The Causes and Risks of Population Growth

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The Causes and Risks of Population Growth Crispin
Pierce, Ph.D. (piercech_at_uwec.edu)
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Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary
diseases we do not understand, the modern plague
of overpopulation is soluble by means we have
discovered and with resources we possess. What is
lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the
solution but universal consciousness of the
gravity of the problem and education of the
billions who are its victim. Martin Luther King,
Jr., 1929-1968
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The list of environmental problems aggravated by
growing populations includes deforestation and
desertification, loss of topsoil, poisoning of
drinking water and pollution of oceans, shrinking
wetlands, shortage of fuels such as firewood,
exhaustion of oil reserves and of various mineral
resources, siltation in rivers and estuaries,
dropping water tables, erosion of the ozone
layer, loss of species and wilderness areas,
global warming, rising sea levels, nuclear waste,
air pollution, and acid rain. Rebecca Clay,
Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 103
(1995).
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Currently the U.S. has no policy on population
even though both the Rockefeller Commission in
1972 and the Presidents Commission on
Sustainable Development in 1995 recommended that
the U.S. adopt policies to stabilize the U.S.s
population. COPHP Student, 2003
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Overpopulation exists if the activities of the
current population are depleting the capacity of
the environment to provide for future populations.
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• How fast is population size increasing?
• What are the causes of increase?
• What are the effects of increase?
• Population increase myths.
• Which tools are effective at slowing population
  increase?
• What can I do?

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How fast is population size increasing?
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• Currently at 274 million, the U.S. population is
  growing by about 2.5 million people each year,
  making the United States one of the world's
  fastest-growing industrialized nation. The U.S.
  fertility is currently at 2.0, up from 1.8 in
  1988.
• Immigration adds at least another 800,000 people
  annually to our nation's population.

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What are the causes of increase?

• Improved medicine, sanitation, and nutrition have
  produced a major decline in death rates,
  particularly in the last century. For example,
  life expectancy in Egypt increased by twenty
  years between 1940 and 1960.
• Birth rates have declined much more slowly.

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• Households in rural areas of developing countries
  often have little or no assurance that they will
  receive an income when old there is no social
  security system, no employer subsidized funds, no
  medical insurance or life insurance. Children may
  be viewed as an asset which will generate income
  when the parents are old.

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• In many countries, the degraded status of women
  is another contributing factor to high
  birthrates. Women are often denied opportunities
  for education, employment, land ownership, and
  governmental service. As a result, they have few
  alternatives to their childbearing roles.

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• Developing areas such as Africa, Latin America
  and parts of Asia are still primarily agrarian
  therefore, incentives for having larger families
  still exist.
• Following adoption of basic technology that
  improved living conditions, death rates plunged
  dramatically. As a result, these populations are
  growing rapidly.

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Why do households have more children than may be
best for society?

• People may not recognize the implications of
  falling death rates for their fertility
  decisions.
• Family size choices may have consequences for
  other families that are not considered. For
  example, publicly funded education, child care,
  tax deductions, and child welfare programs.
  Similarly, congestion costs of overpopulation and
  degraded air, water, and soil quality in large
  cities will not be fully realized by households.

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• For large extended families that are typical in
  rural areas, there are often perceived decreased
  costs associated with having children. For
  example, the private costs of a child to one
  mother may be lower if she expects her sister to
  help in child rearing.
• Societies and religions have developed social
  norms to encourage child rearing (e.g.
  celebration of childbirth), and to discourage
  birth control.

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What are the effects of increase?
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• As human population increases, the diversity and
  number of plants and animals decreases. We lose
  one or more entire species of animal or plant
  life every 20 minutes 27,000 species a year.
  This is a rate and scale of extinction greater
  than any in the last 65 million years.

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• Six million acres of prime farmland an area
  the size of Vermont were lost in the United
  States alone between 1982 and 1992. Four of those
  six million acres were lost to urban and suburban
  expansion. The other 2 million acres were lost
  through erosion caused by deforestation,
  unsustainable farming practices, and animal
  over-grazing.

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• Global carbon dioxide emissions have quadrupled
  since 1950, largely from deforestation and the
  burning of fossil fuels. This greenhouse gas
  addition causes global warming and disruption in
  weather patterns.
• Five storms over the span of five years have cost
  the insurance industry in the United States 25.7
  billion.
• Increased spread of malaria, cholera, typhoid
  fever, and dengue fever worldwide are expected.

