Friday March 28th, 2008. 2:20 pm by frog
Posted in Environment & Resource Management | Video | by frog | Fri, March 28th, 2008 |
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March 28th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
That the climate changes?
March 28th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
And that we are contributing to it, BP. I acknowledge that the exact extent to which we are contributing to it is up for debate, but the science that shows we a contributing to it is not.
The question is what to do about it - I get the impression from other posts of yours that you will say “nothing” - simply because the extent to which we are contributing to it is debateable.
On the other hand, I say we should err on the side of caution in the interests of the future, rather than err on the side of recklessness that will ensure greater economic growth for our generaration, but maybe no future generations, to benefit from.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
We exist, certainly.
What can we do about the fact that the climate is changing? Adapt to it.
>>err on the side of caution
But the “cure” could be worse than the cold.
I see economic growth as a potential good. Destroying the environment is a bad thing. You can do the first, without necessarily doing the second.
No doubt you’ve heard of these chaps:
tinyurl.com/25l2v4
March 28th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
BP - climate change is only one symptom of economic exploitation and resource lunacy. We have already had peak fish, probably peak wood, and are at or close to Peak Oil.
The big one to look out for is peak population - when we have exhausted all availiable resources from our environment and planet to sustain our population, society, systems, culture… no environment and resources, no economy.
Given that our economy runs primarily on oil, and we are not reducing our oil dependance in a great hurry, I’d say the medium term outlook for the economy isn’t very shit-hot. Perhaps thats why the price of gold is cranking, and with the present system that means lots of energy wasted on digging up gold to store in vaults.
If this is the cold then I’m all for caution!
March 28th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
The only true way to err on the side of caution is to reduce the human population.
It doesn’t matter whether climate change is our fault or not. It will still have the same effect.
I’m not that much of a fan of one liners, but take a look at the link below and with a little lateral thinking, you will realise that overpopulation has a major role in pretty much all of the problems that humanity faces today.
http://worldpopulationbalance.org/pop/quotes.php
“‘Smart growth’ destroys the environment. ‘Dumb growth’ destroys the environment. The only difference is that ’smart growth’ does it with good taste. It’s like booking passage on the Titanic. Whether you go first-class or steerage, the result is the same.”
–Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Colorado; World Population Balance Board of Advisors
March 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Population is leveling out in Europe and other wealthy Western countries. It could be said that the population responds to market forces i.e. children are expensive, and therefore controlled.
But it’s also a question of consumption, what people are consuming, and at what rate.
New Zealand can sustain a high growth rate because we have significant headroom in terms of resources. China and India seem to be a different story - so I agree in terms of population growth, but not in terms of economic prosperity. That latter can regulate the former.
March 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
If you’re interested in the population debate heres a link to an article by George Monbiot
Per capita consumption is the key driver of resource depletion, and it is the poor that will suffer most from the excesses of the rich.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/29/6704/
Population may be stabilising in the west, but consumption isn’t, and this consumption is being generated by exploiting developing nations, this exploitation traps them in poverty, and poverty traps them into rampant population growth, preventing a demographic transition into stabilising population levels. The longer they are trapped, the more the population grows, and the more they will need to consume if they ever manage a transition, which gets increasingly unlikley as there won’t be much left.
It looks like a large gradient will emerge - those without will become desperate and easily manipulated, the gradient will be evened out. With more mouths than food life will be very cheap.
Yay for free trade and globalisation - its all connected.
March 29th, 2008 at 11:10 am
But it’s not that simple.
The Africa problem is mostly to do with inter-tribal culture war and corruption. India is being pulled out of poverty by US business interests, particularly technology firms. China no longer starves due to a change away from Maoism .
Free trade and globalisation can, and does, provide the answers.
March 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
One problem with economic prosperity is that 3rd world countries consume less than 1st world countries (I don’t think that is disputed).
China is a developing country that is doing its best to adopt 1st world standards, which also means it will adopt the higher consumption that goes with it. Free trade and globalisation mean that what they are lacking in can be obtained from countries like ours.
