Chapter 7

Population Growth: The Continuing Madness

The world population is nearing the 7-billion mark, with China and India alone accounting for about 2.4 billion of the lot, or 37% (calculated from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision Population Database). This is simply staggering. In 1960, only a little over five decades ago, the total world population was barely over 3 billion.

On that account alone, we have doubled the number of polluters since then as well as of consumers of non-renewable resources. Although this may not directly translate into a direct doubling of pollution and consumption, it makes issues much more difficult to address and underscores the importance of the population growth factor in current problems. In addition, a lot more people also means a lot more pressure with respect to deforestation, land erosion, habitat destruction, and depletion of renewable resources such as fisheries.

The Run-Away Train

The latest United Nations' projections (medium variant) for the year 2045 are for the world population to reach over 9 billion, increasing further the pressure on the environment and depletable resources by another 38%. Why? Just because! We do not need to be 9 billion people on the planet. The mathematics is simple: every person is a consumer of depletable resources and a polluter.

If doubling the world population means a significant increase in pollution and resource use, the opposite is also true and is one of the most sound strategies we have to deal with environmental and conservation problems. Theoretically, halving the world population could also half the pollution we create and double our years of supply of depletable resources.

The current solution is to go up to 9 billion and further destroy the environment: wipe out fisheries, cut down forests, degrade arable land by intensifying chemical- and pesticide-based agricultural production, bring hundreds of species of plants and animals to extinction, turn oceans into sewer lagoons, pollute land, water, and air, and wipe out in a few decades the bulk of the economically exploitable non-renewable resources of the planet.

In 40 years from now, standards of living around the planet will have likely dropped significantly from the rising costs of many resources. At that point in time and under those pressures, countries will be competing intensively for minerals. New international alliances would form, and geopolitical power would shift in unpredictable ways like it did with the OPEC crises in the 1970s and 1980s. Distrust and fear could build until the breaking point. Could the following decades lead to a world-wide collapse? You do the math.

As discussed earlier, there would be little expectation of relief as resources would continue to become scarcer and more costly, and the scenario is a long way from being far-fetched as we have already experienced a taste of it since the beginning of this millennium.

The real question is, could things get much worse? Could billions die from starvation, pandemics spreading as a result of poverty and governments' lack of financial means, multiple localized wars, and prolonged global conflicts? Could this be the final outcome of the population growth problem? If it is, it would likely happen within our children's and grandchildren's lifetimes.

After the heavy criticism and fall out over the 1972 Limits to Growth report, many have been skittish about making predictions for the future. It now appears that the critics were wrong—at least as far as the latest information available is concerned—their claims perhaps condemning the world to a sure collapse on account of the several decades wasted in inaction. As intelligent people, we cannot rule out the possibility of gloomy or disastrous scenarios.

Remember the just-too-horrible-to-contemplate examples given earlier. We have to keep our eyes on numbers and consider all possibilities. More importantly, we have to make sure that we do not confuse what-has-not-happened-yet (an argument often used by environmental deniers) with what-will-not-happen. By nature, many predictions do not materialize, but that does not mean that they will never come true. In many instances, it is just a matter of time.

One of the problems with depopulation is that there is a significant lag time between the implementation of policies and the actual dropping of numbers. China's One-Child Policy—one of the strictest population control initiatives on the planet—has been in effect since 1979, and the country's total number of people is still increasing.

The United Nations' latest projections show China's population continuing to grow now and for another 15 years, until 2025 or so, before it begins declining again (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2011). This is a lag time of about 45 years from inception. As such, even with major population control initiatives, there will be rough times ahead.

The world will see a significant reduction in the number of people either through starvation and war or through intelligent and planned policies.

Conflicts Within and Without

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Hitting the Depletion Wall at full speed will also have very serious political implications. Scarcity would fuel discontent and produce unrest.

The Depletion Wall would be a breeding ground for both internal and external destabilizing forces. On Easter Island, the descent into chaos following the depletion of the Island's natural resources resulted in the overthrow of its leaders and priests—which occurred around 1680—as well as in extensive inter-tribal warfare and cannibalism. We may not go to such extremes, but the experience is likely to be a very painful one.

Evolving Values

Diamond (2005) listed cultural and religious values as a common cause for the failure of societies to attempt to address problems. This is in large part where the process has broken down with respect to population growth and the baby boomer generation.

On Easter Island, people failed to challenge the religious values that led them to keep carving and transporting statues—hence, felling large trees on the island to the very last and destroying the only material they could use to build sea-going canoes. As a consequence of that alone, they lost access to important supplies of food: tuna and porpoise. As already discussed, the deforestation also resulted in the loss of habitats for animals and soils to erosion, further cutting down the islanders' sources of food.

As expressed earlier, we already know many of the solutions to today's environmental problems but have not implemented them. The population issue is a case in point. Both current religious and social values—the opposition to contraception on the one part and family rights on the other—run counter to what needs to happen. Nothing will change unless we are prepared to challenge those.

From a social point of view, we gave up many rights in the past for the greater good. We have given up the right to throw loud parties at all hours of the night, to drive as fast as we want, to consume illegal drugs, etc. We are even required to give a large portion of our earnings to governments.

The world is not as black and white as it seems in terms of rights. Freedoms are generally curbed when either someone else's rights are infringed upon or so that the system functions better. Society needed to debate the issue of family rights and population growth decades ago. Resource numbers are showing that we simply cannot afford full reproductive rights. As for many other aspects of society and the freedoms we enjoy, limits have to be applied if we are not to self-destruct.

Furthermore, uncontrolled population growth infringes upon the rights of other people with respect to the resources we share with them. These are our common heritage. The massive use we make of these essential building blocks for society will greatly reduce their availability to other generations in the future. The environment is also a common property that we have substantially degraded and that will be inherited by those coming after us.

We have had so far a near absolute right to reproduction, being allowed to have as many children as we want. This is a value that needs to be reexamined. It does not necessarily mean that we have to give up the right totally, but it does mean that we have to accept restrictions on the number of children we would be allowed to have or alternatively support states in implementing incentives that would favor lower numbers of offsprings. Obviously, this is not for the sake of controlling people's lives but for the greater good, now and in the future.

Background on Population Growth

The issue of population growth is not new. Europe was often plagued with high unemployment and dire poverty in the Middle Ages. Early on, population growth was closely associated with the problems of joblessness and want.

The name of Thomas Malthus, a Church of England cleric, often comes up in demography literature in this respect. He is better known for his principle of population which essentially states that while food production grows linearly (1, 2, 3, 4...), populations grow geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8...).

For example, assume that a land area produces 100 units of food for 100 persons and that its agricultural output grows by 100 units every 5 decades. After 50 years, the production would be 200 units and after a century, it would have increased to 300. However, if a population doubles every 5 decades, it would go from 100 to 200 after 50 years and then twice that much to 400 after a century. That would leave 100 unfed or get everyone only 75% of a unit of food.

One billion people going hungry as is the case today represents about 14% of the total world population. According to Malthus' law, people eventually always outstrip food production and end up with decreasing shares of resources (increasing poverty) over time. The Green Revolution gave food production a significant boost, but its effects did not last as we let the world population double from 1965 and we are now back to where we started.

While we can still open up new agricultural land, it can be argued that we have already gone beyond the earth's food production limits as increasing agricultural output is being done at the expense of tropical and old growth forests as well as the environment by the use of herbicides and pesticides. This is again a case where the appearance of coping with food production is maintained by degrading the environment and incurring a debt against future generations.

In any case, the fact that biofuel production can already trigger a food crisis indicates that there is very little leeway in terms of our ability to increase agricultural output. Some researchers have called for huge investments in agriculture to anticipate and prevent future food shortages as the world population moves towards nine billion. The World3 model suggests that, as we approach the second half of this century, the effectiveness of solutions and our ability to cope by shifting the burden to alternative systems will decrease.

Already, we are seeing that attempts to solve energy problems by using agricultural solutions (biofuel production) is not as effective as first thought since it affects food output. As the price of minerals increases, the money for foreign aid will shrink. As countries around the world also strive with rising food prices on account of population growth, money for aid and investment in agriculture will be increasingly difficult to come by. As the world becomes less stable, increased military spending will also drain funding from the above.

As such, the ability to solve food problems by relying on the economic system will sharply decrease as we get closer to the Depletion Wall. This is basically what the World3 model suggests and illustrates. For priority reasons, money will be moved to address the food production problem, but it will have to come from somewhere, foreign aid, lifestyles, old age pensions, etc.

In 1798, Malthus wrote a piece entitled Essay on the Principle of Population. It essentially explained away dire poverty as a result of population growth and especially of the poor's inability to control their reproductivity. In his view, it was not caused by the uneven distribution of wealth between social classes but by the poor themselves, especially their unwillingness to exercise restraint in respect to procreation.