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Population increase myths.

• Per capita food production is increasing, so the
  Earth must be able to sustain population growth.
• Per capita meat production has increased

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• Per capita production of grains has decreased
  since 1984

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• It takes 23 times more water, and ten times more
  energy to produce one ton of beef than it does to
  produce one ton of grain.
• Current unsustainable agricultural practices have
  led to widespread cropland losses and extensive
  water pollution from pesticides and fertilizers
  (e.g., the Mississipi River and the death zone in
  the Gulf of Mexico).

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• Technology and market forces will provide
  solutions to problems associated with population
  increase.
• As populations grow, especially in rural areas,
  increased scarcity of land (and other resources)
  may drive people to innovate and adopt new
  methods and technologies that use them more
  efficiently. It is often argued, for example,
  that the agricultural revolution in the UK and
  other European countries after 1650 was driven by
  population growth.

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• Market systems subsidize industries such as
  logging, mining and grazing without considering
  environmental costs. Degradation of commonly
  held resources such as groundwater levels or
  atmospheric and ocean quality is not included.
  Nor do markets consider Earth's "services," such
  as regulation of climate, detoxification of
  pollutants or provision of pollinators, much less
  questions of human equity and social justice.

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• The entire population of the world could fit
  into an area the size of Texas.
• Dividing the world's 6 billion humans into
  Texas's 261,914 square miles, each person would
  have 0.028 acres of land. However this land in
  Texas, (or even all the land in North America for
  that matter), would not be able to sustain these
  people. A minimum of 0.17 acres of arable land is
  needed to sustain a person on a largely
  vegetarian diet without the intense use of
  fertilizers and pest controls.

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• The tiny amount of land per person in the Texas
  scenario could not accommodate the intense
  demands we place on our lands (particularly in
  developed countries) roads, businesses, grazing
  lands, lawns, airports, etc.

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Group Projects

• Exponential Growth Questions
• Questions of Freedom
• The Economic Costs of Population Growth

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Exponential Growth Questions

• Would you rather receive 10,000, or the amount
  after thirty days, where you receive one cent on
  day one, two cents on day two, four cents on day
  three, etc.?

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• If the current rate of world population increase
  is 1.31, how many additional people will inhabit
  the planet in one year?
• Which costs would you include in the price of
  gasoline to adequately reflect the natural
  resource costs of petroleum exploration,
  development, and use?

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Questions of Freedom

• Which freedoms in American society decrease with
  increased numbers of people?
• Are there freedoms that are increased with
  increased population density?
• Who should decide on losses of freedom vs.
  population stabilization?

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The Economic Costs of Population Growth

• There are three major areas of U.S. taxation
  property taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes.
  Which of these taxes is disproportionally spent
  (but not collected) on families with large
  numbers of children? Which of these taxes is
  disproportionally lower for families with large
  numbers of children?

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• Should municipal entities, such as schools, city
  boundaries, and water and sewage systems be
  designed and built for a target population size?
  Should additional residents (born children and/or
  migrants) have to live elsewhere once a city has
  reached its maximum size?

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Which tools are effective at slowing population
increase?

• Improve the health of women and children.
• Improved family planning supports women in
  choosing to delay motherhood, prevent unwanted
  pregnancies, and avoid STDs (including AIDS) and
  dangerous abortions. Improved family planning
  could reduce child and infant mortality by 25,
  preventing three million deaths per year.

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• Guarantee access to family planning resources.
• Eradicate violence against women.
• Abused women are afraid to use family planning
  services for fear of reprisal from their
  husbands.
• Educate and involve men in family planning and
  child care.

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• Create gender equity.
• Insist on womens rights to own property, to get
  an education, to earn income, and to participate
  in government.
• Actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy,
  and other environmental resources.

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What can I do?

• Plan the size of my family. Consider having two
  or fewer children, and/or adoption.
• Support domestic and international family
  planning programs.
• Become involved in programs supporting equal
  rights, and educational and job opportunities for
  women worldwide.

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• Conserve energy and natural resources (one U.S.
  citizen consumes about 30 times as much as a
  citizen of India).
• Encourage reduction of western patterns of
  consumption.
• The richest fifth of the world consumes 86 of
  all goods and services and produces 53 of all
  carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest fifth
  consumes 1.3 of goods and services and accounts
  for just 3 of C02 output.

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References Population Connection The Union of
Concerned Scientists Cornell University PregnantPa
use