Some scientists & economists believe that if everyone in the world had the same standard of living as in Europe, that the sustainable human population would need to be no more that about 2 Billion. Even if this is an underestimate, things like climate change and economic growth probably make this number a bit high.
We have seeded the aspiration of 3rd world counties like China to become big consumers like us. What will happen when it suddenly dawns on them that this dream can not be achieved.
Also BluePeter, If you agree that there is headroom in NZ then you must also agree that there is also a ceiling. So how far can we grow before we bump our heads on the ceiling?
March 29th, 2008 at 11:37 am
The mass killings in Rwanda have largely been blamed on Hutu killing Tutsi, but there were many accounts of Hutu killing Hutu also.
March 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I don’t know what the ceiling is, but given the UK has 60m, I dare say the ceiling here couldn’t be seen with a telescope.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
BP
The fever is worse than the cure and the population of the rest of the planet is in significant overshoot in terms of energy and economic sustainability. GB cannot feed its economy, or its people or provide itself with energy out of the resources it controls within its borders.
The idea that “growth is good” is at this point, ridiculous to me. “The commandment to “Be fruitful and multiply ” was given when the population was reportedly 2″ as someone else pointed out.
respectfully
bj
March 29th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I’m not for worldwide population growth. We don’t need more people.
Economic growth is different. It relates to productivity. You can increase productivity using technology, as opposed to people.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Given that the UK is dependant on imports to sustain its population, some of which come from NZ, If NZ also had 60 million we would have also surpassed the peak of our ability to sustain our population from native food production. If we reach 60 million, then no doubt the population of our neighbours would also, and the demand for food would outstrip supply . Its a bit simplistic to think of New Zealand in iusolation.
Free trade may have merit in a simplistic model, if it is truly free, and if externalities accounted for and common standards agreed then a gradient between countries could reach a happy equlibrium. However, from observations of many agreements in practice trade benefit is very biased/exploitative, and the equlibrium tends to favour lowest social and environmental standards. This obviously favours the exploitative transnationals the most, and thje gap or gradient continues to increase.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Economic growth is based on consumption, and measured by GDP. Yes it would be great if it could be based on knowledge - as opposed to technology in the form of the consumption of consumer electronics, and it were measured with a GPI, but this is not the case.
“I’m not for worldwide population growth. We don’t need more people” - does this mean you support mass immigration into New Zealand? or by we do you mean NZ?
Households work more hours now than they ever have - what is it you would like to produce mor of?
March 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
It’s a bit too simplistic to use land per capita as a guide when you compare 2 countries.
If we use the UK as a bench mark then Australia should be ok with just under 2 billion people.
How many people can be sustained on a certain land area depends on the type of land it is, not just the area involved.
Desertification around the world and uncertainty about crop yeilds due to climate change, reduce the area of food producing land area. Bio fuel crops also pose a problem at the moment.
Globalisation helps reduce famine, but at the expence that when the real hard times come everyone gets to suffer at the same time.
Technology isn’t as shit hot as you might think. When horses were replaced by automobiles, it was seen as a cleaner alternative, but look at the polution that cure has caused now.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
What’s so great about GDP anyway?
Why don’t politicians talk about NDP?
March 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
BluePeter,
“I see economic growth as a potential good. Destroying the environment is a bad thing. You can do the first, without necessarily doing the second.”
First you gotta look at who benefits from economic growth and how evenly it is distributed. For the Third World economic growth is almost essential, but for the Industralised West its unnecessary and probably harmful for everyone else.
I recommend you read Joseph Stiglitz’s book Making Globalisation Work. Its both an enlightening analysis of how the past international trade agreements were designed to maintain the dominance of developed Western nations in trade relations at the expense of developing Third World nations and a optimistic account of various policy prescription that will make global trade fairer and beneficial for all rather than the fortunate few.
“Perhaps thats why the price of gold is cranking, and with the present system that means lots of energy wasted on digging up gold to store in vaults.”
Nope its because the bottom has fallen out from underneath the housing market thanks to the subprime debacle, the US Fed has dropped interest rates through the floor in response, and foreign creditor faced with declining values of their investments in US capital (US$) assets have diversified into tangible assets (gold, agricultural commodities).