To a large extent, his work was used to legitimize the capitalist system, blaming its ills on an inescapable natural law, on the lower classes' lack of self-discipline and propensity to multiply. People procreated until resources became insufficient and starvation and diseases hit, reducing and bringing the system back in balance.

Eric B. Ross (1998)—editor of the political magazine, The Porcupine, and lecturer at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague)—put Malthus' viewpoint this way: “Poverty was the 'natural' product of the fertility of the poor, rather than of the social or economic system” (p. 5). According to Ross, Malthus fell short, however, of supporting means of contraception on the grounds that they “would reduce poverty and with it the chief stimulus for the poor to seek work” (p. 4).

Most view poverty today as the result of both population growth and economics. There is an obvious link between too many people and too few resources, but it is also recognized that the capitalist system is at the roots of socio-economic disparities. People are poor in part because wealth is not properly redistributed.

As for population growth, the case is fairly simple as expressed earlier: the more we are, the more destruction and consumption occur. Population reduction is perhaps the easiest and least demanding avenue for addressing these issues.

One of the aspects of population growth is that it is uneven around the world. Developing countries have much higher birth rates than developed ones. Another aspect is that since people in the developing world are generally poorer, their consumption per capita is much less than that of individuals in developed countries. That is, the impact they have on resources and the environment is much lower per person than in developed countries. Conversely, while populations are smaller and growth has generally stabilized or is negative in the latter, much wealthier lifestyles mean that the total amount of goods consumed per person is much higher than in developing countries.

The argument has also been made that developed countries have more money available for cleaner technologies and often have stricter environmental controls, which serves to lower their environmental footprint. However, as long as babies are born with hundreds of toxic chemicals in their body, this remains a theoretical argument. The baby boomer environmental debt has grown, not shrunk, and having money does not mean it will be spent towards the environment.

That being said, higher standards and green technologies do not reduce developed countries' consumption of non-renewable resources: we would only hit the Depletion Wall in a cleaner environment.

Nobody is off the hook with respect to population reduction, the poor because of their massive numbers and the rich because of their greater impact on the environment and resources.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Another piece of the population growth puzzle has to do with the dynamics of common properties such as rivers, lakes, oceans, forest and mineral resources on crown land, etc. As most of us already know, people tend to take better care of their own belongings than they do of public property. The communality of assets is at the roots of many past as well as modern tragedies. Let us look at the issue a little bit more closely.

Garret Hardin, an American ecologist well known for his work on overpopulation, explored the process of how public properties can be damaged or destroyed as a result of self-interest. His theory was first published in 1968 in a journal article titled, The Tragedy of the Commons. His work was in part based on a framework developed by William Forster Lloyd (Hardin, 1968, p. 1244).

The theory is as follows. Suppose that a number of farmers share a common land for pasture and that it eventually reaches its maximum carrying capacity—the maximum number of animals being able to graze on it without causing adverse effects to either land or beast. Beyond that point, adding one animal would cut down on the feed for others, reducing their weight gain.

As a general rule, it would be in the best interest of a farmer to raise as many animals as possible to generate the highest return. If the common land were privately owned and all cattle grazing on it belonged to one farmer alone, there would be little point in adding one animal to the herd as the calories it would consume to grow would be taken from the feed of other animals, reducing their own growth. One thousand calories gained by one animal would come at the expense of others in exactly the same quantity, 1000 calories (for example, 100 animals losing 10 calories each). Little would be gained for the farmer.

In a commons situation, things would be different. At least part of the calories gained by the additional animal would come from cattle that belonged to other farmers, i.e. would be stolen from them. So, the gains for an individual herder would be greater than the losses. The smart thing to do would therefore be for an entrepreneur to add as many animals as possible on the common pasture despite the overgrazing problem it creates.

But that in itself is not the cause of disaster. The problem occurs when each farmer reaches the same conclusion and disaster befalls all, the land being totally destroyed by excessive overuse. In Hardin's (1968) words,

Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. (p. 1244)

The mad rush for oil and non-renewable resources: these are the common heritage that belongs to all generations. What do we do with them? Dig them out of the ground as fast as we can to sustain our lifestyles. Without laws to protect them, the tragedy of the commons will befall them and many will pay dearly for what we do in this generation.

Air, land, and water are other examples of common goods shared between generations. In their case, they are being degraded or destroyed not through depletion but through pollution. A tragedy of the commons is unfolding everyday on this planet right before our eyes, and we are totally incapable of doing anything about it.

In essence, the tragedy of the commons is the crux of the current environmental debate and our failure to address problems: we do not pay for the damages we do to the planet; it is our children, grandchildren, and theirs that will. The next generations will ultimately pay the price for our neglect, and perhaps pay the ultimate price for it... just like they will have to pay back the massive national debts we have been accumulating since the 1970s.

Population growth is a fundamental aspect of the tragedy of the commons. It can be addressed much more easily and painlessly than other problems. Part of the issue has to do with expectations rather than anything else. In developed countries, most people used to have large families. Now, it is the last thing they want. Changing expectations from early on in life—especially on account of preventing human suffering and helping the environment—could help reduce significantly family sizes in the future.

Values always change over time. Society could easily refashion itself around smaller families and lower-impact lifestyles. Hardin (1968) also viewed the issue of population growth (freedom to breed) as an aspect of the commons syndrome and characterized it as “intolerable” (p. 1246). Regardless of reproductive rights, the planet simply cannot support more of us; it cannot even feed six billion people at the moment—despite all the modern science, technology, and chemical-intensive agriculture.

The issue of communality is a complex and highly destructive force in today's world mainly because the losses are borne by future generations. Privatization has been proposed as a solution to the problem. However, that cannot be applied to many things. You cannot partition and sell the air, oceans, rivers, etc. And nobody wants to live in a world where you have to pay for everything, where all beaches are private, etc.

Ecological Cycles: People Die Second

The following is another piece of the population problem. It will be referred to as the people-die-second principle and has to do with the fact that in ecological cycles predator populations usually decline after their sources of food fall. This may seem to be stating the obvious. However, the actual mechanics of these ecological dynamics have important bearings for us, namely the fact that the declines tend to occur fairly rapidly for certain reasons.

Let us take the example of wolves and rabbits. The former is a predator, the latter, its prey and food source. Assume that a male-female pair of wolves moves into a territory having large numbers of rabbits and that they are the only predators in the area. As the supply of food is plentiful and there is no competition, the pair has an easy time, grows healthy, and for those reasons breeds... like rabbits. The same would be true of their offsprings. As time goes on, the population of wolves eventually would grow to consume more and more rabbits.

Over time, the number of rabbits would have come down from predation. Their excess population would have been slowly trimmed down to zero. At that point, they would be breeding just enough to maintain their own population stable, i.e. producing enough offsprings to feed the wolves and keep stable their breeding stock. As long as the total number of predators did not increase, both populations would be in balance and could be sustained indefinitely.

However, in nature a perfect equilibrium is rarely maintained, at least with respect to many processes. As food would still be adequate at the point of balance, wolves would keep breeding like rabbits. As a result, they would offset the supply-demand equilibrium.

After some time, there would not be enough rabbits born every year to keep up with the expanding predator population. However, wolves would not die or stop eating for that reason. They would start depleting the breeding stocks, still eating their fill, at least for a while. The problem with this is that it would mean that fewer rabbits would be born the following years as the breeding stock would be reduced.

As such, two depletion processes would now be at work and essentially double the speed at which the demise of the wolves would occur: the predator population would continue to increase the demand for food and the supply of preys would decrease. Those accelerative conditions would ensure the decimation of the rabbits in a relatively short period of time.

Wolves would then go hungry and begin dying of starvation and diseases resulting from weakened health. Their population would dwindle and then collapse. They would have gone from surplus food, to balanced and sustainable supplies, to scarcity. They would have died second, in the wake of the scarcity they themselves created. With the disappearance of many of their predators, rabbits would begin multiplying again and live the easy life until wolves rebuilt their numbers and moved in again on the plentiful source of food. And the cycle would repeat itself.

What is critical to note here is that wolves did not start dying when the system went off balance. If they did, things would have gotten back to equilibrium quickly. Instead, they were quite happy feeding on breeding stocks and increasing their own numbers, worsening the problem on two counts: more mouths to feed and a dwindling food supply. This is why collapses tend to feed on themselves and occur rapidly when things begin declining, as opposed to following a slow descending curve.

The collapse described above is what happened on Easter Island in more ways than one. People multiplied in times of plenty. When life became more difficult and the point of balance was reached, they did not reduce their numbers to bring the system back in equilibrium. They dug into animal populations, wiped out one species of tree after another, which led to land erosion and habitat destruction as well as prevented the natural regeneration process.

