Let's Try Cap-and-Trade on Babies

Posted by: Tim Halbur

17 October 2009 - 1:00pm

Not having babies is, arguably, the most effective way of limiting one's carbon footprint. Experts discuss ways to approach this touchy subject.

"A recent study, though, by the London School of Economics and the British-based Optimum Population Trust, suggests meeting the world's unmet need for access to reproductive health would be the most effective and cheapest way to start dramatically cutting carbon dioxide.

Each $7 spent on basic family planning between now and 2050 would reduce emissions by more than a ton, the research says."

Full Story: Let's Try Cap-and-Trade on Babies

Source: Miller-McCune, October 16, 2009

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Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

Submitted by craiglewis on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 19:48.

Population control is not the answer to climate change and will in fact only serve to create much larger social and political issues across the first world including a decline in economic competitiveness and skyrocketing social costs borne by a much smaller working population. Europe is already doing such a good job at depopulating right now that they should be on track to lose much of their culture within the next 50 years when mainland Europeans are outpopulated by mostly muslim immigrants (whose birth rate is about 7 times that of the average European). That's not intended to be an alarmist statement of any value, just a statement of fact. Most islamic families live much more humbly than their secular counterparts.

The issues of climate change have little to do with our growing population and more to do with the excesses of the current population and their current sprawling lifestyle decisions. As a father of five, I can attest that we actually have a smaller footprint than families half our size if for no other reason than we have more people per square foot living in our house than the average Suburban family.

What moral right do we have to tell anyone, particularly the growing third world that they don't have the right to procreation? The arrogance of this approach will be western civilization's downfall. So go ahead. Contracept yourselves into oblivion.

Population Is One Key Element Of Sustainability

Submitted by Charles Siegel on Tue, 10/20/2009 - 09:24.

World population is leveling off and is expected to peak in the 2050s at 9 billion or less. In the second half of the twentieth century, world population increased from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6 billion in 2000. We would have little chance of controlling global warming and other environmental threats if population kept increasing at that rate.

But there is no need to tell people that they don't have a right to procreate. People are already making the decision to have fewer children for themselves, and they would make that decision even more decisively if they had more access to family planning.

Europe's population began growing before the rest of the world's, and it will stop growing before the rest of the worlds'. Europe went through the same demographic transition as other nations earlier, because it industrialized earlier.

Your family of 5 children may have a smaller impact than families of 2 children, but try projecting your decision to have 5 children a couple of generations into the future. Would your 25 grandchildren have less impact than their 4 grandchildren, and would your 125 great-grandchildren have less impact than their 8 great-grandchildren?

There are two opposite errors that people make about population:

--It is common for people to make the error of thinking that population growth is still the most important threat to the environment, as it was in the mid-twentieth century, when the world's fertility rate was much higher than it is now.

--It is less common but just as wrong to think that population growth is not a threat to the environment at all.

This article makes the more common error by saying "Population growth is the real driver for higher greenhouse gas emission, so why don't more mainstream solutions start there?" Actually, if we project current trends, we find that world population will grow by about 50% by 2050 while per capita consumption will grow by about 600% by 2050. At this point, consumption growth is a bigger issue than population growth.

Charles Siegel

We'll be thankful for my 125 grandchildren

Submitted by craiglewis on Tue, 10/20/2009 - 19:09.

It's tough to tackle this issue because it's so personal. To suggest that having more than 2 children is somehow unduly impacting future generations is the wrong argument. This is in fact a very moral issue and cannot, in my opinion, be used as a lever in combatting the problems of our excess as an industrialized culture. The slope is too slippery.

My 125 grandchildren (I hope there will be more BTW) will provide a valuable service to all of us in being productive members of an economic system that is predicated on younger generations paying for the older ones. One of hte reasons why our Social Security system is nearing collapse, and why much of Europe's social system is as well, is because there aren't enough people supporting the previous generations. I would suggest that social collapse in some of these industrialized countries will happen long before any impact of climate change will ever be recorded.

And I will once again note that a growing population in Africa is not the threat to our environment. Only the industrialized world is. Dropping birth control over Ghana won't have one single meaningful impact on climate change.

Project Your 5 Children Into The Future

Submitted by Charles Siegel on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 09:04.

