We’ve already looked at the greenhouse effect and the basic concepts behind global warming. We’ve also in the past mentioned that the general view both in the media and by most global warming think tanks is that global warming is a human problem and one that rests squarely on the shoulders of every human being alive today i.e. everyone is to blame even though the oil giants, airlines and major industrial businesses of the world pollute most of the planet all on there own.
Whether you agree or disagree with the previous statements the simple issue is that laying the blame on every human being means that world population levels have a huge affect on the global warming agenda and that’s what we’re going to explore in this article.
Increasing Populations
Since every human is to blame for our current plight it would seem logical that population levels would very quickly become one of the key factors we could use to combat global warming. The worlds population has grown by nearly four times over the past 100 years, a rate of growth larger than any previous century.
More people would mean, more consumption, which in turn would lead to increased fossil fuel usage and since fossil fuels are a major producer of greenhouse gases, well we have ourselves a major problem. In other words based on the above logic population levels not only become a key factor when discussing climate change but questions like, how do we manage the worlds population levels take on a new level of importance.
If everyone consumed a little less or maybe if we all had less kids then maybe, just maybe we could slow down and maybe even start to reverse the damage done from global warming.
Certainly with the world population growing by more than 80 million people each year, the issue of rapid population growth is here to stay. But before we start looking at solutions involving population control let’s first discuss whether population really is at fault. Are we talking about population or a populations consumption because the two are far from equal.
Population Vs Consumption
We’ve layed down the issue of population levels increasing but is that the real problem. Surely the populations of today could exist in a green manner without all the excessive fossil fuel burning of today. In fact if we look at population sizes and consumption we’ll see that despite the United States having a far lower population than say China or India it actually produces more greenhouse gases than any other country on Earth. That’s some serious gas production going on there and more importantly the cause isn’t the population levels which are tiny compared to other countries.
The simple fact of the matter is that the western world (with the USA leading the way) simply consumes most of the worlds energy. In fact if the United States wasn’t as wasteful and unresourceful as its now become we wouldn’t be having the discussion we’re having right now. The modern western lifestyle has in many ways become desirable but at the same time extremely extravagant and wasteful.
This is a fact that most people would find hard to deny, but would a shift in consumption levels be the solution, and is that even realisable ? If you add to that the the desire of third world countries to become like us (i.e. developed) and you have a problem of epic proportions.
World Populations
Having digested some of the thoughts above let’s now take a look at some actual population figures for some of the major countries of the world.
- China – 1.3 Billion People
- India – 1.1 Billion People
- USA – 302 Million People
- Indonesia – 213 Million People
- Brazil – 188 Million People
- Pakistan – 161 Million People
- Bangladesh – 147 Million People
- Russia – 142 Million People
- Nigeria – 131 Million People
- Japan – 127 Million People
- Mexico – 107 Million People
- Phillipines – 89 Million People
Those are some pretty big populations and it’s estimated that by 2050 the worlds population will be at more than 9 billion people, with most of these living in Asia and Africa. This is up almost 3 billion from right now where we have around 6.7 billion.
Either way what is quite clear is that the problem has never been about population levels. If it was then the largest populations of the world would be the largest producers of greenhouse gases.
The fact that they aren’t drills home a useful lesson, and that is the solution in the short term lies in the management of the consumption of the worlds fossil fuel energy resources.
Over the longer term the development of cleaner, more greener energy fuel sources would be of the highest priority. Simply reducing or attempting to control the planets population levels would do little if anything to solve the global warming challenges of today.
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