Eventually, the many plentiful food resources were depleted, but the population numbers were still up. That is when everything combined and they hit a depletion wall. Starvation struck and tribes started killing—not to speak of eating—each other. People died second, essentially on account of what they brought onto themselves.

The Point of Sustainable Balance

The point of equilibrium or sustainable balance discussed above bears more exploring. Here is a concrete example with simple numbers. Suppose that a tribe in a fictional country needs to consume an average of 20 cows a year to sustain itself. What are the steps it would need to take in order to reach the point of sustainable balance? Firstly, it would have to build a herd. In order to do so, members go out and buy 10 cows from a neighboring tribe. Let us assume that each of these gives birth to 1 offspring a year and that fertilization occurs through the intercession of wild bulls freely roaming the area.

These 10 cows obviously cannot be eaten. They are the breeding stock for the herd or what is referred to as capital in economics. The second step would be to grow the herd to 20 cows so that each gives birth to 1 calf annually for a total of 20 new animals, which is exactly what is needed to feed all in the community.

After year one, the 10 cows will have given birth to 10 calves. Let us assume that they are also all females for the sake of simplicity. At that point in time, the tribe would still not be able to eat any of the animals, lest it depletes its breeding stock, which needs to remain at a minimum of 20. Year two would see the birth of 20 new calves from the 20 breeding cows, for a total herd size of 40 before the tribe has fed itself. That would be the point of balance at which the community could sustain itself indefinitely just from the excess cattle born every year and while maintaining its breeding stock of 20 intact.

Below this point, the number of cows giving birth every year would decrease and produce fewer new calves, forcing the community to dig even more into the breeding stock and further reduce the annual number of newborns for the following year. For example, if the tribe's population grows and begins requiring 25 animals to feed itself annually, this would leave a breeding stock of 15 (40 minus 25) for the following year, which would produce only 15 offsprings that year for a total of 30 animals. If 25 are again eaten, the breeding stock would drop to only 5 cows (30 minus 25), which would give birth to only another 5 calves. The tribe would then starve even if it ate every animal left and totally wiped out its breeding stock (10 minus 25).

Below the point of sustainable balance, vicious circles tend to develop and can, as illustrated above, quickly wipe out entire breeding stocks. Above it, the opposite happens. Breeding stocks would keep increasing every year, producing ever greater surpluses and building a herd into a virtuous circle. What we have is essentially a point of equilibrium flanked by two accelerative mechanisms: one, negative and the other, positive.

If we manage renewable resources above the point of sustainable balance, they should provide us with greater and greater wealth every year. If we do it at equilibrium, the same yields could be sustained on an ongoing basis. However, if we drop below it, we can quickly find ourselves on the Easter Island road.

In economic terms, the growth of populations (such as the cow herd discussed above) is geometrical, not linear. What is more important to us, however, is that declines display the same characteristic. The increase in consumption of 5 cows a year led to a decrease of 10 in the total herd in year two (from 40 to 30) and of 20 (from 30 to 10) in year three, as opposed to decreasing by 5 every year as in a linear progression.

In the natural world, there are factors that can mitigate and slow down geometric progressions. As such, the latter do not always go as fast (or slow) as anticipated. The positive predator/consumer geometric progression and the negative prey/resource geometric progression are the essence of the Depletion Wall phenomenon. When they meet, things quickly get out of hand. Consumption accelerates geometrically while at the same time supplies decelerate geometrically.

When considering the management of renewable resources such as fisheries, we have to aim for or above the point of equilibrium so that the capital or breeding stocks are protected at all times. Erring on the side of caution is also the responsible thing to do as the worst that can happen is that the resource will grow and provide more wealth than anticipated, which can be cashed in at any time in the future.

Setting targets with small margins of error or actually below the point of balance is what we did—among many other things—when we wiped out many world fisheries. Overgenerous estimates of supplies or weak action on the part of governments led us to deplete the capital stocks. By the time this was ascertained, the process had already accelerated and it was too late. With respect to renewable resources, we have to live off surpluses only and set targets accordingly. Forests have to be replanted so that what we take every year is at least replaced. Otherwise, the total area of deforestation on the planet will grow over time, making us poorer in the long run.

Non-renewable resources, however, are a very different story. They are capital stocks, with a twist. Just like the original cows without which a herd could not be built to eventually produce plentiful and sustainable supplies of food, they are the building materials for the machinery we use in the production systems that generate the vast wealth that we have today. However, they cannot be regenerated like cows. Yet, they are treated like surpluses as opposed to capital stocks which are permanently depletable.

Unlike renewable resources, there is no point of sustainable balance for minerals. Every ounce of ore that we dig out of the ground comes from capital stocks and reduces them. There is no surplus to live off. When they are wiped out, it is the end of the line. The presence of metals in single-use packaging (steel and aluminum cans) for instance is simply a crime against humanity, against future generations.

We have to clearly recognize the fundamental difference between capital and surplus, as well as renewable and non-renewable resources and plan their utilization accordingly.

A world collapse seems a remote possibility when one thinks in linear terms. However, many environmental systems grow exponentially, not linearly. The current sense of stability in the world today is very much an illusion as we are able to sustain our lifestyles only by incurring massive financial, human, environmental, and capital resource debts against future generations. Following this line of thinking yields one conclusion: we are long past the point of sustainability.

Will people die second as population dynamics models suggest?

Chapter 8

The End of the Road—Rwanda

Everybody has probably heard about the Rwanda-Burundi genocide in 1994 in which a Hutu majority went on a rampage and massacred in only three to four months hundreds of thousands of the country's Tutsi minority. The total death toll may have reached as much as one million.

The United Nations peacekeeping force on site had warned the international community about it, but everyone failed to stop the atrocity. The episode shocked the world, at least for a while. The massacre was predominantly portrayed and perceived as an ethno-racial conflict. However, there was an undercurrent of a different nature running through it, an underground story unfolding concurrently. This is what the following is about. But first, the official version of the facts.

The Official Story

Rwanda is a tiny country sitting at the western edge of the eastern region of Africa, almost in the middle of the continent itself. Its geography is hilly, and the land is fertile. The country's climate is tropical, but its elevation above sea level tempers it somewhat. Agriculture is the basis of Rwanda's economy, but it consists mostly in subsistence farming (Rwanda, n.d.).

Rwanda is one of the world's most densely populated countries. According to the United Nations, the average population density for Africa in 2010 was 34 persons per square kilometer. That of Rwanda in 1990 was 270. In comparison, the average for the world in 2010 was 51, for the US, 32, and for Germany, 231 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). As a developing country, Rwanda sustained more people per square kilometer in 1990 than Germany, one of the most economically robust countries in the world.

It even put to shame the most populous country in the world, China—which implemented strong family control policies over the issue of population growth and whose number of people per square kilometer stood at 140 in 2010 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).

The Rwanda-Burundi demographic comprises primarily two groups, a majority of Hutus (85% prior to the massacre) dominated by a minority of Tutsis (15%). The former are believed to have settled the region first. Tutsis moved in later and ended up dominating the other ethnic group.

In the late 1800s, European colonial powers (Germany and Belgium) took charge of the region, governing through and in association with the Tutsi minority. In 1943-1944 the country was hit by a famine that wiped out nearly a third of its population. In 1962, Hutus successfully overthrew the Tutsi monarchy. Rwanda and Burundi separated and became independent. Many Tutsis were killed in the struggle.

A Hutu government was established in Rwanda. In the ensuing years, hundreds of thousands of people (mostly Tutsis) fled the country to neighboring safe havens from where they staged attacks in the hopes of regaining power. In 1973, after a military coup by a Hutu general (Juvénal Habyarimana), the violence subsided. A decade and a half of better times followed.

Burundi saw two failed Hutu rebellions, one in 1965 and one from 1970 to 1972 which led to Tutsi retaliations and resulted in the death of a few hundred thousands of Hutus (Rwanda, n.d.). In the early 1990s, a Tutsi rebel group invaded the north of Rwanda, and civil war broke out. A peace agreement followed in 1993, but ethnic tensions remained high. In the same year, the assassination of Burundi's Hutu president by Tutsi extremists further increased tensions.

When both Habyarimana and Burundi's succeeding head of state, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were killed by a missile attack on their plane in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, in April 1994, all hell broke loose. Hutu extremists went on a rampage, first killing those of their own supporting peace, including many high government officials, then turning on the Tutsi minority. Within the next three months, almost one million people—mostly Tutsis—were murdered, many of them hacked to death with machetes, in what appeared to be well-planned attacks ordered by the new government and related groups (Rwandan Genocide, n.d.).

The Underground Drama

That was not the complete picture, however. There were several factors and elements pointing to there being a sub-story to the horrific drama. Diamond (2005) listed several of them.