“The only true way to err on the side of caution is to reduce the human population.”
Hmm perhaps not. Its a senseless being concerned about uncertain projections about population growth when we there is no certainty about how many people are actually alive today!
“Accurate and timely data on deaths and causes of death are essential. . . But for more than a quarter of the world’s population - largely in Africa, South-East Asia and the Middle East - there are no recent data available. . .â€?
http://www.who.int/research/cod_info
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/earth-2050-population-unk nowable/
“GB cannot feed its economy, or its people or provide itself with energy out of the resources it controls within its borders.”
Why can’t geographical areas with surplus energy (electricity, food) meet the demands of country’s with deficits if they in return can supply us with stuff that we can’t provide ourselves?
“I’m not for worldwide population growth. We don’t need more peopleâ€? - does this mean you support mass immigration into New Zealand? or by we do you mean NZ?”
Why not? We’ve got one of the lowest population densities in the world. I too was opposed to open immigration into the country, but I have now changed my mind.
“Households work more hours now than they ever have - what is it you would like to produce more of?”
The problem is we’re producing very little of any worth. Most of the New Zealand workforce consists of managers and people tasked with distributing and selling stuff made elsewhere.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I think one of my posts got blocked due to the use of the “S” word, but it was something like this:
Comparing population density of different countries is a bit too simplistic.
You have to also take into account the type of land the people live in.
Using the UK as a benchmark for acceptable population density, you could argue that Australia could support just under 2 Billion people, or even more extreme would be that Antarctica could support a bit more that the UK.
Probably the best example of a sustainable population is that of Tikopia (take a look at it on Google Earth). It has all the best things that make it easy to live sustainably for the locals, and it does not rely on outside trade.
The density of Tikopia is about 240/sq km. So if we equate that to the rest of the planet we could get a population of a bit under 36 Billion, which means using Tikopia as a benchmark leaves us plenty of room.
But when you look at Tikopia, it is covered almost entirely with trees, and the climate is excellent for plants to grow, and the people’s standard of living is what we might call primative.
Now if we gave half of them cars and built roads and a supermarket and put in all the other technology that we love so much, as well as cut down 3/4 of the forest and turn 1/3 of the island into desert, so that it modeled the earth a bit better, how many people would it sustain then?
Could they sustain 218 people?
Sleepy Tree Hugger, it’s true that we can’t actually count all the people in the world, but how does that mean the population probably isn’t growing,
and that it probably isn’t a problem?
Its like saying “Hmm, I’ve never actually been in a car crash, so what’s the point in wearing a seat belt?”
“Hmm, perhaps not” is probably what the engineers said about the Titanic sinking when the were building it too.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
“Comparing population density of different countries is a bit too simplistic.”
Not when I was saying how New Zealand could support far more people than it currently does and thus is able to take pressure off countries that are overpopulated or alternatively we can supply those countries with the resources we have in abundance (food, knowledge, technology) and exchange them with those resources that we lack.
“Sleepy Tree Hugger, it’s true that we can’t actually count all the people in the world, but how does that mean the population probably isn’t growing,
and that it probably isn’t a problem?”
Because those unreliable statistics and projections potentially overstate current population and projected growth which fuels the hysteria of those like yourself and may or will be used to develop policies with huge consequences for people particularly in the Third World.
Too many people were harmed by the hysteria spread by the likes of Paul Erlich and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s for it to be unchallenged now.
The Charge: Gynocide
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1979/11/ehrenreich.html
National Security Study Memorandum 200
http://www.population-security.org/28-APP2.html
March 29th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
So how many people can New Zealand support?
You seem to have all the answers Tree hugger, so answer this.
If I am wrong and population is not a problem, what’s the worst that can happen?
If you are wrong what is the worst that can happen?
March 29th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
DougT,
“So how many people can New Zealand support?”
Its beyond my expertise and most probably everyone elses too. Any figure would be mere speculation and conjecture.
“One problem with economic prosperity is that 3rd world countries consume less than 1st world countries (I don’t think that is disputed).”
Don’t take it personally Doug. Alot of what you’ve said has a lot of merit, particularly the above statement, but we in New Zealand have little influence over global population and nor should we. The above article in Mother Jones shows the consequences when Westerners have attempted to do so.
