts. Given some market mechanisms currently in place, and the time generally needed for public opinion to change, chances are slim that we will be able to live up to that, even with the current population.
Feb 18 2011: But Marten, what do you mean by any kind of population increase? The population growth we expect in the next 40 years are adults and old people that are already born. They will replace an earlier generation that was smaller, but the number of children born per year has already stopped growing since 20 years back.
So how would you avoid the final increase with 2 billion more. I can only see to options forcing 1 child policy upon young couples, which take Mao Tse Tung powers, or killing people that takes Hitler powers and I want none of this in the future world. We should see to that all have access to family planning, as an estimate 30 million of the children born each year are estimated to be unplanned. But 30 million per year is 300 millions per decade and about a billion until 2050 so indeed with Utopian success in family planing we can avoid one of the two extra billions.But what more can we do. Already are 40 millions abortions done per year. And had that not been the case during the last generation we would have been one more billion now. So the worlds women are already doing more abortions than they are giving births to unplanned children.
Feb 20 2011: Family planning is indeed what I had in mind as a more plausible alternative to Hitler or Tse Tung practices. I really think that, taking into account the rising living standards in currently small-footprint countries, it would be worth the effort of reducing projected population increase by half, with contraception, women empowerment, abortion,family planning and policy measures such as decreased child allowance from the 3rd child onwards...
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Feb 21 2011: Quite rightl Quite right! Instinctively we all get it, that's why fat cats can be derided for everybody's delight and why so many people are fuming regarding Irene Khan, the ex-secretary general of Amnesty international, getting £500.000 payout. We all know that our life standard is built on the misery of the Third World, Irene Khan certainly knows it...Feb 16 2011: It is amazing how easily the meme of the "Malthusian Catastrophe" spreads ... I wonder what instinctive fears it is touching that makes people believe it, almost religiously, so very quickly. In any case, it seem to take an inordinate amount of time and work to dislodge it !!Feb 16 2011: Thank you for raising this issue so succinctly. I absolutely support and agree with most of what's being said here. I don't believe it's just a matter of inefficiency and poor planning though. In fact, there are many who have a vested interest in perpetuating the idea of population explosion, because that assertion puts it back on the people (bad, randy people, reproducing like a bunch of rabbits to the point where we can't feed ourselves) and detracts from the larger issue of the politics of poverty. Obviously, we have the resources to feed our populace and probably will in the future, but unfortunately poverty is profitable. (http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/12/16/f-commodities-outlook.html).
But we all have a part to play. After hearing the above story on the radio, I realized I no longer wanted my retirement savings to go toward funding the deliberate starving of millions, and potentially billions, of people. I'm taking my money out of my mutual fund-based RRSPs and putting them into an ethical vehicle that will probably make me a lot less money over time, but at least I'll be able to sleep nights after I retire.Mar 14 2011: Over the years WHO keeps increasing daily protein guidelines despit a lack of evidence as to the morbidity and mortality associated with various levels of dietary protein for those 60 plus in the population.
Increased healthy lifespan, reduced HD, Cancer, Diabetis, AZ, PD, seem like a much better trade off than unsupported speculation about small incresed Muscle loss that may or may not be a morbidity or mortality factor. It may even help with aging! Why slavishly foolow unsupported claims about diet and protein? Where is the data? Please!!
In the matter of slavish imitation, man is the monkey's superior all the time. The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving a opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
Kait Kenel
Mar 13 2011: Allow me to quickly add that, in making changes like the ones presented below, it is not unreasonable to infer that the overall quality of life for many people, in terms of true health and happiness, will increase
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If people were able to focus less on the things they could 'get' in certain societies, which helps fuel our destructive use of the earths precious and finite resources, it is probably true that the overall happiness and well-being of those people will increase.
On that same token, by educating people in developing areas of the world, especially women, it is affording them a freedom/independence that they may have never known before. This again, can reasonably result in an increase in the overall happiness, health and well-being of such people. Let it also be noted, that I do not believe it to be 'our' job as a western culture to force upon other groups ideologies that we prescribe to, but more the sharing of facts about health and science, to the best of our (continually growing) knowledge.
Sorry to go all psychology on this discussion, it just needed to be pointed out ;)Mar 12 2011: I believe that at this point the fact that we have a major problem regarding population and environmental sustainability is known. However, the facts often aren't conveyed in a manner that reaches out to the general population in an effective way. Not only are exact statistics often not shared enough, those statistics are not shared in a way that will touch people instead of computers. To make a real difference the facts need to be shown in a way that is not overwhelming and will demonstrate how the issue at hand pertains to individuals, not just the world as a whole. For this reason, the work of Gapminder Foundation is so important. If the correct statistics can get out in the correct manner more often, then change will be made more rapidly.
Steven Rader
Feb 25 2011: I think that we may be lulled into thinking that the rate is going to even out and the exponential growth will come to a halt. However, I think we may be forgetting to consider the incredible advances in life span that are being brought about by the human genome research. While birth rates may be slowing, if we increase life span by only 5-10 years, it will have a significant effect on population. If some of the indicators in research are true, life span may increase considerably more than 5-10 years in the next 10-20 years. It seems that our population trajectory is a lot like Moore's Law discussed by Ray Kurzweil where the curve is propagated by different technologies such that when one driver for the curve slows down, a new technology starts driving it right back to exponential....
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If this is in fact the case... and population is destined to continue on this trajectory, we will have some very difficult decisions to make about quality of life, resources, choice, human life, and human rights.
Dan F
Feb 24 2011: Nice to have the human population discussion front and center.
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It seems to me the dynamics of not just of the explosion of the human populations in modern times is mind boggling, but also the dynamics of the explosion of the cultural evolution and how that has effected how we have thrived in numbers and improved the standard of living around the world. All this has resulted in an extended and more delicate reliance on man made or designed products, ideas and the exploitation and alteration of natural resources for our benefit. The question in my mind is whether the quality of life is bound for extensive unpleasant outcomes.