Firstly, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF)—the Tutsi-led army that ended the massacre in July 1994 and conducted reprisals—did include Hutus. Secondly, a third ethnic group forming only 1% of the country's total population—the Twa—and not posing a threat to anyone was also heavily targeted during the genocide. Fourthly, despite some physical differences between the two main ethnic groups, many could not be distinguished from one another. They spoke the same language, intermarried, often had multi-ethnic family histories, and attended the same institutions, be they schools, churches, or bars.

More striking, however, was the fact that communities that were almost exclusively Hutu were also the site of massive killings by Hutus (p. 317-318). These elements together suggest that there was more going on than a simple ethnic conflict. Furthermore, the Hutu civilian population was heavily involved in committing the massacres. Killing almost a million people involves a lot of work, however appalling the fact is. It could not have been done only by a handful of extremists and dissenting armed factions.

Killings by the military were usually done with guns. Civilians used machetes and nail-studded clubs. Diamond (2005) described a pattern of the military sweeping through an area with guns and being followed by machete and club-wielding civilians (p. 316). The attacks were also more personal in nature (dismemberment and maiming) than they needed to be. Again, many factors pointed to another story developing along with the ethnically-based conflict.

Part of the answer lay in the country's exploding population. As expressed earlier, its density even following the genocide puts to shame most countries around the world, including the most highly populated ones. There are only so many people that a piece of land can sustain. While many countries around the world chose to modernize and mechanize their agricultural practices during the Green Revolution that began around the middle of the last century, Rwanda failed to do so.

Diamond (2005) reported that to cope with the increased demands from a growing population, farmers resorted to deforestation, marsh draining, and poor and over-intensive agricultural practices. The killing of thousands of Tutsis following the independence of Rwanda in the 1960s and their exodus from the country after their successful overthrow from power had indeed resulted in a lot of vacant land that could be—and was—redistributed to Hutu farmers (p. 319).

By 1985 the availability of new arable land had been exhausted. Soil erosion and a dryer climate caused by deforestation further put pressure on farming. For many families in Rwanda, subsistence farming provided barely enough to eat. No new arable land meant that existing farms had to be split between children from one generation to the next. If these were barely able to feed a family originally, then they were hugely insufficient after being divided in two, three, four, or more.

This is essentially what Diamond (2005) concluded when he looked at the work of two researchers (Catherine André and Jean-Philippe Platteau) who had visited the country in 1988 and again in 1993. Farms not only had declined in size but also supported more people than before, children leaving home at a much later age because of the lack of land. In the Kanama Commune (the area studied by André and Platteau), 9% of the population lived below famine level in 1982. That number had increased to 40% by 1990 (p. 320-321). Obviously, the partitioning of farmland could not continue.

There were also better off farmers in Rwanda. During times of drought and famine, they gobbled up bits and pieces of land that smaller farmers were forced to sell just to keep themselves from starving to death. The gap between the rich and the poor only intensified during those periods of increased social tensions and gave rise to a new class of people, “hunger thieves,” or farmers stealing out of desperation.

In Kanama, 43% of all serious conflicts investigated by André and Platteau were related to land (Diamond, 2005, p. 323). All this created conflicts within families—inheritance, for example—as well as within communities. Roughly 5.4% of the commune's population died as a result of the 1994 genocide. Yet, all residents but one were Hutu. The largest category of victims was the poor and malnourished. Other significant ones were large landowners and troublemakers (Diamond, 2005, p. 325).

These many factors together suggest that, along the ethnic tensions and political drama that gave rise to the 1994 genocide, another story was unfolding. At the time of the genocide, Rwandans were living under enormous environmental pressures brought about and worsened by the country's out of control population growth and density. The situation was simply untenable.

The broad participation of civilians in massacres and the fact that many Hutus were killed by people of their own ethnicity suggest that other motives drove at least part of the killings. Massive deaths would free up land; this is probably why rich (large) landowners were killed as well as vast numbers of the weakened poor—the competition. André and Platteau referred to the 1994 genocide as a “unique opportunity to settle scores” (Diamond, 2005, p. 325).

It is undoubtedly a tragedy that occurred in Rwanda, a tragedy of the commons, a Malthusian natural process of a system bringing itself back in balance in the crudest of ways, an ecological cycle in which arable land got depleted while the population kept growing geometrically.

Rwanda's population density stood at 270 persons per square kilometer in 1993. It dropped as a result of the genocide but is now back up to an unprecedented level of 403 according to the UN's World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). This represents a shocking 49% increase in less than two decades. The density is expected to go up to 467 persons per square kilometer by 2015!

Rwanda still has one of the highest birth rates on the planet. It is a wonder that the place has not exploded again since the genocide.

The Malthusian Debate

With the Green Revolution, international food production did outpace the growth of population. That, however, turned out to be only a short-term trend, based on today's hunger numbers. If the planet's population keeps growing, things will get worse and, just like in Rwanda, many might welcome war as a means of alleviating food pressures. We might be able to do without oil, but what will happen when there is not enough food to go around? Will wealthy parts of the world go hungry in order to export food?

Many poor countries could face the fate of Rwanda in the second half of this century. Avoiding disaster will become increasingly difficult if not impossible if we delay until the population-resource problem hits geometrical speeds. Ecological cycles show us that crises tend to accelerate once we pass the point of sustainable balance and only get worse after that. Waiting till scarcity hits will be a fatal mistake. Population reduction is probably one of the easiest and least painful ways to slow down our speed towards the Depletion Wall.

Unbridled procreation is not something that the world or the planet can afford any longer, unless we see disaster as a viable option. At this point in time, we do practically no conservation of non-renewable resources and the world population keeps growing.

Population reduction will occur one way or the other. The only question is whether it will be done early and intelligently through birth reduction, or whether it will take the form of starvation, Rwanda-style genocides, or biological terror and warfare.

PART IV

A LOOK AT THE SOLUTIONS

Chapter 9

Addressing the Problem of Population Growth

The root of the current population boom is not so much an increase in fertility as a decrease in mortality rates. The vast advances we saw in medicine and health in the 20th century resulted, especially in developing countries, in a dramatic increase in the survival rate of infants and young children, which, in turn, produced a population explosion in the second half of the century. As such, some have argued that we should really be talking about a health boom.

In the words of Nicholas Eberstadt (Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research), the reason for the 20th century's population explosion “was not because people suddenly started breeding like rabbits—rather, it was because they finally stopped dying like flies.... The population explosion, in other words, was really a health explosion” (p. 56-57).

Population control has many ins and outs. Firstly, there are ethical issues. The coercive One-Child Policy in China has raised many questions. There are also economic concerns. A smaller labor force would have to support a larger portion of the population in retirement. As well, potential incentive and information programs would require funding which can be afforded by developed countries but not so easily by developing ones. Following is a closer look at depopulation issues.

The United Nations and the International Community

First off, as already mentioned, depopulation efforts have to occur across national boundaries and economic regions. No country, rich or poor, is immune to the problem in terms of environmental footprint and resource use. The fact that there can be a significant lag—decades in countries with high birth rates—between the time when a country begins implementing policies—even coercive ones like those in China—and the time at which a population levels off and starts decreasing makes the matter urgent for that reason alone.

Population control has to become a buzz word at the United Nations level. Although the UN has done a lot of work on the issue, the message has not gotten through, and neither has the sense of immediacy.

In the absence of depopulation strategies, short-term measures targeting immediate needs will continue to fail as they have so far—the one billion people going hungry today being evidence of that—and turn out to be destructive. They will also accelerate us towards the Depletion Wall, which will add to the problems of hunger, resource shortages, and increasing prices. Food provision initiatives need to continue but will only be constructive and meaningful within the context of a depopulation strategy.

Part of the difficulty in addressing the issue is that developed countries do not see themselves as having a problem. Yet, they do as their per capita impact on the environment is several times that of developing countries. The situation is made worse by countries—like the US and Canada—that promote high levels of immigration in order to increase the size of their consumer markets. North America saw its population almost double since 1960.

Another problem is obviously developing countries' high rates of population growth, regardless of the lower per capita consumption level that individuals may have. Overall, they have a significant environmental and resource-depletion impact. Large-scale deforestation in India and Nepal is but an example of it.

The United Nations has warned about the problem but to little avail so far. Resolutions have to be brought to the fore, and population reduction targets for all countries must be set just like we are attempting to do with greenhouse gases. Short of this, the issue will remain at the wishful-thinking level, and nothing will be done just as has been the case so far. The concept of depopulation has to become part of the everyday language just like global warming is today.

How Far Do We Have to Go?

Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, authors of the best-selling book, The Population Bomb, studied the issue of population growth and consumption. One of the things that they point out is that economic research supports the idea that standards of living cannot be maintained under a scenario of continued population growth.