The changes that society needs to make IMHO to avert the potential AGW climate crisis would be more extreme than most people in the Green Party would be comfortable with, as I’ve found out whilst posting on this blog so its not as if I don’t think there is a problem. I’m just sooo sick of the doom and gloom mongering spread by my fellow members of the environmental movement, especially when its regarding blaming people who are least responsible for whats happening to the climate. Its just sooo depressing.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Depressing?… those who cannot respond to doom and gloom in a positive manner at this stage, are likely of a mentally weak disposition to the extent that in coming times they’ll fail to cope at all.
“…New Zealand could support far more people than it currently does and thus is able to take pressure off countries that are overpopulated or alternatively we can supply those countries with the resources we have in abundance (food, knowledge, technology) and exchange them with those resources that we lack.”
I get irritated by the quite common opinion that NZ is a vast underpopulated bountiful land, prime for a population-sink to account for the foolish excesses of the rest of the world. I lived in the Netherlands for a while… not enough room to swing a cat, not that i’m given to feline abusive proclivities. Anybody who espouses such an opinion is currently free to emmigrate to a veritable plethora of comfortably overpopulated nations and I always take the opportunity to whole-heartedly encourage people to do so.
I think that currently this country could support, as in feed, clothe and shelter, a much greater population. However it will I think, be a challenge to support even the current population in the coming 5 - 20 years. Down at the coal face, around the farms, I get to see the total dependency on massive inputs of diesel from dubai, superphosphate from Western Sahara, Urea from the ‘naki, electricity from Indonesian coal… all readily available, if at somewhat elevated pricing… and yet the system is straining and groaning before the petroinflationary show even begins in earnest. The soils are dead. It would take a long time to get any decent yeilds from a non chemical system. In the interim there will be a ‘hungry gap’.
March 30th, 2008 at 11:33 am
kane9
“Depressing?… those who cannot respond to doom and gloom in a positive manner at this stage, are likely of a mentally weak disposition to the extent that in coming times they’ll fail to cope at all.”
Yes depressing, especially when people’s fears are so overblown.
“…foolish excesses of the rest of the world.”
You mean the foolish excesses of Europe that has a birthrate below replacement level? Or are you angry at the people in the Third World for no longer dying like flies as they did until 50 years ago? Or having higher birthrates, because they crave economic security in their old age and there are no better alternatives other than having more children than those of us in the West who have social security?
“Anybody who espouses such an opinion is currently free to emmigrate to a veritable plethora of comfortably overpopulated nations and I always take the opportunity to whole-heartedly encourage people to do so.”
Overpopulated is such a subjective concept. Have you seen how many bees live in a beehive? Or seen the damage a herd of elephants can do to the land?
“However it will I think, be a challenge to support even the current population in the coming 5 - 20 years. Down at the coal face, around the farms, I get to see the total dependency on massive inputs of diesel from dubai, superphosphate from Western Sahara, Urea from the ‘naki, electricity from Indonesian coal… all readily available, if at somewhat elevated pricing… and yet the system is straining and groaning before the petroinflationary show even begins in earnest.”
Well suprise suprise that the Industrial Agricultural Industry isn’t sustainable, but then it wouldn’t survive without substantial government intervention. Guaranteed prices, subsidies, R&D grants, funding of transportation and industrial infrastructure, etc. The problem isn’t that agriculture can’t satisfy peoples demand for food. The problem isn’t food shortage, but food overproduction!
March 31st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Climate change is not primarily about population. The build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by certain technologies (burning fossil fuels, mainly), not by human beings as such.
Once those technologies are eliminated and replaced by cleaner alternatives, the climate problem will be solved, regardless of how many people are around at the time.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Uh, Geoff, reality check here- if human beings are using certain technologies in certain proportions because of their population levels, then surely human population has a lot of effect on the emissions those technologies cause?
Also, even if we replace all our energy generation with renewables, we still have issues such as agricultural emissions, pollution of our water, endangerment of native species, etc… that will have to be dealt with, and are made worse by extra human population.