Not just the world and countries, but large modern mega city of hundreds of thousands and even millions of residences relies on incredibly sophisticated political, economic, social, biological, etc., systems to function and operate as planned. Am I the only one that senses how things could really degrade if cooperation turns more toward survival in these densely populated urban areas?
The assurance that aspects of the world population trends give reason for optimism because it is peaking out misses the central issue in my mind. I don't dispute these trends just the assumption of the stability of the current and projected general human population situation.
Cause and effect can spoil models and often do. When it comes to such matters there is often a lag affect between the things that can and do bring about correction(s). We have plenty of warnings in a variety of areas that suggest that it's only possible to claim so far so good.
I am not a doomsayer, but one who thinks the miserably index for vast numbers of people could go up - way up!
Feb 25 2011: Certainly, I don't think anyone is optimistic enough to think all the billions at the bottom of the food chain can develop in the American way... or in the European way for that matter. Expectations of material wealth will have to be curved.
I am particularly interested in your misgivings about cities... In fact, I should think that it is easier to provide services for people when they congregate in high density population centers: schools, hospitals, public transport, libraries, housing, sanitation... If anything I think that cities are part of the solution not the problem.
Gabriel .C
Feb 22 2011: In short, because Mr.Rosling is but one man.
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This makes me wonder if the Gapminder Foundation has considered a more political role for its genius display of data. How would political debates look like if every claim made by a statesman were to be accompanied by Mr. Rosling with a pointing stick, a graph, and an allusion to his beloved Sweden? :)
Rhetoric is dangerous because it can be both beautiful and entirely fallacious at the same time. I wish foundations such as these were incorporated into a larger system of completely objective fact-checking, easily available to the masses if not forcibly thrust upon them. Now that would make for some first class debating.
Feb 20 2011: I think the problem of population growth will solve by itself, with as many people will populate the planet as many poor will be , and the poverty like any time in history will produce wars , genocides , diseases , this is just an example .............and perhaps are many others.
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Feb 20 2011: Sad, but true.
I have a better alternative. Let women decide if they want a child or not.
Feb 21 2011: it's an alternative but it's up to women , and I don't trust them very much in respect of that.Mar 11 2011: Do you see children as the responsibility of women only? As far as I know a man has to be involved in some way to create a child...Feb 20 2011: I don't think that they are generally known -- no. Because, who in a global role is speaking to this issue? Al Gore I believe tried and as far as I can see, has sunk away because the world did not stand-up and change in a day. Change takes multiple repeating of the message. We do not grasp ideas from one movie or even 5 encounters with the same information. It takes repeating and sharing the message over and over again leveraging every medium we can get our hands on. How are you sharing your expertise? You may need a new loud speaker! :-)Feb 17 2011: In addition to Helen Williams' interesting statement about how the press likes ideas that sell. I think, the reason for this false perception about population growth may also be linked to psychological factors and not merely to the facts.
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Given history and how much the population has grown recently, it is very easy to project into a simplistic view of crowded worlds and pollution problems related to it. It is a lot harder, to picture a change (such as the change in trend you have mentioned) or imagine how many other changes will happen over such a period. (Linear falacy?)
I think it was a NY Times Op Ed, which started with a description of the pollution related to horses in NYC and how people thought this would doom the city. They could not imagine that cars would solve that problem. It is easy to extrapolate simplistically into a superficial (but apparently logical) linear scenario. It is harder to forecast what will really happen. (Persistence Fallacy?)
Sociology also contributes. If you need to protect your name, it'll be easier to repeat the simple linear extrapolation than to risk being wrong with accurate analysis or principled forecast. People will easily forget a mistake 'everyone could have done' years later but ridicule free thinkers in the now and then (not all obviously). (Reputation Fallacy?)
People may know the facts but faced with a choice between trusting a non-linear economic forecast and a simplistic model...
In summary: psychology and sociology seem to me to contribute to the current perception, just as I might have believed in 'us' and 'them' if I had not been baffled by a Prof. Rosling in a well-known TED Talk.
It is not enough to educate about just the facts. The previously mentioned fallacies (all named right now by me and on the spur of the moment) must all be addressed with understandable examples.
Feb 17 2011: Very good your pointing out of the mechanisms whereby we come to hold certain beliefs.
Obviously, not even The Guardian could make readers believe anything, it needs to be seemingly logical (here is where your fallacies come in useful). I have a problem, though, with the idea that journalists that write agonisinging with much wriggling of hands about population growth are unaware of what Laurie Vosters (a contributor below) calls the politics of poverty: starvation wages of adults which need the wages of children to supplement them, low prices of commodities produced by the 3rd world... I know it sounds conspiratorial, but I think that the most likely reason why we don't get good information about population growth is because it is in some people's interest that there are lots of poor people to exploit.
Gavin Smith
Feb 17 2011: I have five siblings. I have a child and another brother has two children. My four other siblings are all leaning toward not having children (all are now above thirty). Someone pointed out that the replacement rate would be 2.1 children per couple. In my family we have counting partners Nine adults and three children. So the "breeding" adults would actually need to have to have about 4.5 children just to break even per a couple. I realize this is probably below the global average. Does any one know any numbers by country about replacement rates. I am guessing that countries like the US and germany which I have heard have negative population growth before immigration have a much higher replacement rate per child bearing parents. I just point this out because I have heard several people in my life say either that they didn't have children because of over population or disparage others for having multiple children. One women I know had four children between the late sixties and early eighties. She was told that she was being selfish at one point. She laughed it off. If the replacement rate is this high here and now, and after 2050 the global situation is similar the question is what is the right population for the earth, or more correctly what is the right definition for good population size. No one can stop seven billion from happening. But after the global max at what point in the decrease will people panic and start talking about incentivizing childbirth. Will a world that has only known seven billion feel that 'only' six or four is a crisis. Never too early to hope that is their worry.