They (2004) argue that consumerism is another issue that needs to be addressed if we want to avert disaster. Under current conditions, consumption would still keep growing even with a leveling off of the planet's population. People in the developed world want more and more, and developing countries will likely follow their example (p. 183).

In trying to estimate an optional population size, Ehrlich and Ehrlich considered many factors. Among others were the ability to provide everyone with the necessities for decent living, basic social and human rights, and intellectual, creative, and artistic activities. Maintaining a certain amount of cultural diversity, preserving the environment, and survival of the species in case of disaster were other factors considered. Based on the current availability of resources and the demands made on them, they (2004) came up with a number, two billion people, or roughly what the world population was in the 1930s (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2004, p. 185).

By any means, trying to estimate the world's optimal population size is a very arbitrary process. In their 2004 work, One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future, there are very few references made to non-renewable resources (our capital stocks) or the fundamental difference between them and other types of assets, such as fisheries, that can be sustained indefinitely if properly managed. In light of this, two billion people might not be an appropriate long-term world population target. Under those circumstances, an enormous amount of non-renewable resources would still be consumed.

According to the United Nations' classification of more developed countries and less developed countries, the wealthier part of the world comprises only about 1.2 of the total 6.9 billion people on the planet (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). In theory, cutting down the global population to two billion people could reduce consumption to fairly low levels. However, that would only be true for a standard of living based on a world average, not for one based on North American or Western European lifestyles.

According to calculations from statistics provided by the International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database (2010, October), the estimate of the gross domestic product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita GDP (current international dollars) for 2010 was $36,430 in advanced economies (top 33 countries). The same figure for the developing world (150 countries) was $8,485. The average for all was $13,580. In comparison, the US and Canada were listed respectively at $47,132 and $39,034, for a North American average of $43,083.

Those numbers have serious implications in terms of determining an optimal population target for the world. What is a decent standard of living? Suppose that the planet's total population dropped to two billion people—or 29% of what it is now—and that this resulted in an equivalent decrease in resource use. Based on a world average per capita GDP of $13,580, the consumption of metals and other materials would generally drop to about 29% of current levels.

However, if decent living is interpreted as the North American average, $43,083—or 3.2 times the world average—then our consumption of resources would only drop by about 8% (29% X 3.2, minus 1). This is minimal and would not make any significant difference in terms of non-renewable resource use.

If decent living is interpreted as the average for advanced countries, $36,430—or 2.7 times the world average—then our consumption of resources would still only drop by about 22% (29% X 2.7 minus 1) with a two-billion-people population size. That would be better but a long way from being enough as far as long-term sustainability is concerned.

Even if decent living were interpreted as 50% of the North American average, or $21,542—a shocking and totally unrealistic expectation for most—our consumption of resources would drop by about 54%. If it happened overnight, it would double our years of supply of reserves and subeconomic stocks of minerals, but that would still mean only about a century before these are exhausted. Clearly, a two-billion population size is not a possibility for the long term.

Under normal circumstances, a reduction of the total number of people on the planet to two billion could take over a century even with aggressive population control measures in place. By that time, all current economic and sub-economic stocks of non-renewable resources will long have been depleted. At least, this is what the latest numbers show.

Just too horrible to contemplate? This is exactly what a Malthusian crisis is. Once wolves had passed the point of sustainable balance and started digging into the breeding stock of rabbits, the process of depletion was quick to accelerate and all that was left for them to do was to die. Humanity is in the midst of a Malthusian crisis, and we are totally impotent to stop it. The time to take measures to prevent it was in 1972 when the Club of Rome made the call for action. Now, the best thing we can hope for is to mitigate the worst of the crisis. Alternatively, we can let nature take its course and see how it brings the system back in equilibrium.

Assuming that we are able to transition through the resource crisis ahead, the standards of living currently existing in advanced countries would have to drop dramatically. A range of 500 to 750 million is likely to be much more realistic in terms of world population for the future. Even then, society would need to rely extensively on new technologies and materials as well as implement very stringent conservation measures.

Consuming Like North Americans

A useful benchmark to look at in terms of sustainability is the world consumption based on North American lifestyles. Those are probably what a lot of people around the planet aspire to and might be interpreted by many as the basis for improved standards of living across the board.

What if we won the fight against poverty and everyone consumed at the average level for advanced countries? That would more than double (268%) the world's consumption of resources as well as our speed towards the Depletion Wall. The same figure based on US and Canadian standards is 317%. This clearly shows that poverty cannot be eliminated through economic growth. It just cannot. Depopulation is the only hope of averting disaster and bettering standards of living for the poor in the medium and long term.

The total number of people in developed countries—where most of the advances in technology and industrial production take place—was about 800 millions in 1950 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). The 1950s may also be closer to what we can expect as far as medium-term consumption levels are concerned. Of course, these are broad measures, but they provide a strong indication that a small world population is very feasible.

In the last few decades alone, we have gained a lot of medical, scientific, and technological knowledge which would make today's life much better even if we still only had the financial means that countries did in the 1950s. For example, television and radio sets were available in those years, but their quality has dramatically increased since then. Today's models use less materials and are actually much cheaper in terms of percentage of income than they were decades ago. The amount of entertainment available (channels, movie rentals, etc.) has also vastly increased. Having a television or a radio set today has a very different meaning than it did in the 1950s.

Our children will build their world with a large preexisting amount of science that we did not ourselves have. This will mean a higher standard of living even if it does not translate into larger dollar or GDP figures. As well, today's mass markets will not be as important for them as they have been during the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age because of this preexisting knowledge. On the contrary, rather than making goods more affordable, large-scale consumerism would accelerate resource depletion and price increases as well as the potential crises associated with them. A smaller economy is not only feasible but also an option with greater prospects for better standards of living.

We do not need to use all available farmland or occupy every square inch of the planet. By doing so, we decrease the potential for better standards of living instead of increasing it. In a world with less than a billion people, most major cities would likely remain but shrink in size. Many villages and small towns would disappear. Large areas of land (especially those less fertile and drought-prone) would be abandoned to be reclaimed by nature.

Both self-sufficiency and globalization will be part of the solution. Electronic communications would remain a fundamental aspect of societies as they reduce the need for transportation. With plenty of land and more resources per capita, there would be fewer reasons to wage wars. We would be better able to establish a world government with the same rules and similar standards of living for everybody.

A small human population on a small planet makes perfect sense. It is our best shot at surviving the looming resource crisis and at maintaining good standards of living for everybody. In fact, it is our only shot.

In light of the latest research and resource numbers, it is becoming clear that the planet cannot support an increase in consumption levels in either developed or developing countries. Attempting to improve conditions for seven billion people through standard economic growth will only lead us faster to the end of the Easter Island road, to the Depletion Wall.

We have to reduce the planet's population as fast as we can, not only to avoid crashing into the Depletion Wall—which would spell disaster especially for poorer countries—but also to raise standards of living in the developing world. We could debate the question of an optimal world population size for years, but there is just no time for it. The world did get by very well with three billion people as was the case in the 1960s. For now, this is all we need to know, and we should get started down the depopulation road and do so urgently. It will take decades to get back to the population level of the 1960s; that would leave us plenty of time for debate on the issue of long-term targets.

Speed of Depopulation

We have to change the way we think and take our heads out of the sand. Global warming, the contamination of major ocean fish species, and the depletion of capital resources are all symptoms of the same disease. Many are in denial and refuse to look at reality primarily over fears of what that may mean for their standards of living.

What we know is that we have to drastically reduce the world population and that all countries must be involved. The process will occur over time, but what we want to do is start quickly and set a reasonable and sustainable speed of depopulation.

We do not want to create chaos or undue hardships, but we have to keep in mind that we are no longer in the 1970s—when the World3 model was released and the total number of people on the planet was only about 3.5 billion. As the early simulations suggested, options are increasingly becoming limited and ineffective, and all choices may at this point involve some hardships... simply because we did not take action when the first alarm bells were sounded.

There are economic issues relating to depopulating. If we go too fast, we will have too few working-age people to pay for the financial and health costs related to an aging population. If we go too slowly, we will unnecessarily deplete capital resources and keep going down the Easter Island road. This is the essence of the population debate.

Replacement Rate Issues

Population growth depends on many factors: birth rates, childhood survival, death rates, lifespans, etc. These vary in different parts of the world. For that reason, it is impossible to determine exactly what an optimal birth rate would be for the entire planet.

As such, it would be more useful here to look at benchmarks than try to determine exact optimal reproduction rates. A replacement rate is the number of offsprings per couple or person that enables a population to maintain itself indefinitely, neither growing nor shrinking. If all countries around the world kept themselves at that rate, the global population would remain the same year after year.