Having a child probably remains the largest thing any of us can easily control that will effect the climate, as the energy used to make food, clothes, electronics, run lights, build accommodation, etc… for that one child are likely to be enormous over their lifetime.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Finally some decent discussion about overpopulation.
I want to reiterate what I said in my original post in the “Is Earth day really the answer to the question?” blog.
I am not sayng that human population growth is the only problem we face, but problems like pollution, climate change (whether man made or not), sustainability etc. are all interconnected. If we concentrate on one thing it will make no difference if one of the other problems continues to grow.
You can reduce waste, but if the population doubles, you need to reduce the waste per person by half to keep the waste output the same.
Just to clarify a few of SleepyTreehugger’s points.
I don’t see killing off people as an acceptable solution to overpopulation, but I also don’t see that relying on the fact that millions of people are dying in 3rd world countries is any better.
There are organisations around the world that promote education about birth control, and the benifits of smaller familes to 3rd world people, and they are, as far as I am aware, quite successfull.
You are definately right about population being subjective. But the subject is Humans, not bees, or even Elephants.
I don’t think it’s depressing to look at overpopulation. What is depressing is realising that this very same subject was discussed back in the 70’s, but seemed to have been dismissed because the subject was considered taboo back then too.
Why is it that we still seem to have this mentality that we need to grow and expand? We have modern medicine and technology and we are now very much globally interdependant, so that we can benifit more from good relations with other nations than from warfare.
We had the ability to provide everything we needed to survive, and there is no immediate threat to the survival of the human race.
If you want a depressing though SleepyTreehugger, just remember what was discussed in this blog and wait a few more years.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Geoffp, I’m not sure if you have somehow got the idea that people believe that more people means more CO2 being expelled as we breath?
Even if that was the case, it would be ballanced out by the fact that we are reducing the populations of other species on the planet anyway, so less CO2 breathed out by them.
The problem with cleaner alternatives like wind and solar power, is that they rely on converting energy from the Sun, which comes to the Earth at a finite amount over time (there is the 7 year cycle, but that just means regular peaks & troughs). Because this energy comes from the Sun over time, it means we can’t convert more of it than we recieve, and if we don’t collect that energy most of it will just radiate back out into space.
We don’t get much electricity from wind or solar as it is, so it would be reasonable to assume that we can’t meet out needs with such technology. Hydro dams are another good source of energy that we can convert to power, but this also relies on the Sun (via the water cycle), and as we have seen in the past, this is not as reliable either if we have low rainfall in the headwaters.
I personally don’t think sustainable power generation is such an issue though. If we don’t have power we can still survive. It’s the food and water that we need to survive that is more of a worry when it becomes unsustainable.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:59 pm
The issue is what is a sustainable economy for various levels of population and what are the tradeoffs. Then how we can reach any consensus.
Locally we could not have open migration without nuclear power. We may need it or tidal power for domestic population and Greenhouse reasons anyhow.
Globally the West and some developing countries over-consume scarce resources, while in other places there is over-population. If we had focused on the .7% of the aid promised then and given it with fair free trade (allowed free trade in agriculture), they could have moved out of poverty and society of kin through family onto to health, education, a future as a citizen in the wider economy and some wealth. This would have reduced our growth and reduced their population. Given their consumption would have increased (even if the aid was given in the form of renewable energy investment) we would have not be better off in terms of sustainability - but there would at least be a sense of shared journey and thus a basis for beginning to look at global solutions that we can all agree on (whereas for now, the world is too divided to face up to what are shared problems).
April 1st, 2008 at 12:33 am
“Once those technologies are eliminated and replaced by cleaner alternatives, the climate problem will be solved.”
Geoff… you sound all jaunty as though this energy transition were to be completed forthwith. No, no, no, have patience, technology has taken human civilisation infestations centuries to attain and will take some time yet to be eliminated, and yes the cleaner alternatives will prove to be labour intensive and unpopular but quite necessary. I trust your inate hope is that any transition is in the general direction of the cro-magnon rather than captain kirk, you misathropic narodistic neo-luddite you.