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Feb 17 2011: I don't know about the replacement rates per country. However, perhaps your family is atypical and most people do reproduce. It is the same in my family where some 8 cousins over 40 years of age have produced only 2 offspring (just as well if you consider the carbon footprint of the average sprog in Western Europe) but most people that I come accross socially do have children, mostly 1 or 2 and occasionaly 3.
On the issue of what is the optimal population, recently I read an interview with Eric Hobsbawm where he was pondering on the plummeting of the fertility rate in Eastern Europe on the grounds that the system is predicated on population growth.... You need a certain proportion of people working to pay for the goods and services they themselves need and also the people who don't work, children and old folks. Also one must bear in mind that a world in which the labour force were scarce, the price of labour would rise. As far as I know whenever that has happened governments have increased immigration or companies have taken their factories to countries where labour is cheap. Obviously, a small population is desirable if you want well paid labour, but if you want to make a lot of profit out it, the more the merrier... So, I guess that the optimal population depends on what type of world you want.Feb 18 2011: Replacement level depend on life expectancy. If people live about 80 years it is 2.1 children per women. If life is shorter on average replacement levels is higher. Gatherers in rain-forest with life expectancies of 20-30 years have a replacement level of almost 6 children per women.
Adam Burk
Feb 17 2011: Hans, this is a poignant issue to highlight. Coming over from a conversation Nic Marks started, I think about the connections between his ideas and yours. If the issue truly is how we use resources, and his happy planet index accounts for this, then it seems we have the development of a solution. Using the happy planet index as our measurement system, this would incentive innovation in renewable energy systems and hopefully cradle to cradle ideas and products. All this paired with a shift in human consciousness to be orientated towards the greater good rather than insulated self-interest, could be major ingredients in the solution soup for climate change.
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Feb 18 2011: Agree, it is those consuming most and having lots of resources. I note that money is cheap (i.e. interest is low) so lets put these and other resources to find out how to live a good life with less energy use and with a much more green energy. If that is started right now, the billions after billions that will be buying washing machines during the next 50 years will not increase the burden on the environment and climate. Today we are not even measuring CO2 emission with the same speed that we measure GDP/capita.. It takes 3-4 years to get comparable data for countries. the world has not yet turned serious about climate, that is why I find population discussion a diversion of what should be done.
Alex Sprunt
Feb 16 2011: Yes Hans I agree and thank you for the clarity of your explanation ... R Buckminster Fuller in "Critical Path" covers the population growth concern in detail showing how as our standard of living increases our population growth decreases.
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My wife and I met playing Fuller's "World Game" in 1999, a very accurate simulation of life on planet earth. At the end of he day's activity two charts were discussed, the first was the total estimated annual cost to provide a high standard of living for everyone on earth and it was $270billion a year. The next chart totaled $720billion and was the total amount spent the previous year on weapons and wars around the world.
The vast majority of people on earth still do not know that we have the option for us to all live together at a very high standard of living ... in fact Fuller said, "At a billionaires lifestyle", and the accelerating change in technology is providing this wealth.
I thought, given that Einstein was even amazed by Fuller that he was a good mentor to follow and we've now created a 'movement' we call Your Healthy Planet.com and it is based on a context of abundance, the true context of life on earth today. We invite everyone who is interested in joining us on this journey to visit http://yourhealthyplanet.com and come on-board.Feb 16 2011: This is a trick question, no?
Total resources used (or greenhouse gasses generated etc) = individual consumption X population
We have huge efforts involved in reducing individual consumption (as well we should) and it's something we actually have some control over, but any change in population is going to have an equally important affect on the environment.
This isn't to say that we should start culling people. If anything, recognizing that population growth is important should lead to an increased focus on talking poverty, education and family planning in the developing world. Not as a substitute for reducing personal consumption, but in conjunction with it. If we really are already using 5 earth's worth of resources, we need to put the brakes on hard wherever we can find them.
Peter Gallic
Feb 16 2011: 100 years ago scientist made bold predictions about the world and where it would go based on what they knew at the time. They were mostly wrong. Most of the comments on tis blog assume a level of knowledge that far surpasses what we actually have. We don't know what causes climate change, we just learned why lead acid batteries work, we don't understand how the brain works, we are only beginning to understand materials and even our knowledge of biology is being radically challenged by breakthroughs in research. The one thing we could definitely say is we seem to have lost none of the arrogance of the past. So to the dire predictions of those the 'know' I say, people that 'knew' believed the earth was flat, that the planets orbited the Earth and that certain people were inferior. Admitting that we don't know would be a better start to a better tomorrow.Feb 15 2011: The Kaya identity (a specialized form of the IPAT equation) tells us that population, P, is a factor. The question is- is it a bigger factor than affluence (a combination of energy/wealth and wealth/capita) or technology (carbon/unit energy). if you use current rates of population growth, E/W, W/capita, and C/E (carbon intensity), and do projections of carbon emissions, say to 2100, the equations show that the affluence term, and in particular, E/W (energy intensity) is a main driver. Yes, carbon emissions will decrease with a decrease in P, but a decrease in E/W will have a bigger dent. This just means we have to learn as a globe to use less energy even as per capita incomes (or country GDPs) increase. People focus on energy because it is easier to imagine. I believe that if we explained the IPAT equation better, and showed the results of projections, people will understand the issue better.
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IPAT is simplistic, yes, but it gets us talking about the right things - population, affluence, and the role of technology.