The first thing that comes to mind in terms of replacement rate is the number two. Two parents giving birth to two children would ensure that numbers are sustained indefinitely. Reality is somewhat more complicated. The actual replacement rate is affected by a number of variables. For example, any death before the age of parenthood would decrease the number of newborns. As such, the number of children per family needed to maintain a population stable is usually somewhat above two. As well, giving birth at an earlier age tends to amplify population growth. Doing so later on in life has the opposite effect.

A significant aspect of the population growth problem is that progression is geometric above the replacement rate. Just one more child per family can have a huge impact on a country's total number of people over time.

For example, suppose that a population renews itself every 80 years. At replacement rate, the total number of people in a country would be 100% after the first 80-year period and every other one after that. In contrast, a scenario where couples would have one child above the replacement rate would result in a sizable 50% population increase after the first 80-year period (100% X 1.5) and compound after that: another 80 years would yield an increase of 75% on top of the 150% for the first period, for a total of 225% (150% X 1.5) of the original population.

In the same way, progression is also geometric for birthrates below replacement. As such, depopulating countries would have to adjust their policies so as to produce a constant rate of decrease, for instance 5% a decade, and prevent an acceleration of the process. This may involve, for instance, stronger incentives at the beginning and progressively weaker ones after that.

A Few Benchmarks for Reduction Targets

Countries which currently have a high birth rate and a fast growing population will not likely see any net decrease in number of people for decades even under fairly stringent measures. What would happen at first is that annual growth would only slow down rather than drop below zero. This is what is currently happening in China. Despite having had a one-child policy for decades, its population continues to grow. On the other hand, developed countries—most of which have birth rates already around or below replacement—would see immediate drops. There would be no lag time as is the case with China.

How far and how fast would 5% a decade take us? Over the next 90 years, countries currently at the point of balance would be looking at a real drop of about 37% (negatively compounded). Those above it would achieve less, with many continuing to grow for some time before actually seeing a decrease.

The world would have to reduce its population by 71% in order to achieve the optimal size of two billion people advocated by Ehrlich and Ehrlich. To reach this level would take about 244 years at a net 5% per decade rate of decrease, i.e. after the number of people on the planet has stopped growing and has reached its point of balance. The growth rate for approximately the last doubling of the world population was 14% per decade (1970-2010). That is, it would take us about three decades just to reach equilibrium assuming a 5% annual reduction rate.

A net decrease in world population would start occurring only around 2040. We would therefore be looking at reaching the two- billion-people mark some time after the year 2280. At a net 10% decrease, it would take about 118 years to reach it after the world population has stopped growing, placing the achievement of the optimal population level of Ehrlich and Ehrlich around year 2160.

The above are benchmarks that can help us understand the magnitude of the problem and what needs to be done. We also have to remember that this alone would not prevent us from hitting the Depletion Wall but only slow down the process. It could have been enough had it been applied in the early 1970s when the Club of Rome first warned us about the problem of exponential growth and the world population was only half of what it is now.

The Aging Baby Boomer Population

Many governments have expressed concerns about the cost of supporting higher numbers of retirees as baby boomers age. The current strategy in Canada and some other countries is population growth. This is obviously madness within the current state of resource depletion. But, just how big is the age boom?

If you look, for example, at Canada's population age distribution as of 2010 (Statistics Canada, 2010, September 29), you can see that the youngest age group, 5-25 years old, comprises 24.4% of the total population. The next one, ages 25-45, represents 27.5% of it, and baby boomers, 45-65, account for 28.4% of the country's total number of people. The same figures for the US (US Census Bureau, 2009) are respectively from the lowest to the highest age group: 27.5%, 27.6%, and 25.2%.

In a normal population, you would expect to have fewer individuals in the middle range than at the bottom as people die with age. The top tier should also be significantly smaller than the other two for the same reason, giving a population its typical pyramid shape. In the current situation, people of working age will have to support a bigger than normal elderly population as baby boomers age. This is the essence of the problem and why some countries are considering population growth as a strategy to alleviate the problem.

In the last few decades, both the US and Canada have relied on very generous immigration policies to increase the size of their markets. The need for it, however, has significantly decreased since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a general liberalization of trade worldwide. With the aging baby boomer problem looming ahead, the two countries are likely to extend these policies into the future.

This raises several concerns. From an environmental perspective, the US and Canada, the two biggest polluters and wasters of resources on the planet, have significantly increased their environmental footprint and resource consumption on account of population growth alone.

Chapter 10

Depopulation Economics

Given that all we have known in the past is economic growth and population expansion, the task of decreasing the total number of people on the planet or even just considering the idea of lower consumption levels and economic output is daunting. Yet, although it would not be easy, it can be done given supporting policies and the right economics.

Setting Reasonable Goals

The whole point of depopulating is to try to reduce our consumption of not only non-renewable resources but also renewable ones as we are currently unable to manage them in a sustainable way due to consumption and economic pressures—which have already led to the collapse of many fisheries, the loss of agricultural land through erosion, chronic deforestation, etc.

The developing world needs to see an increase in standards of living simply because of the sheer poverty currently existing in several countries. This can actually be achieved under the growth-freeze strategy outlined further down. Such an approach would see a country's total gross domestic product remain the same while the per capita GDP increases from the total production being divided among fewer people. The concurrent implementation of the Green Economic Environment strategy could make developing economies greener and achieve some gains with respect to resources and the environment at the same time.

Developed countries—which are better off and whose environmental footprints per capita are dramatically higher—would have to opt for a more aggressive growth-reduction strategy in which total GDP would decrease but standards of living could be maintained (per capita GDP) depending on the chosen reduction targets.

The approach would result in additional leisure time for workers (shorter work weeks, more holidays, etc.). Combined with a GEE implementation, the strategy could provide a strong framework for resource conservation and environmental protection.

The two approaches are outlined further down, but first is a closer look at the economic principles underlying them.

The Myth of Larger Markets

One of today's most mind-boggling economic misconceptions is that increasing a country's population results in a larger market which, in turn, promotes economic growth. The assumption is that more people means more consumption.

This can be seen, for example, when economists and politicians talk about gaining access to the huge Asian market, often regarded as the mother lode of all consumer markets, dwarfing the entire market of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which includes the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The problem is, people do not buy goods, money does. The total amount of consumption in a country does not depend on its population but on its wealth or how much is spent. In economic terms, people are only as good as the size of their wallets.

One person spending a million dollars a day is exactly the same 'market size' as a million people spending a dollar each. In both cases, the total consumption or purchase of goods is exactly the same. The difference between the two markets would be that spending would occur mostly on luxury goods in the first instance and only on food and basic necessities in the second one.

The US GDP (a rough estimate of a country's total production) in 2010 was about $14,624.184 billion (US dollars) or 2.55 times larger than that of China, which stood at $5,745.133 billion. Yet, the US population that year was only about 317 million compared to China's 1.354 billion people. As such, the US market is far bigger than that of China despite having less than a quarter of its population. It even dwarfs the Indian market—which has a total gross domestic product of $1,430.020 billion—by 10.23 times (International Monetary Fund, 2010, October, World economic outlook database, October 2010).

Canada, despite having a population of only about 34 million people in 2010, had a bigger GDP ($1,563.664 billion) than India whose total number of people exceeded 1,214 million (International Monetary Fund, 2010, October, World economic outlook database, October 2010 ). As such, Canada is a bigger market to the US than India is despite appearances suggesting the opposite.

The corporate sector as a whole does not generally have a vested interest in larger national populations. What should matter to them is spending, but they often seem to confuse the two. Some companies do benefit from certain types of markets while others are penalized by them. For example, while exporters strongly gain from expansion into the Far East markets, local industries often cannot compete with cheaper imports and go bankrupt.

Market size does reduce the cost of goods, mainly by spreading development expenses and capital outlays over a large number of items. What most politicians and business people fail to understand is that this too is not a function of population size but one of spending or money. It does not matter how many people there are. What is important is how many dollars circulate in the economy.

Increasing the planet's population from three to almost seven billion people as we did in the last five decades did not in itself increase the size of markets. It has not added one dollar to the world economy. It has only spread the wealth available more thinly, decreasing incomes on average by 50% of what they would otherwise have grown to.

The Changing Meaning of Market Scales

There is some truth to economies of scale making goods cheaper. In large part, the phenomenon was brought about by industrialization which made possible the mass production of consumer goods.

In most cases, the environmental costs of a large world population in terms of pollution, depletion of non-renewable resources, etc. are rising rapidly. These are rarely, if ever, factored into the benefit equation of economies of scale. Trying to increase a country's population in order to achieve larger markets—if that were what actually happened—no longer makes sense for that reason alone.

Society does derive benefits from market scales, but that can better be achieved through trade expansion, for instance by joining trading blocks and removing trade barriers. The European Union (EU) and NAFTA are examples of that. In this way, the benefits of market scales can be enjoyed without having to increase a country's population and share wealth among more people.