Regarding climate change, there is a distinct possibility that old thorium breath Jimmy Lovelock may be right, in that even if humanity had not discovered and exploited fossil fuel energy resources, there would still be an eventual anthropogenic adverse climatic effect due to albedo alteration and ecological imbalance.
Geoff, don’t let Co2 hog the limelight either, dinitrogen monoxide and methane emissions will carry us on the road to perdition sans fossil fuels. You just wait until we get our desperate fingers into that hydrate pie.
And Geoff whilst your long term outlook on the elimination of technology is commendable, don’t be fooled into discounting the effect of growth in human biomass. Over-population is the primary issue and homo sapiens may be no better than candida albicans on agar when it comes to the ultimate challenge of self limitation.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:18 am
The clean, prosperous future I foresee has plenty of advanced technology in it. Just no fossil fuels or agricultural greenhouse gases, that’s all.
Fifty years ago, London suffered from horrible smogs. The more the city grew, the more pollution there was, and the worse the smog got. The authorities at the time could have reasoned that there was no real hope of fixing smog without reducing London’s population. But (being sensible people) they chose the clean-technology path instead. Now London has more people than ever, but (relatively) clean air.
Environmental protection is full of stories like this. It has never yet turned out to be necessary to eliminate the people - just eliminating the pollutants will do the job much more effectively.
Population does matter, of course - it affects the speed with which problems can arise. The bigger the population, the faster we have to act to keep environmental problems from getting out of hand. But the solutions themselves seldom depend on how many people there are.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:28 am
Good news, DougT. The amount of solar radiation incident on Earth is approximately 180 billion megawatts - vastly more than required for any conceivable human need. (Non-solar energy sources are much less abundant, but often cheaper.) Whatever it is that ultimately limits our growth, it won’t be energy.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
The problem with getting energy from the Sun (either directly or indirectly), is that the methods we use are highly inefficient at getting it.
For example, if you took all the energy from the air moving past a wind turbine it would stop the wind.
But as i said before, I can’t see a lack of electricity being more than a huge inconvenience to modern society.
The bigger problem is a lack of food and clean water which many developing countries already face.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
geoffp
Funny you should say this
“Climate change is not primarily about population.”
“Whatever it is that ultimately limits our growth, it won’t be energy.”
http://tqe.quaker.org/2007/TQE155-EN-WorldEnergy-1.html
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/
I am biting my tongue here.
http://tqe.quaker.org/2007/TQE158-EN-GlobalWarming.html
Since there is no evidence whatsoever to support that view. This regression analysis recently showed it to have MORE explicative power than either Solar or Fossil Fuel use. Which is to say… Pogo was right.
“We have met the enemy and he is us”.
“Fossil fuel and global population values were transformed to differences from their respective computed 1961-1990 mean values while sunspot values were the ratio of each “smoothed annual value” to the 1961-1990 mean of your sunspot series. In some instances I used the prior year HadCrut3v temperature measure as an explanatory variable (Temp -1Yr). As shown below, population shows greater explanatory power than fossil fuel and sunspots are significant in one instance.
Population Solar Intercept
0.16 0.12 -0.12 Coefficients
0.01 0.11 0.11 Standard errors
0.79 0.11 RSQ & standard error of est. Y
103.67 55 F value, degrees of freedom
2.29 0.61 Sum of Sq.dev of est Y - from linear mean, from given Y
Population Solar Fuel Intercept
0.35 0 -0.01 -0.03
0.07 0.11 0.01 0.11
0.82 0.1
80.74 54
2.37 0.53
Temp -1Yr Population Solar Fuel Intercept
0.28 0.28 -0.02 -0.01 0
0.13 0.08 0.11 0.01 0.1
0.83 0.1
63.41 52
2.31 0.47
Temp -1Yr Population Solar Intercept
0.38 0.1 0.07 -0.07
0.13 0.02 0.1 0.1
0.81 0.1
76.89 53
2.26 0.52
”
I don’t disagree that it is mostly our burning of fuels, but we are also altering land use and albedo, ocean uptake and capture of CO2 and a raft of other things that are not entirely “emission” related.