The spatial issue is important, and this is the way we can move the discussion forward. We cannot limit the growth of developing countries, but we can influence the way that growth will occur (whether it will be carbon- and energy intensive or not), and the only way developed countries can gain any credibility is by embracing a less energy- and carbon intensive way of life.
Dave Lim
Feb 15 2011: Greetings Hans from TEDx Singapore
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I also have a background and passion about development economics.
As an illustration, here in small island nation of Singapore, I am constantly amazed that we're living in one of the most advanced and wealthy countries, yet Singapore is a odd drop in an immense SEA:
South East Asian countries of Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Nepal, Philippines, Bhutan.
Being in Singapore is as if you picked up the city of Manhattan and put it in the middle of Africa.
Most people would be surprised:
+ There are 650 million people this SEA = More than the whole population of South America!
+ They are many impoverished, least educated, sick, hungry in SEA, yet not very featured in mainstream media.
We can look out of our windows of our apartments and see neighboring Indonesia.
+ Indonesia is about the size of a handful of US States = has nearly the same population of US
Imagine if the entire US population moved to live in just 5 US states and then everyone becomes one of the poorest people in the world.
Much food for thought.
Perception solutions?
I think at least one obstacle is because we humans don't tend to notice what is physically small.
On the world map India, China and Africa loom so large in physical size on our world map, SE Asia fall in their shadow.
Perhaps one part and one start towards this addressing this perception gap is to have much greater and wider use of those representational maps that you often see in National Geographic etc, those maps that re-draws the world differently depending on what information is represented
Welcome everyone's ideas ...Feb 14 2011: I think we were so scared, for so long of "the population bomb" that we can't quite believe it has really passed us by. Especially since the global population is still growing; it's hard to emotionally grasp that the growth will peak and fall.Mar 14 2011: For those who like the numbers and data on food and protein consumption here is a link to the UN data.
Easy to see the big change if those over 60 eat less protein (Say 7% of Kcal) and the health benifits would be great for those over 60. (Longer life, less disease, less food cost)Mar 14 2011: HansWhy not also look at the diet needs for those 60 and over? Less protein improves health and lifespan and makes more protein available for the two billion with less food.C3H8O3, Mannoheptulose, Trehalose all might be part of the answer to a longer lifespan for humans.Cassava might prove a great source of low protein food for the elderly. (not the young) making a circle back to your early work in Africa. Eric Anderson Haikou Hainan PRC
http://knol.google.com/k/ron-mignery/protein-cycling-diet/2s3nmvrwklbxs/1#Mar 13 2011: I totally agree with you and by the way, I really enjoy your talks.
Having said that and replying to your specific question, I believe that the facts are there and known, how can they not, however, we tend to 'play', 'pick & choose' and sometimes even manipulate the data depending on the message we are trying to convey. I would also add that there may be an element of laziness where issues or topics are presented in a vacuum, ignoring the 'complete picture' and just exploring a 'pixel'.Mar 13 2011: Let's make a hypothetical scenario that I call 'hypothetical' because I am unsure of its accuracy, but I think can prove a point. Let's say that the western world may not be producing children as readily as it once did . We may be able to attribute this to, say, the continual decline of religions' influence on society (considering contraception 'sinful') coupled with an ever-evolving education system that teaches about having safe sex which works two-fold: reducing population growth as well as reducing the proliferation of STI's/STD's, giving people better odds for health and longevity. So, we may decide to conclude that the western world is not be producing as many children, but we do use an enormous amount of the worlds currently available resources. So, for us, yes the idea of re-evaluating our levels of energy consumption, in conjunction with, the re-evaluation of what resources we decide to harness, can be considered 'reasonable', even feasible.
In terms of the developing world, it may be a good idea to be better educating people in general, and women especially in their rights as humand to choose to have (or not have) children. This is an area where this form of education, in light of a possible 'population crisis' may be effective.
I will also add that, the notion of a population crisis on the horizon may be an over-sensationalized and highly misunderstood idea, but I don't believe that it is inaccurate, entirely.
It is pretty obvious that the world is actively making changes to accommodate for the threat of this 'crisis', and that is exactly what we should be doing.
Therefore, population growth may not effect climate change like other factors, but that does not mean we lack effective ways to deal with it, and it is not what one group of people can do to make effective changes, it is what everyone as a WHOLE community MUST do to curb these effects. To me, it is all important, and change needs to happen everywhere.Mar 6 2011: No worries mother nature has her own way in keeping human population in control. Haven't she always? Threw the use of sickness, disease, natural disasters on large and small scales, crime, suicide, and war. I wish some of the things like war and suicide don't have to happen but. These things all play a role in calibrating Earths population numerically speaking.Feb 22 2011: Well, the data is there. Its been there for a while now. The interpretation of this data has really sucked till now!
But thanks to you, we have a much better understanding of whats really happening.
I personally think that earth's carrying capacity has not been reached or crossed yet. We do have enough resources for all the people. I remember reading a statistic by the UN that in 1999 we had more than enough food for everyone. I'd blame our established systems of economics and trade (and even society) for all the suffering.. and only if there's a global revolution, very soon, opposing the fundamentals of our current system, will we be able to keep the population less than 9 billion.Feb 22 2011: I am glad to know that the human population may peak at 9 billion, based on current population demographics, rather than continuing to grow exponentially as it has over the last century. But even today, with "only" 7 billion people, we are already way out on a limb that may be weakening.
The various technologies that have supported the "green revolution" are numerous and wonderful, but we have become dependent upon them as our population has swelled. I'm afraid that a significant diminishing of supplies of nitrogen-based fertilizers, pumped irrigation water, top soil, oil for transporting food, etc., will strain our ability to support the people we have, especially in the poorer areas of the world. What chance do we have to end poverty world wide and thereby limit the population to 9 billion without rapidly depleting our resources to critical levels - and/or overheating the planet? If we can pull this off, how can we sustain such a population for the unlimited future?