Although decried by the political left, the globalization of the world economy has greatly expanded trade opportunities for all countries and will enable them to continue to achieve efficiencies of market scale in the future as the world depopulates.

Of course, there is a cost associated with increased trade: physical goods have to travel longer distances to markets than they would otherwise do if they were produced locally. However, energy will increasingly come from renewable and clean sources in the future and at reasonable prices. As such, long-distance transportation is likely to become a lesser evil than increasing the world population given the current state of reserves of non-renewable resources.

Note that bulky low-value items have always tended to be produced locally as the cost of their transportation generally outweighs any possibility of profitability. In contrast, high-value, small, and light items can easily be exported to other countries and remain profitable. For a few cents per unit, tiny computer chips worth hundreds of dollars can be shipped worldwide. In comparison, a ton of cement worth $75 cannot be transported very far before costs exceed profits. As such, both local and for export goods will remain in the picture for the future.

As the price of energy increases, markets will sort out what is profitable to ship over long distances and what is better produced at home. More and more, services, software, communications, and information represent a larger share of many countries' GDP and are not generally affected by transportation issues. This trend is expected to continue into the future.

Improving Standards of Living: The Basic Principle

To the economy, we are just meat. The only thing that matters is money. As expressed earlier, market size is a function of cash spent, not of the number of people spending it. From this, we can draw two conclusions.

The first one is that spending (what creates jobs and economic activity) remains exactly the same regardless of population growth. The second one is that if the number of people in a country grows, money is only spread more thinly among them. That is, the real income or wealth per person decreases. While a country's total GDP may remain the same, individuals are poorer than they were before. In other words, a growing population does not in itself result in economic growth but forces us to share a limited amount of wealth between more people, impoverishing all.

In line with the market scale discussion in the previous section, the argument is often made that a larger national population means a bigger market, more people needing to buy cars and houses, etc. This is simply not true. Money is only spread more thinly, meaning that while spending on food and basics increases, it goes down for more expensive items. Cars are bought less often, people rent lodgings instead of buying, the size of houses and condominiums decreases, and individuals increasingly resort to credit (which has to be repaid later and shrinks back economies at that point in time) to finance their needs.

Many also mistakenly believe that population growth forces governments to spend more to support society (for example, increased welfare and various child and family allowances), hence promoting economic activity. Guess where the money for this comes from? Your wallet! Taxes are higher than they would otherwise be to make up for this. Again, money is just shifted around without any real rise in total consumption.

If governments borrow the money (increase the national debt) instead—as baby boomers have been doing—then taxes can remain the same temporarily but eventually the time comes when payments on the national debt have to be made and consumption shrinks accordingly at that point.

The economic growth we saw in the last century occurred as a result of what economists call monetary expansion or the addition of money into the system (various forms of credit, both personal and governmental). While it looks like population increases are responsible for the growth in world GDP of the last few decades, these really have nothing to do with it. It is actually chronic government indebtedness and increased use of credit at the personal level that have driven economic expansion over that period of time. Population growth itself has only served to impoverish us.

Society does derive benefits from economies of scale but these cannot be achieved by population growth.

The Ultimate Proof

The ultimate proof that population growth impoverishes us can easily be found in historical gross domestic product (GDP) figures. These give an approximation of total wealth at any one point in time, and estimates are available for individual countries.

One of the issues that escape most people's attention when discussing economic expansion is the difference between per capita and total growth. A country's GDP may increase, but that does not necessarily mean anything to the ordinary person. The benefits from it may not accrue to someone for a number of reasons, one of them being population growth.

While this issue might not be a major concern in Europe where most countries do not see significant increases in their total number of people, it is not the case for North America. Both the US and Canada have seen a tremendous amount of population growth in the last few decades, respectively 48% and 57% from 1970 to 2010. Governments are quick to boast about positive gross domestic product figures when they come out. However, do these really add up to more wealth and better standards of living for regular people?

Let us look at some statistics. From 1970 to 2010, the world's GDP grew from $15,622 billion to $50,159 billion (in inflation adjusted 2005 dollars) or by 221% (United States Department of Agriculture, GDP, 2010). However, personal income or GDP per capita grew during the same period from $4,218 to $7,350 or by only 74% (United States Department of Agriculture, GDP Per Capita, 2010) instead of 221%.

There lies the problem with population growth. While the total wealth around the world more than tripled, individual income did not even double over the same period of time primarily because wealth had to be shared among almost twice as many people as before. Let us take a closer look.

If you made $30,000 dollars in 1970, your income would have been around $52,000 (in inflation adjusted 2005 dollars) in 2010 based on a 74% increase but would have otherwise grown to $96,300 had the world population not increased. That is how much richer we could be today. Bye, bye poverty! On account of population expansion alone, the North American economy has channeled two-thirds of the growth it saw between 1970 and 2010 to feeding new mouths (persons) as opposed to increasing standards of living.

In the same way, if you lived in a developing country in 1970 and your family went hungry because your total income was $2,500 instead of the $5,000 you needed, your 2010 income would have been $4,350 based on a 74% increase (still not enough as is the case with a billion people today despite more than a tripling of world GDP since 1970) but could have been $8,025 (over $3,000 or 60% more than what you needed) had the world's population not increased.

What would the world look like today if average incomes had tripled? Could poverty have been wiped out? Would the problem of hunger have been solved instead of there being one billion people going hungry today? The short answer is, we are able to feed about 6 billion people today and the world population in 1970 was about 3.7 billion, i.e. we would have massive food surpluses.

North American Immigration Policies

A lot of the population growth that occurred in North America in the last few decades resulted from immigration rather than higher birth rates. Although an increase in population size does not in itself create additional economic growth in the host country, the new capital that often comes with people when they resettle does add to the size of its market and wealth. It is, however, a contentious way of creating economic growth as that capital (not only in financial assets but also in the form of skills and education) is essentially stolen from other countries.

The problem arises when rich countries like the US and Canada import through immigration the best minds (a phenomenon referred to as brain drain) and huge amounts of savings from developing countries. It is a form of reverse foreign aid that takes from the poor in order to give to the rich.

Depopulation Strategies

Historically, productivity increases have had the effect of pushing unemployment up. Whether through mechanization, technology, or the streamlining of procedures and practices, society has increasingly become able to do more with fewer people. Typically, workers are laid off and replaced by machines or computers that can do a given task at lower cost.

Would depopulation eventually eliminate unemployment by reducing the size of the labor force? Probably not if a business-as-usual scenario is assumed. Productivity would keep creating unemployment through more efficient technologies as it has in the past. Governments would presumably also keep promoting economic growth through various forms of monetary expansion as they have been doing in the last few decades.

Take, for example, the US and Canada. Since the 1970s, the North American population has grown by about 50%. Over the same period, unemployment rates hovered between 5% and 10% in both countries and still do so today. This suggests that economic growth—which creates employment—has generated enough new work to offset not only the 50% rise in population but also the jobs lost on account of productivity increases.

In 1970, the North American GDP per capita was $20,616 (in 2005 real US dollars). By 2010 it had risen to $42,078, or by about 104% (United States Department of Agriculture, GDP per capita, 2010). This suggests that Canada and the US are able to produce today over twice as much goods and services per person as they were able to in 1970. As such, only about half of the people would be needed today to produce the total amount of goods generated in 1970. This can be viewed as productivity having created a little over 50 percentage points of unemployment over four decades.

As such, in a business-as-usual scenario, unemployment would likely continue to exist as we depopulate. We should have no fear of labor shortages, especially since the process is controllable: reduction targets can be adjusted, governments can take measures so as to promote increased productivity, etc. Economic growth would continue as it is not a function of the number of people in existence but of the total amount of money circulating in an economy: half of the people spending twice as much would add up to the same total consumption. What would change is that personal income and standards of living would increase.

Business-as-usual is not, however, a scenario that we should be contemplating. The problems of non-renewable resources and pollution would keep getting worse from continued economic growth and, according to World3 simulations and recent data, would potentially lead to disaster. The whole idea of depopulating is being raised here in an attempt to address these issues in the first place. If we are going to make progress, depopulation policies would have to be implemented as part of a broader overall strategy.

This would involve, for example, the implementation of a Green Economic Environment (GEE) system in order to make consumption and economies greener. It would provide additional gains in terms of pollution reduction and conservation of non-renewable resources—which would be badly needed given the massive size of the world population that is expected in the foreseeable future.

It should be clear by now that, at this point in time neither aggressive population control measures nor a GEE strategy alone will be enough to prevent us from crashing into the Depletion Wall. Both are sorely needed: the massive seven-billion-people consumption machine would not shrink fast enough to prevent the depletion of non-renewable resources in time to avert a crisis, and a green economic environment strategy would not be sufficient on its own to prevent it either.