As I pointed out earlier… the atmosphere is like the thickness of a coat of lacquer on a bowling ball… and the image of all our lights… and this is just the lights…
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html
gives a flavour to the problem that surpasses the numerics for ordinary humans.
Population IS a problem. NZ is IMAO already at its carrying capacity… give or take a million, and there’s 2 mill or so expats who may want and have a definite right, to return.
There’s negative slack.
BJ
April 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Yes, the size of the human population will be limited by something. The Earth is finite, after all. I just don’t think it’ll be climate change, or energy scarcity, that ultimately enforces the limit.
The more I look at climate change, the more similar it seems to other pollution problems that have been successfully solved in the past. The pollutants involved are few in number (a handful of key greenhouse gases) and not in any way fundamental to human wealth or well-being. Although there are myriad contributing factors, only a few are big enough to really matter: fossil fuels, deforestation, and certain non-essential agricultural practices just about cover it.
Yes, there are difficulties. Global-scale problems are harder than regional or local ones - but that didn’t prevent the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion from being successful. Long-lived infrastructure is another (a coal-fired power plant can last 100 years) - but we’ve phased out obsolete technology many times before.
The solution is surprisingly easy to imagine, once you try: a solar-powered, fossil-fuel-free future, with sustainably-managed forests and agriculture. Nothing there that looks unachievable. The technological change required is actually much less profound than what occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. We just need politicians who think like Greens.
April 1st, 2008 at 7:38 pm
“We just need politicians who think like Greens.”
… but aren’t actually THE Greens, why would that be?
Just on the news headlines now, “climate change, are some senior Nats having trouble warming to the concept”.
Yes they are, and that is the problem with global issues. The range of opinion is very diverse. Faced with the same issues, one segment of society can see trouble ahead perhaps in a catastrophist manner and decide to plan for the worst, hope for the best, whilst another segment see no major problems on the horizon and choose to forge onward.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
The sad fact is that this sort of thing has happened before in the past, and we have archiological proof that human civilisations have failed in the wake of their own success. The Easter Islanders, the Mayan empire, and the Anasazi are a few good examples of this.
The biggest advantage we have over them is the ability to learn from THEIR mistakes.
Our biggest disadvantage is that most of us believe (just as THEY probably did) that our technology will overcome any problems we face.
Geoff, As far as the history lesson on London’s smog 50 years ago, I assume you are talking about the London smog disaster in 1952 that triggered the “clean air act”. The problem was mainly to do with pollution, but was made worse by a temperature inversion in the air that trapped the pollution. Dispite the clean air act and various others, a similar event happened in 1991 (although not as bad).
And as far as poiticians being Green, the Values party (where the Greens came from) had a policy of zero polpulation growth way back in the 70’s.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:58 am
“Nothing there that looks unachievable. The technological change required is actually much less profound than what occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
Are you an Engineer? Have you studied Psychology and Game theory? Risk Management? Politics?
It is clearly achievable to an Engineer, though probably not with current populations, population distributions and limits of efficiency in production and transport of commodities. I suggest that you wander over to the Oil Drum or have another peek at the link to Chefurka I posted earlier. His analysis is quite detailed and the answer is not as easy as you make it sound… not by ANY means… and the dislocation of the global economy required to achieve it is profound.
To someone who recognizes that political and human behaviour trumps common sense every time, your vision is clearly NOT possible. It isn’t that we can’t physically do it, it is that it isn’t humanly possible for us to organize ourselves to do it. Greens might. Nats could NEVER do so, and neither could Labour… because the people who have the most clout are the ones most heavily vested in maintaining the status-quo… BY DEFINITION. So the dislocation of the global economy is resisted, tooth-and-nail, by everyone in power and the bankers who profit from it as well.
We’d better start dealing with our population overshoot, because as I pointed out earlier… this is like being on a ship at sea. Your first job as a sailor is to keep that ship afloat and habitable, because the ocean is out there waiting… it doesn’t care who you are, or how big you made the ship… if you make a mistake, like overloading the ship, it can capsize and vanish without a trace. Nothing personal, and that is the situation on “lifeboat earth”… We ARE overloaded, and we are in danger of capsizing, the “tipping points” of climate change and ocean chemistry have killed other species, possibly up to 95% die-offs in the distant past, and we are NOT invulnerable.
very respectfully
BJ
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think Geoff clearly has his head in the sand.