Before the technologies of the 20th century, the Earth supported something under 2 billion people. Can anyone tell us how we can protect the 5 billion people beyond that level alive today, or the 2 more billion expected as we move past "peak oil" and into an age of depleted aquifers, eroded top soil, etc.? How many people can modern technology support once we have depleted our resources and overheated the planet?
I certainly don't have these answers. Can anyone help out? I may be overly pessimistic, but this is why I think the population problem is already here; the growth has already happened! Over-extension followed by collapse is not a new phenomena in human history. Can we avoid another boom-bust cycle - this time world scale?Feb 21 2011: What happens to the population of any species ? Is growth infinite ?
I would say it is not. Any system has only that much of a carrying capacity. Once this carrying capacity is reached population growth comes to a halt, because the system, inevitably runs out of one or more essential resources.
This is true for bacteria, plants and animals as well.
So, why should humans make an exception ? We can discuss what the carrying capacity of our planet is (and numbers vary widely), but in any case there will be an upper limit to a human population. If we are resourceful and use our natural resources wisely we might even be able to push this upper population limit a bit.Feb 20 2011: Unfortunately, the average citizen of the United States (or any country on earth for that matter) does not understand demographics. I wish it were otherwise but it's true. The growth of population is not understood by the typical person. For example, people do not understand what they sign when they buy a house or car. Would that the typical person knew what cohort they were in, and it's effects n others.
Now, the main question is "why do so many think this kind of population growth is such a problem?". Well, they were scared into worrying about population growth some years ago and can't let go of the notion. Now, they are being slowly scared into being concerned about global warming, and they don't seem to be enjoying the concern of extra items in their lives. Give them a basic course in demography and MAYBE they'll start to put problems in perspective.Feb 20 2011: I agree that population is stabilising, and is not a major problem.
I disagree with many contributors who think we are running out of resources.
We have plenty of resources, all the energy and matter we could conceivably need, we just have less than optimal systems in place around those resources.
Part of problem relates to the technologies we use, which are typically expanding exponentially, and could expand a lot faster is they were not constrained by the need to recoup investment in the previous generation of products.
The other part of the problem relates to the the social systems we use, most of which are based around money as a system of valuation.
Using money as a system of valuation has a serious negative effect on a significant minority of all societies, because money is a measure of exchange value, and exchange is based on scarcity. Most people value abundance, but there is no monetary value in general abundance (abundant goods are free). Thus monetary systems have an inbuilt incentive to create scarcity, which results in a significant fraction of any society experiencing scarcity, when we actually possess the resources and technology to produce general abundance of many goods and services.
In terms of energy, sunlight delivers an equivalent of 6 inches of oil over the entire planet every year. Plenty of energy. Yet because it is decentralised, and abundant, there is no economic incentive to develop technologies to harness it (too much profit being made from existing technologies - oil and coal). For a more detailed discussion of the concept see http://tedhowardnz.wordpress.com/money/
Having recently (10 months ago) changed my diet to vegan (after 55 years of carnivorous diet), it seems clear to me that we could sustain a population of 9 billion at a conservative density of 2 people per acre (very easy for vegans) using only 12% of the land area.
It is actually quite easy to sustain 3 people off a half acre section in temperate climates.Feb 19 2011: "Beyond 2050 the world population may start to decrease if women across the world will have, on average, less than 2 children. But that decrease will be slow." Well, like most liberals and humanists you revert the issue of our vastly decaying ecosystem to a humanistic issue (or at least hinted this is the solution). You and most other people who commented here do it so conveniently that you all simply disregard or become oblivious to the cause of our environmental issues. I opine that our environmental issues aren't going to change if the standard of living in developing countries will rise. It is the exact opposite that is true.
I wrote elsewhere: "We all know that our ecosystem if facing a harsh future, and to a certain extent (a very large extent I suppose) is due to land and resource overuse. This isn't likely to change if we continue to a) reproduce without control or regulation and b) continue to perpetuate the modern hedonist lifestyle, requiring more material entitlements and spoils c) spread the modern lifestyle to the novel burgeoning economical powers in Asia where people already bred like mad (India and China, both of these countries suffer from overpopulation). The unprecedented demand for luxurious and material spoils in the western civilized world is, after all, what causes both land overuse and resources overuse. Our piggish demand for the spoils of modernity also explains why the prices of oil, wheat and corn have skyrocketed in recent years; the ecosystem can't cope with the growing demanded for spoils. The liberal mindset, deprived of any reasonable consideration of consequentiality and characterized by a denial of behavioral causality is what led us to this situation, in allowing people to act exactly for this materialistic self-gratification. It doesn't sound reasonable or conceivable to bring the west's morbidities to third world countries, does it?
For more information: www.amerika.org/globalism/global-warming-is-a-consequence-of-globalismFeb 19 2011: I think that you forget the enormous increase of the human population happened in the last 120 years.
Even in my short life, I remember that India had 400 million people, now their population is over 1 billion.
Nigeria's number is over 100 million, China, even though they have a 1 child policy, their population increased to 1.2 billion people. Africa: I worked there for 6 years in healthcare. In the Family planning clinic there were 2 photo's. One of a 2 child family, looking healthy and wearing new clothes and one of a family with 8 children, all dressed in shaggy clothes and looking poor. The reaction in general was that the man with 2 kids was poor.
The first time in the history of mankind in 1860 we reached 1 billion people. In 1960 there were 3 billion.
Fifty years later we have 7 billion. I am quite worried about this. Actual wildlife is disappearing, not enough space and greed for the last Rhino horn or Elephant tusk or Lion skin.
The Middle East where it is aloud to have more then one wife, the population is growing. In countries where religion has power, family planning is not popular. Just listen to the opinion of the Vatican about birth-control and that is Europe.