I agree completely that consumption is a bigger problem than population, as I have said in my post above, in many posts on this list, and in my book The End of Economic Growth.

But if everyone had 5 children, then population would be a bigger problem than consumption. It is easy to project that decision into the future: lets simplify the projection by assuming that, 1) if everyone made that choice, population would double every generation, and 2) that a generation is 25 years. This projection is an underestimate, since you actually need a birth rate of only about 4.2 rather than 5 for population to double in a generation.

In this simplified projection, world population would be 12 billion in 2035, 24 billion 2060, 48 billion in 2085, and so on. Doubling every 25 years means increasing 16 fold every century, so we can continue our projection by seeing that world population would be 96 billion in 2110 and 1,536 billion in 2210. (That is over 1.5 trillion). Eg, the population of the United States would be over 76 billion in 2210, based only on natural increase.

This reminds me of projections people used to do in the 1960s, saying that if world population growth continued at its then-current rate, there would be only one square foot of land per person in a couple of centuries. And a century after that, the world's entire land mass would be covered by people standing on each other's heads 10 deep.

If you do some simplified calculations like this to get the idea of how exponential growth works, you will see that it is completely unsustainable for everyone to have 5 children.

It is possible for the social security system to work with a stable population, if people just pay a bit more in taxes during their working life and retire a bit later. It is impossible that anything could work if we reach the point where we have just one square foot of land per person.

Incidentally, population growth in Africa has a relatively small impact on the global environment, because their consumption is low, but it has a devastating impact on the people of Africa. Eg, Jared Diamond has shown that the genocide in Uganda was caused by overpopulation, which forced people to kill others to get enough land to survive, and the same is true of other conflicts in Africa.

Overpopulation has caused real social collapse in Africa (which is why Diamond gave his book the name "Collapse"). By contrast, we need only minor changes to adjust the social security system to the end of population growth.

Charles Siegel

missing the point

Submitted by Michael Rodriguez on Tue, 10/20/2009 - 07:29.

Craig, this isn't an argument for population control or regulating the "right to procreation." It is simply stating that access to more birth control and family planning may be beneficial. Many can agree that there are people who end up having unplanned children and who wished they would have had affordable and accessible birth control and family planning services.

Feel free to have your five children, and I'm sure we all respect and applaud the fact that you watch your carbon footprint and consume less. But the fact is, some people would appreciate family planning and birth control services made accessible and affordable to them.

As to your argument about Europe being outpopulated, that is a combination of two individual and rightful decisions: 1) the decision of Europeans to not have children and 2) the decision of the immigrants to have more children. Are you suggesting Europe restrict or inhibit the first decision? Its up to the individual to have, nor not have, children. No one forced the Europeans to have a low birth rate.

You claim your "right to procreation." A more touchy question, I suppose, is, what about others' rights to birth control and family planning? We open up the can of religious and socio-political worms on that one, but at least lets recognize that there are people who consider that question as important.

But somehow, this question almost inevitably ends up in the realm of religious and social norms, and about sexual rights, freedoms, womens' rights, and social mores.

Nope - I didn't miss the point

Submitted by craiglewis on Tue, 10/20/2009 - 19:16.

There is a moral relativism argument that prevails amongst those who advocate for population controls that suggests that women are unhappy if they have large families. True, some women in poorer nations begin having children much earlier in their life than they are mature enough or educated enough to handle. Providing birth control has not proven to be an effective tool, at least not nearly as effective a tool as basic education. Until women in poor countries receive an adequate education, throwing family planning services at them is simply imposing our will on them.

As I have noted in other posts we cannot separate the moral questions from the practical ones. To do so only reduces our civilization.

Climate Change and the Urban Water Crisis - Apr 02, 2011
Four Visions for Future Living - Oct 17, 2010
Visualizing the World's Dwindling Water Supply - Feb 06, 2009
Why NASA's Spectacular Image of the Earth is So Disturbing - Feb 10, 2012
Simple, Inexpensive Measures Identified to Reduce Global Warming - Jan 16, 2012

“

Cars, I've come to believe, operate in two economies -- the cash economy, where you pay for them in dollars, and the gift economy, where you pay for them in favors -- basically, rides exchanged.

”

Read the full article, written by Alan Thein Durning.