Tom Nilsson
Our Governments are clearly not taking climate change seriously enough. John Howard has only recently started to even pretend to take an interest in addressing climate change, and that is only because of the opinion polls. Howard’s proposed carbon trading scheme will not come into effect until 2012, which is five years away. Even then any targets associated with the scheme are likely to be modest. We should be doing much more, and we should be doing it right now.
A British think tank called the Optimum Population Trust recently released a report which found that the best way to fight climate change is to have fewer children. The report calculated that each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York.
Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion.
In Australia the argument for reducing our birth rate is even stronger because Australians on average emit a lot more greenhouse gases than British people.
On a global level, if the global human population was only two billion instead of six and a half billion then climate change would not be the problem that it is. The Optimum Population Trust report found that global population growth between now and 2050 will be equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions terms to the arrival on the planet of nearly two more United States or ten Indias.
See – http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.release07May07.htm
Tom Nilsson
President
Sustainable Population Australia, Tasmania Branch
Tom Nilsson
June 11, 2007 at 17:55
Daphne
The Optimum Population Trust has produced a well-researched report which is available on their website – http://www.optimumpopulation.org.
The so-called “ageing population” is ofen overstated by people who want to push a particular agenda. Australia’s birth rate has inreased in recent years, and Tasmania’s birth rate is higher than the national average.
In many developing nations the birth rate is well above replacement level. For example in East Timor each woman has on average six children.
The global population is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050 (up from 6.5 billion now). That means there will be an extra 2.5 billion polluters on the planet.
Jo McRae
June 11, 2007 at 19:52
I wonder if the devastating diseases and disasters that strike down so many people in one go are our planet’s reaction to stress, like a tree that sheds its leaves due to drought. That does not absolve us from taking action of course, but with the focus more on the cause, rather than the effect – which is just what the politicians do not seem prepared to do.
Tom Nilsson
June 13, 2007 at 15:00
The big picture is that we live in an increasingly overcrowded planet, and our resources are diminishing and we are degrading the planet’s environment. We urgently need to reduce our numbers, or at least stop growing our numbers.
Tom Nilsson
June 14, 2007 at 23:05
Daphne
Have you heard of contraception? The ability to control our own fertility is something that distinguishes humans apart from animals, for example look at the rabbit problem on Macquarie Island. Unfortunately despite the existence of a range of contraceptives, they are not always made available to the people who need them, particularly in the poorest countries, but also in some cases in Australia. Therefore the obvious solution to the population problem is to make contraception more widely available (and also increase education about their use).