And the population explosion is mainly the result of Western medical science.
Infectious diseases are vanishing so most children survive.
I am disappointed that you believe in climate change due to the CO2, which is food for plants. The temperature in the Medieval time was warmer then today (we are heading for a cooling) and that was without industry. To feed 7 billion people a warmer climate can feed them, if the cooling is starting, millions will starve.
One hint, if you are interesting in the global warming/climate change hoax, follow the money trail. Many well known names will pop up. They don't care that taxes are raised, that the normal people will suffer, in the developed and developing world. They will earn billions. Check the money trail.
Feb 21 2011: Alice,
1) don't look at geographical borders and the population within these borders. That doesn't mean much. Yes, China has the largest population in the world, but look at the size of the country. What matters more in my opinion, is the population density relative to available resources.
2) population growth of any organism is not linear. You usually see strong initial growth which eventually levels off and sometimes even goes down again.
3) Population growth depends strongly on the level of education. There is also a difference of rural vs. urban. Families in urban environments tend to have fewer kids than in rural areas. Coincidentally, there is a clear trend of more and more people moving to urban areas.
4) Climate change due to CO2 (and other greenhouse gases such as methane) is a fact and not some obscure theory. What can be debated is the long term overall effect of this climate change.
The reasoning of higher temperatures = more food is faulty. Crops have their optimum temperature ranges in which the prosper. For example, you'll be hard pressed to grow apple trees in the Brazilian Amazon.
Climate change in general, doesn't have to have a negative impact. It happened many times. What is bad, is the speed with which it happens, because it doesn't give enough time for ecosystems to adapt.Feb 18 2011: Hans Rosling's figures are interesting. However, even more interesting would be trying to explain why the working poor in certain countries -namely Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe- don't have enough children to replace themselves and the poor in Africa have many more children that would seem sensible from our point of view. The obvious answer is that those poor Europeans can't afford children (please notice that virtually all countries were total fertility rate approaches two have either financial incentives to have children or working salaries allow for decent living standards), but then poor Africans can't either....So that can't be the answer. I am aware that Europeans have better access to contraception but as far as I am aware Bushmen and other hunters and gatherers don't need any fancy technology to control their numbers, they practise infanticide.... Sad, but it is better to raise two healthy children than 6 malnourished ones. My point being that if other Africans perceived children as detracting from their standard of living, they would also practise infanticide... Before anyone gets upset, infanticide has been quite a common way of controlling population growth for most of human history -in Great Britain the death of infants due to overlaying reached epidemic proportions.
So, my question is, why does the perception of children varies so much from country to country and also within the same country from decade to decade?Feb 18 2011: Think Soylent Green -- and that's only said in a half kidding manner...Feb 18 2011: I see the two points, population and climate change - as being connected but not in the way that most people would identify. Let me say straight off; I'm an optimist.
The more people there are, the more smart people there are. Imagine if Africa had 50 universities of the same standard as Oxbridge or Harvard /Yale/MIT. the biggest waste on this planet is not energy but human potential. How many Einsteins have starved to death in Africa, how many Mozart's?
I don't believe that the developing countries are leading the charge on the environment, generally speaking their governments are in favour of action because they imagine large quantities of cash coming their way whilst the populations of these countries are disinterested, busily trying to survive. It's in the rich, developed countries where the rank and file are concerned about the environment - they can afford to be. For many reasons we need more progress in education and growth in the developing nations, not least of which is the environment; sure further growth may have short-term environmental costs but long term the outlook is better.
I believe that within 50 years we will have virtually unlimited affordable energy, I believe that human endeavour will provide this. With unlimited energy we can provide water wherever it's needed, we can grow more, we can do more of everything. People who campaign for us to do less are whistling in the wind, it's in our nature to advance not to retreat; they should concentrate on ensuring that we advance in the right way.
The change has begun; for example, we're moving to electric cars, and we're doing this for economic & political reasons not ecological ones, but no matter the reason, the result will be beneficial.
Be concerned, yes, but be optimistic and rise to the challenges; let the deserts bloom!Feb 18 2011: Hej Hans,
I wonder if there isn't in the end a kind of fate of mass figures…
You've done a huge work to "humanize" statistics, even to make them exciting! But how can population be made even more human? It seems that for many population is an inform mass that "fatally" evolves through the projection of a certain number of rates -it's fun to watch population pyramids, especially the dynamic ones that mushroom in Europe! We judge, too much, not too much, but we have difficulty to relate. We have a vague notion –not so vague once we have watched you work!- that if child mortality and family planning evolve in the heavy populated or high birth rate countries, birth rate will decrease and population renewal will stabilize. And all this, we know, depends on education, health, all kinds of development factors etc… mountains to move if taken at the mass level?
I was wondering while watching your last piece on child mortality, if it would help to show micro data with the macro data, so that once we see how things evolve "en masse", we can visualize on the ground, one at the time, what it takes to move the mass figure. And look at the chain of causalities that added to one another create a stream of change… Would this make sense?
I was in Sumba a few months ago. An interesting foundation there was building pumps to get water up the populated hills. This freed time for children to spend more time in school, and mothers to attend malaria prevention consultations. And I was wondering, how can we show for example that this drop of water has an impact on people and on "population"? And similarly, we could show the effect of how the drop of water is "powered" (green) on resources…Feb 17 2011: I've learned to be a little skeptical of experts saying they "know" what the final world population will be in 50 years.
Perhaps you could benefit from watching an on-line course on population from Yale:
In it the professor points out how grossly wrong almost every past prediction has been.
But I agree that the best (perhaps only) form of population control is economic development to a minimum standard. And that should be the ultimate focus. Meanwhile education in birth control methods also has it's place in keeping the ultimate number down (perhaps significantly).