As Geoff said earlier:
“It has never yet turned out to be necessary to eliminate the people - just eliminating the pollutants will do the job much more effectively.”
You obvoiusly never read a comment I made in another blog:
“In fact even the Tikopians did not know what the carrying capacity of Tikopia was untill they surpassed it (suicide, warfare and infanticide were among the solutions they found, would this be acceptable to us though?).”
If you research what I said, you will find that your comment was misinformed.
Another thing you need to get your head around Geoff, is what is called “Population overshoot” as BJ pointed out. I won’t try to explain, but if you google it there is plenty of info out there about it.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:13 pm
If you google “overpopulation blog” you will find quite a few blogs going on around the world similar to this one.
The similarities are quite clear with the comments made by those that believe overpopulation is a problem, and some of the solutions to the world’s problems are even more in the realms of Star Trek than Geoff’s.
I’m not trying to pick on you Geoff, but you do epitomise the naive belief that technology will fix everything.
Just as an example, if you take a look at the Wikipedia article about the the Montreal Protocol you will find that this “solution” actually created another problem that was not foreseen, but has similar effects to the original problem.
The only thing anyone can really do is to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. I’d say most people would call this atitude pesimistic, but maybe in a few years most people might be more inclined to call it realistic.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
nzfirst has again criticized nz’s open door immigration policy:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0804/S00056.htm
…Statistics New Zealand’s latest figures… show a rapid increase in the Asian population from 400,000 in 2006 to 790,000 in 2026. In 2026, 16 per cent of the population is projected to be ethnic Asian.
other parties seem inclined to gloat over these figures:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0804/S00054.htm
& pansy wong:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0804/S00068.htm
wong also stated that asians are “incredibly smart” .. http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/1680920
i think it very important that this time the greens decline the temptation to take the easy route by playing the “playing the race card” card along with all the others, & actually weigh in behind nzfirst, putting environmental concerns to the forefront.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Scrap the Maori seats and encourage positive immigration.
New Zealand could use more people….
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Why on earth is the Peter Brown outburst news?, Winston first always play the race card, the media should know this and ignore it.
Mind you, is there anywhere in the world where multiculturalism really works?
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
john campbell decimated peter brown last night..
http://whoar.co.nz/2008/john-campbell-rips-peter-brown-a-new-one/
(it’s a ‘recommended-watch’..eh..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
So if NZ’s main export is agricultural (food), I assume this means that what we don’t eat we can sell to other countries, or we import less food than we export. So if we increase our population the surplus food will reduce, therefore reducing the amount of exported food.
So how does increasing the population help?
If imigration causes racial problems, it would more likely be due to imigrants being blamed for the increasing poverty gap.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
despite that, you still couldn’t resist playing the “playing the race card” card.
philu, why don’t you just summarize for us here which arguments in favour of immigration john campbell gave which you found so impressive, & then state how you feel it addresses the variious comments in this thread?
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
BB you might want to define your terms there…
Andrew, in your 12-10 post where you mention ‘weighing in behind Peters’ for environmental concerns…Peter is playing the race card! The Greens should get the hell away from him there. If they are going to do immigration *generally* it should be on their own terms.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
he showed brown/his policies..his party..
to be cheap/lying racists..and little else..
(i don’t recall any mention on any debate on the merits of immigration..
where do you get that assumption from..?)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
that’s what i said stephenr: do it on their own terms - “putting environmental concerns to the forefront”.
what would be incredibly destructive to NZ’s interests is to continue to stand back & allow an anti-immigration stance to be buried in the cheap & easy charges of racism, so it becomes a no-go area for debate in the future no matter how much we may all suffer for that, or even worse, to pile in on nzfirst along with all the others.
brown highlighted asian immigration instead of others because the asian population is the one projected to grow the most.
here’s the whole press release:
these are valid concerns, & if someone like philu had any real arguments against these concerns, he would have responded to my challenge to state them, instead of just giving a vague “he showed that they were wrong”