The Three-Pronged Growth-Freeze Strategy

The needs of developed and developing countries are very different by nature. Realistic depopulation strategies for poorer regions of the world would have to involve some kind of improvement of standards of living. By the same token, continued economic growth is not a possible solution for either the developed or the developing world.

A Three-Pronged Growth-Freeze Strategy combining a frozen GDP, population reduction policies, and a green economic environment could provide in developing countries both an improvement of standards of living and meaningful progress on environmental issues at the same time. What would such a scenario look like in reality?

The growth freeze would mean that countries would aim at stabilizing their GDP at current levels, i.e. zero economic expansion for them in the future. This, however, would normally mean that standards of living would not improve, but if population reduction measures are implemented concurrently, fewer people with the same total GDP would deliver a higher GDP per capita or personal incomes. As such, standards of living would be able to continue to improve for developing countries under a Three-Pronged Growth-Freeze Strategy.

A freeze on growth, however, would mean that no progress is made with respect to resources and the environment as total output or consumption would remain the same. This is where the implementation of a Green Economic Environment would come into play. By making both consumption and the production system greener, meaningful progress could be made on environmental issues, assuming that GEE targets are strong enough.

The strategy would also have a very significant added benefit: depopulation within a growth-freeze context would mean that the labor force would progressively shrink (fewer people to produce the same output). Hence, unemployment rates would go down, which would be a major improvement for most countries. Not only would workers be more easily able to find jobs, but countries would also save on the cost of unemployment and social assistance programs.

Could labor shortages eventually become a problem? Each time unemployment drops below 3% or 4%, the business sector complains about difficulties in getting qualified personnel and inflationary effects on wages and the price of goods and services. Governments often react by raising interest rates to slow down the economy and create unemployment to prevent inflation from spiraling out of control as it did in the 1970s and 1980s. The issue is a complex one and is discussed further down.

The Three-Pronged Proportional-Growth-Reduction Strategy

Because of developed countries' high levels of consumption per capita, a Three-Pronged Proportional-Growth-Reduction Strategy would be called for in their case. Such an approach would involve a decrease in GDP proportional to a reduction in population, as well as the implementation of a GEE system.

What would that mean for standards of living? Obviously, there are various possible degrees of reduction. Let us assume that governments opt for a 10% decrease in population size over a given period of time. As this is a proportional strategy, the target for GDP reduction would also be 10%. This would result in the per capita gross domestic product (or personal income) remaining the same as a 10% smaller output would be divided by a 10% smaller population.

Under the Three-Pronged Proportional-Growth-Reduction Strategy, standards of living would be maintained, and some gains would be made for the environment on account of a lower total GDP. This would be a major component of political viability and selling point for the strategy. Anything involving a decrease in standards of living could yield stronger environmental gains but would be less popular with voters. The implementation of a GEE system would make production and consumption greener and further decrease a country's environmental footprint.

If both economic output and the labor force are reduced at the same time, there would not be significant changes in unemployment, at least initially. The same amount of goods would be produced per person although total GDP would decrease.

The Three-Pronged Aggressive-Growth-Reduction Strategy

A Three-Pronged Aggressive-Growth-Reduction Strategy would involve a decrease in GDP greater than a concurrent reduction in population alongside the implementation of a GEE system and would have different implications. For example, in a situation where GDP is decreased by 20% and population reduced by 10%, a country would see per capita income go down by about 11% (80% output divided by 90% population). Much more significant gains would be made for the environment, but standards of living would go down, at least in terms of consumption of physical goods.

A larger labor force (90%) for a smaller amount of work (80%) would mean that unemployment would grow over time. This, along with productivity increases, would force governments to address the issue. Under a Three-Pronged Aggressive-Growth-

Reduction Strategy, countries would not be able to create more work in the traditional way, i.e. through economic growth. Governments would then have to turn to spreading jobs around as a means of addressing the problem. The work week could be shortened, holidays, increased, and retirement age, lowered to prevent unemployment from rising.

While the consumption of physical goods would go down under this scenario, people would benefit from more free time. While standards of living might decrease in dollar terms, the quality of life itself could see a net improvement. The Three-Pronged Aggressive-Growth-Reduction Strategy would signal the beginning of a new era of leisure for the countries that choose this approach.

The Three-Pronged Aggressive-Population-Reduction Strategy

A fourth approach could also be meaningful in terms of achieving significant progress for the environment and resource conservation. It would allow a country to continue increasing standards of living if stiffer population reduction targets are selected. Of course, it also involves the implementation of a GEE system. The option may look unlikely at the moment, but it might become the choice of many countries as we get closer to the Depletion Wall and a sense of panic sets in. As well, it has some significant benefits.

A Three-Pronged Aggressive-Population-Reduction Strategy could involve, for example, reducing GDP by 15% while setting a 20% reduction target for population. Again, a GEE strategy would be implemented along with this. A 15% drop in GDP would then be shared by a number of people 20% smaller, yielding a growth in income of 6.25% (85% divided by 80% minus 1) for a given period.

Again, a betterment of standards of living would be a selling point and increase the political viability of the strategy. As well, the aggressive-population-reduction approach would also mean lower unemployment, which would benefit job seekers and lower the cost of support programs for society. As under the first strategy above, labor shortages could eventually be a concern.

Unemployment and Productivity Management

It is doubtful that unemployment rates would get to be excessively low under any version of the strategy for a number of reasons. Firstly, as we will see in the next chapter, there is a lot of slack in the system. While a country's official unemployment rate might be only 5% to 10%, the actual percentage of people that do not work is much higher. For example, it ranged from 20% to 35% (depending on the criteria being used) in Canada and the US in 2010. As well, there are a number of labor-saving strategies that can be implemented to address the issue (also discussed in the next chapter).

Secondly, while economic growth and depopulation both decrease unemployment, productivity does the opposite: it pushes it up. It has also the advantage of increasing individual wealth (per capita GDP) since fewer people are able to produce the same output. That makes productivity increases the best possible tool for addressing the issue of low unemployment. Moreover, it does not have the destructive impact on resources and the environment that economic growth and population increases have.

Productivity is notoriously low in developing countries and the cause of continued poor wages and poverty. That makes it an ideal tool not only to mitigate the potential for labor shortages of a Three-Pronged Growth-Freeze Strategy in the developing world but also to increase per capita income (more is done with fewer people). All a country has to do is to promote mechanization and investment in technology.

Ironically, productivity has traditionally been the cause of much suffering in countries around the world as it increases unemployment by promoting the replacement of workers by machines and new technologies. However, within the context of a depopulating world, it would have the opposite effect: addressing the potential problem of labor shortages and increasing a country's output per capita, which eventually trickles down to workers in the form of higher wages.

All of the above strategies are simplified to some extent and do not take into account the aging of population effect, which would mean that a smaller workforce would have to support a larger-than-usual number of retirees. There are solutions. Those are discussed in the next chapter. With respect to the strategies outlined above, the aging effect would likely mean that standards of living would be affected to some extent, depending on several factors. Countries could easily counter that effect by adjusting GDP targets accordingly.

The economics of population growth do not add up. Increasing the number of people on the planet does not add one cent to economies but does force us to share national production among more individuals, making each and everyone poorer. Given the current state of reserves of non-renewable resources, economic expansion is not a possible avenue for the future. Fortunately, there are a number of viable options, and it was the purpose of this chapter to outline them.

Note that in two of the four strategies, personal income would actually increase. The other two approaches offer either the status quo in that respect or an exchange of income for quality of life, in which case people would live simpler and more leisurely lifestyles that would allow for less stressful, perhaps longer and healthier, lives as well as for more fulfilling ones by affording time for people to explore their creative side or volunteering and helping others instead of being the typical obsessive consumer—consumaton—of the modern age.

The Two-Pronged Aggressive GEE Strategy

The depopulation approaches discussed so far allow us to better understand the interplay of population size, total GDP, and per capita income as well as their effect on standards of living and quality of life. While those are solid and implementable strategies, many governments will balk at the prospect of freezing or reducing GDP. So will the corporate sector.

Continued economic growth could occur in a context of a Two-Pronged Aggressive GEE Strategy. Such an approach would involve reducing a country's population together with the implementation of a GEE system that would use much stronger reduction targets than the strategies discussed earlier. This would ensure that while economic growth continues, the use of resources and countries' environmental footprint are minimized. The strategy would have the advantage of avoiding the unpopularity of freezing or reducing GDP.

While very appealing, the approach presents several drawbacks. Most governments would likely use the approach with watered-down GEE targets while presenting it as an aggressive strategy and continue current destructive growth patterns. As well, the approach would lead to a progressively tighter labor force, which can be mitigated as discussed earlier.

Copyright Waves of the Future, ©2012

More information: USGS Mineral Tables Degrowth Limits to Growth World Population Growth