Feb 18 2011: Hi Tim, Well the demographic predictions have not been very wrong in the last 40 years, and the number of children born per year has stopped growing. BUT of ten children that reach their 15th birthday in China in the last years, only 8 were replaced by newborns in China. The other 2 were replaced by newborns in Sub Saharan Africa.
The children below 15 years of age are not increasing in number any longer, but this is because the countries with fewer children born are compensated by countries with more children born. Or one could put it in an abstract but clear way, about 2% of the children of the world are annually emigrating to Africa.
Feb 18 2011: I very like this amusing image of 2% of the children of world emigrating to Africa. It raise a worrying question though: What if this is what some are really afraid of? Ignorance is easier to dispel than xenophobia.Feb 18 2011: Interesting question is what percentage of these 2% are born with a problem (ie. HIV)? And a further interesting question is what does this bode for the health of the world?Feb 17 2011: Demographics are never static. Moreover, phenomena like migration and disasters have made it even more difficult.
jag .
Feb 16 2011: Thanks Hans, before I read your question I thought population was a very big problem, but seeing as your a world expert and reading the statements you have read. Why do so many peple think this? From reading, web, maybe even a ted talk.
- 0
The important thing here is that you as an expert on this can enlighten people on what aspects of the worlds problems are most importannt, and help eradicate any environmental dogma.Feb 16 2011: It is interesting that population grew enormously in India and Ireland under British rule and in Indonesia under Dutch rule -possibly also in other countries subjected to the rule of other colonial powers. It seems to be case that people can be induced to have children when they boost up the domestic economy -certainly the data for colonial India, Indonesia and Ireland supports this. When children do not drain their parents resources, as they do in the West sometimes for decades, they produce more than they consume at a very early age. Quite recently, the BBC showed a documentary about tobacco cultivation in Malawi and you could see that there were many children, some as young as 3, working in the plantations. The parents said that the salaries of the adults weren't large enough to survive. Perhaps production under the aegis of international capital is not that different form colonial production...
One thinks also that the schooling of children, quite independently from the ideological regime that auspices it, brings about quite a reduction of fertility, presumably because schools make children unprofitable for their parents.
But back to the Hans Rosling initial post, maybe we, in the west, make an issue about population growth because it is easy to generate fear about it, and fear sells papers, and everything else... you suffer anxiety about population growth, then you go and buy yourself something nice, because you deserve it... Here in the UK the Guardian newspaper is brilliant at that kind of thing. On the front page you have a alarming headline about lack of energy in the near future, in the 3rd page you have an advert for a oil guzzling car... or for a nice city break with a cheap airline...Feb 16 2011: Even if population growth WAS a problem, are you going to step in the middle of other cultures and tell them how many children they should have? And no, most people do not know the facts of world demographics.Feb 16 2011: Sadly, this order of thought is beyond most of the world's decision makers today. Still a largely male bunch, they are disconnected from how the changing role of women in society impacts family size, age at first birth, the health and educational status of women and children.. Women leaders may "get it" almost intuitively, but they are stifled by economic and political systems based on competition and domination, not collaboration and creativity. Those leaders who understand these dynamics then confront populations who have been taught to consume beyond their capacity for satisfaction with little thought to how collective consumption and waste leads to pollution, climate change, loss of aerable land in their homelands and around the world; and only an elite level of those consumers is just now beginning to grasp how events half a world away impacts the price of food, shelter, clothing, and non-essentials.Feb 16 2011: Greetings from Uruguay
The simple answer is no, they dont know the facts, nor do they worry about them.
At least around here.
Kind Regards
A huuuge FanFeb 16 2011: You answered the question yourself: "they" don't know the facts.
to your final question:
Are these facts known? If not, why?
I would gladly invite you to TEDxFlanders 2011 (24th of September Antwerp, Belgium) to come and share this knowledge!
=> dispersing facts (and spreading ideas) are necessary to get them to a large audience...
Maybe the ideas and research of Nicholas Christakis (www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html) can be insightful.
Other kinds of diffusion modelling might describe the phenomenon too.
If you want to make a meme spread fast... you might look at the book by Chip and Dan Heath "Make to stick"
So the question becomes: how can we make it a
Story ?
Feb 18 2011: I absolutely agree that if you want something to be common knowledge you have to get it to a large audience. It would be interesting to consider what kind of ideas about the world most of us walk around with. Most of us get our facts from tv and newspapers in the format of news, which hardly ever engage in cause and effect analysis. Presumably the reason why you want people to have truthful ideas about the world is that they can intereact with it in a positive way. For people to want to think about the world they have to be given facts and have to have them related to each other in terms of cause and effect. Just knowing that the average Bangladeshi for Mexican couple have 2 children is not terribly interesting. Now, If you dig at what is behind that phenomenon, maybe we will get interested and will be able to direct some of our resourses to help the needy, or put preassure on our governments to give more aid.... The thing is, from my experience of the media, I am not that sure that the objective is to interest people in the world but just to get them to consume some more...Feb 14 2011: The reason why we're so focused on population growth I think is Club of Rome report "Limits to Growth." People talking about future of Earth consistently referred to this document, so now we assume that population growth is the main reason.


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I will show you in this instructable how to cook up a vegan sunny-side up egg which contains no animal products. It looks like an egg, it feels like an egg, but no bird ever laid eyes on this baby.
This is not the easiest recipe to follow. It requires a fair amount of specialized and hard to find ingredients, but once you've gathered everything you need and you've practiced a few times it's fairly quick, very tasty (it's a desert), and super fun to serve. This is extreme gastronomy, cooking for the concept, deconstructing the age old question of (which comes first) the chicken or the egg to replace it with the more fundamental question: what is an egg?
