Consumers, not Population Growth

A paper I came across by David Satterthwaite makes the interesting point that it is consumers, and not people per se that are the cause of global warming. In other words we shouldn't blame population growth for rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although I didn't agree with everything he wrote (I'll keep my comments until the end though), I want to present his argument here because it's a fair one, and use it as a sort of bridge between showing that high population growth is a problem for the environment and finding out the arguments denying 'overpopulation'.

Satterthwaite starts off by pointing out that the lifetime contribution to GHG emissions of each person varies by a factor of more than 1,000 (depending on their circumstances etc.) and so it is misleading to see population growth as driving environmental change. He reviews CO2 emissions and their evolution from 1950 to 1980, then 1980 to 2005 and finds little association between nations with rapid population growth and growth in their emissions. He finds plenty of examples of countries where CO2 emissions are high but population growth rates low and vice versa (see table below). 

He puts this down to the fact that many households in countries with high population growth (often low- and middle- income) don't have access to electricity for example, or do not consume the goods and services that generate GHG emissions. He analyses data on cooking fuel and access to electricity for 43 countries and finds that for 20 of them, more than half the urban population rely on non-fossil fuel cooking fuels like wood or straw and that even when they do switch, consumption remains low. He takes the stance that this will remain that way as a large portion of the world's population lives in extreme poverty and this is unlikely to change, looking at the failure of the last 50 years of development  practices (his words).

Source: Satterthwaite (2009)

All this leads him to conclude that:

"Human-induced GHG emissions are not cause by 'people' in general but by specific human activities by specific people or groups of people" (p.546)

So that rather than simply looking to population growth, we should focus on rapidly changing the consumption patterns of present and future generations. In the context of development policies, he thinks that too much investment is towards contraception awareness campaigns and not enough that challenges the 'over-consumption logic of global capitalism'; when ensuring adequate sexual and reproductive health services wouldn't even necessarily reduce emissions.

I completely understand his points about needed to alter society's obsession with consumption but my answer would be that dealing with high population growth is one (perhaps easier) place to start. It is no silver bullet but humans (consumers or not) clearly have an impact on their environment (which doesn't necessarily have to be through GHG emissions). This impact is obviously much more significant depending on e.g. their economic wealth as Satterthwaite points out, using the case of an Indian household with an income of 150,000 rupees (US$ 3, 125) contributing to emissions 10 times more than a household earning less than 3,000 rupees. 

Now the problem I have with his analysis is that yes, developed countries contribute massively to GHG emissions despite the fact they have low population growth, but they had large population growth in the past and these now large populations contribute to emissions. They have already completed the demographic transition and are economically wealthy and industrialised. His argument cruxes on his belief that most of the world's population will remain poor and so won't become consumers, but I disagree. Just in the last few decades East Asian countries have developed rapidly (and have had massive population growth) and are beginning to contribute more and more to GHG emissions, and other countries and parts of the world will follow. Incidentally these countries are also the ones where most of the world's population growth is taking place. So I'm not saying the population growth will directly increase emissions but rather that not only are these populations growing, but they are becoming consumers and it is this new, larger generation of consumers that will pose a problem for the environment.

source: World Bank

note: apologies for the presentation of the table, I wanted to make sure I could include his data but still make it legible!