Step 1: Ingredients and materials
You will also need calcium lactate and sodium alginate (to give your egg yolk the right shape and texture) and agar agar for the egg white. Sodium alginate and agar are extracted from seaweed, and calcium lactate, despite its name, is NOT made from milk (it is made by reacting lactic acid with calcium carbonate. Lactic acid, in turn is made with sugar, water and chalk). This desert is 100% vegan fun.
For tools you will need a hand blender and a small slotted spoon.
Although you might be able to find the ingredients locally and individually, it is much easier to buy a kit online. Think Geek carries a kit made by moleculeR which is fairly expensive but has very pretty packaging, and it's convenient because you'll get a good sample of ingredients and all the specialized tools too. It is from their DVD that I got the idea for this recipe: they give instructions for a reconstructed egg, but they didn't take the concept to its logical conclusion, they didn't make it vegan. Their egg white is made with regular milk, and doesn't taste as good as this version. Another online vendor is The Spice House which carries all three "molecular" ingredients, sodium alginate, calcium lactate and agar
Looks amazing... imagine the look if have bacon and egg made this way ; ) Do you make Bacon too ?
Thanks for you hard work!
I believe that currently they are able to grow meat in a labratory on a petri dish, no animals, no nothing. and it's exactly the same thing. I don't know if i can find the webpage again tho, just do some research, it's about to happen
The Vegan Anti-Egg
or: The Great Vegan Egg Impostor.
or: The Best Egg Impostor Ever! ;-D
lol... I personally think the title is fine as-is and this Ible is first-rate.
And Mastros: You are not the only person in the world. Others enjoy reading these kinds of tutorials. Just because you are not seasoned with common terms does not mean you get to decide how the titles should read and how things should be constructed. Vegan options are in high demand and cruelty-free groups are growing.
Again, I think this was a great tutorial, and I'm sorry that others decide that their personal opinions need to get in the way of how a person should write a recipe. Keep them coming because I will continue reading.
It's an amazingly well written instructable. It is clear, with great pictures, and shows exactly how a vegan would reconstruct an egg with the limitations of their eating style. Even to the point of adding nutritional additions. This happens to be one of the better written instructables that I have seen put together.
Did people get mad at Picasso when the image of a woman he painted was not what he expected? Everyone knows his style of art is not photo realistic, so there was no trick. Just another interpretation.
You might have not expected what you found, but a waste of time? No. This could have been, for you, an interesting article that showed how vegans and vegetarians work around the limitations they live by. Sometimes in a fascinatingly artistic manner using very cool ingredients. You could have learned that it is common for vegans and vegetarians to use names like "vegan mayonaise", "veggie bacon", or "veggie or vegan" anything to denote a meatless work around.
It's never a waste of time to learn things.
I think you're being a bit silly really. Have a nice day.
wow this is amazing.. thank you for sharing, i can't wait to show my wife :) one of the reasons of me going vegan was that I found out what an egg really is. it's not a fertilized egg, because there are no roosters around to mate with the mother.. yea, it was pretty nasty to figure out that I had been eating chicken period for 25 years, every morning, can't get more disgusting than that probably..!
mahhh mahhh tasted gewdd in murrr bellay
mahhh mahhh tasted gewdd in murrr bellay
THIS IS AWESOME! This looks like a great and healthy desert dish!
Just found this site and was delighted to find this recipe. What I don't understand is why people are criticizing others for looking for recipes which mimic meat. I was told by my doctor to go on a vegan diet to prevent heart disease. I'm learning a lot but so many are critical of these foods. Why are you even looking and COMMENTING on such a site? Remember the old adage of MYOB. You look for your foods and I'll look for mine. I promise I'll never comment on your choices, even if it consists of cockroaches. I expect the same from you.
Here's a question I've wondered about for a long time: Do vegans breast feed their children?
Really, if you're seriously troubled by this question, you could try investigating what sort of reasons peole have for chosing a vegan diet. If you're still preplexed, you could go out on a limb and actually talk to a vegan...
As you know, there exist vegans who choose the diet for activism, or other reasons exclusive of health interests. Obviously growing infants need the nutrients breast milk can provide, but it's not hard to imagine someone who does not think that through, regardless of their diet. The only way I find this question "dumb" is that it presumes that people do anything categorically.
I didn't mean to imply that anyone is stupid. I found the question disrespectful but that could just be how I read it.
PlanetVegan seems to have provided a much better answer to the question (above)
oh, and for those vegans that don't eat even wild collected honey.. I do have a question.. how can one justify eating fruit, even organic and local, that requires the use of owned, honey producing bees, but vilify the honey as slavery..? that I have been wondering for a while..
It just illustrates the point I wanted to make, really - namely that creatures vary. Fish (pescavores?) may eat their babies; so do captive pigs (omnivores) and wild rabbits (mainly herbivorous) but very few humans do, even among those who live on a predominantly meat diet (This is who I was refering to - technically I should have written omnivores).
Treating any group of people as a homogenous and alien entity rather than a loose collection of approachable individuals is problematic.
Apart from being misleading, it helps reinforce barriers and perpetuate ignorance.
But my comment was not really relevant, as Lynn probably thought you were a vegan, in which case my criticism is completely misplaced.
I responded rhetorically because I'm so used to hearing that kind of question from people who think they are being clever.
So - sorry again!
To anwer you question lynnhowlyn: I think they do. as far as i know they don't drink animal milk because they feel we 'steal' it from the animals, and gthe calves are taken away right after birth (or something like that). since it's their own baby, it wouldn't steal anything, so i could think of no reason why they wouldn't.


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|TAB Meeting
Event Type: TXT Team
Age Group(s): Teens
Date: 6/5/2013
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Check us out at the monthly TAB (Teen Advisory Board)meeting. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at the Boardman Library. Newcomers are always welcome. For teens in grades 7-12.Library: Boardman Library
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