The coming collapse?

A report (home page) was released last week by the United Nations Environment Programme on the current state of the environment and what, if anything, countries are doing to avert damage. It is not a hopeful picture. This Herald-Sun article from 8/6 provides a summary (you would think that such an important topic would make headlines, but it was hidden away back on page 43):

Earth in danger zone

Critical thresholds being exceeded

THE Earth’s environmental systems “are being pushed towards their biophysical limits”, the United Nations Environment Program says.

The agency’s 525-page report on the health of the planet paints a grim picture.

It says: “Several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded. Abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the lifesupport functions of the planet are likely to occur.”

The report, released yesterday, says changes include rising sea levels, increased frequency and severity of floods and droughts, and the collapse of fisheries.

The report, which compiles three years of work by 300 scientists, says about 20 per cent of vertebrate species are under threat of extinction, coral reefs have declined by 38 per cent since 1980, green house gas emissions could double over the next 50 years, and 90 percent of water and fish samples are contaminated by pesticides.

It says little or no progress has been made over the past five years on almost a third of the main environmental goals, including global warming. Significant progress has been made on just four of the 90 most important goals, the report says.

“This is an indictment,” UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told a news conference in Rio De Janeiro. “We live in an age of irresponsibility that is also testified and documented in this report. In 1992 (when the first of the agency’s five reports was released) we talked about the future that was likely to occur. This report 20 years later (says) … a number of the things that we talked about in the future tense in 1992 have arrived. Once the tipping point occurs, you don’t wake up the next morning and say, ‘This is terrible, can we change it?’. We are condemning people to not having the choice.”

Dr Steiner said: “Change is possible. Given what we know, we can move in another direction.”

The report was released in the run-up to the UN Rio+20 conference on June 20 and 21.

A few reactions: “We’re breaking our planet once and for all, warn scientists”, io9; “Irreversible”, MetaFilter post; “Earth could reach ecological tipping point by 2025”, Population Matters. This article links to a similar report in Nature journal (also: “Earth summit: Rio report card” there). (Annoyingly it is subscriber-access only. Surely they could make such an important report free-access?)

The reports state that Earth’s various ecologies will reach a “tipping point” before this century’s end with possibly dire consequences for the lifeforms here. If it comes to pass, many species will go extinct, forests will be decimated, the oceans will be toxic waste dumps. In effect, the grim barren Earth depicted in Avatar will become reality. The article linked back in my 31/3 entry, “Here’s a view of the world at 2050 – if you dare to look”, also is worth a re-read.

The July U.S. edition of Popular Science, featuring a “Future of the Environment” special, has a diagram showing four possible futures depending upon the choices made now, reproduced below:

Is all this doom-mongering, crying wolf? A lot of people will think so and dismiss it, as they have global warming, as there are so many more pressingly immediate issues – keeping their job, paying off mortgages and bills, all the minutiae of daily life. As individuals there seems to be little we can do, so we shrug it off and carry on as usual. Nations are locked into the same destructive path of consumption and endless economic growth, and lack the will to change. If the dire predictions come to pass (and for the sake of other lifeforms here, one hopes they do not), humanity can’t say it was not warned.

A grim future

“Here’s a view of the world at 2050 – if you dare to look”, The Age, 21/3. This opinion piece presents a dismal view of the world midway through this century, with environmental devastation and extensive biodiversity loss due to human activity and overpopulation. It is not dissimilar to the hellish Earth presented in the Avatar movie. The Environmental Outlook to 2050 is available online, though annoyingly it is subscriber-0nly.

The report asks whether the planet’s resource base could support ever-increasing demands for energy, food, water and other natural resources, and at the same time absorb our waste streams.

The huge amounts of various waste products produced by 7 billion people does not get much attention in population arguments, but most of this waste is toxic and not recycled, so it ends up polluting the environment we depend upon – the land, air and oceans.

The purpose of reports such as this is to motivate rather than depress. The report’s implicit assumption is there are policies we could pursue to make population growth and rising living standards compatible with environmental sustainability.

We’re not yet at the point where the sources of official orthodoxy are ready concede there are limits to economic growth. But this report comes mighty close.

I very much doubt that the current rate of population growth can be sustained without even more damage to the environment – the outlooks are mutually incompatible. Implementing restrictions on such growth would be met with much resistance in the present day, but if things get really desperate as described in the article, I wonder if this opposition would change.

There is a tendency amongst many to mock and dismiss such opinions as alarmist, and assert that humans will find a technological fix (cramming us all into megacities seems to be a favored option). Indeed the very first reader’s comment below the article is breezily dismissive:

No i don’t worry about it because like most humans you are exaggerating. The worst thing never happens just like the best thing never happens … it will sort itself out. You will look back on this and feel somewhat foolish.

A saying I like is, “A pessimist is an informed optimist”. In other words, it is a realistic viewpoint.

A 22/3 letter in response:

The population threat

ROSS Gittins wrote about the release of various reports regarding climate change and the response to it based on these reports. These reports are designed to inspire people into action. Issues such as carbon emissions, economic growth, energy needs, alternative sources of energy, emerging or developing countries and so on. However, every time a report is mentioned or discussed in the media, the glaring omission is population growth.

Population growth is a hot topic that is difficult to discuss and even harder to deal with. Surely the time has come to raise this as a matter of urgency. While the world may be able to deal with increased growth, should it?

The world has enough problems with 7 billion people; what would it be like with 8, 9 or 10 billion people?

– David Love, North Balwyn

Trees = rain

From New Scientist, 16/5:

Land clearances turned up the heat on Australian climate

Deforestation by European settlers may be to blame for making Australia’s drought longer, hotter and dryer than it would be otherwise.

The “big dry”, Australia’s 11-year drought, has been blamed on greenhouse gases and natural variability. To see if deforestation played a part, Clive McAlpine of the University of Queensland in Brisbane and colleagues used a climate model to simulate Australian conditions from the 1950s to 2003. They then compared the impact of today’s fragmented vegetation, obtained from satellite images, with that of 1788, prior to European settlement.

Over much of south-east Australia, where the drought has hit hardest, less that 10 per cent of the original vegetation remains. The team’s model showed that this land clearance has increased the length of droughts in the area by one to two weeks per year. In years of extreme drought, the loss of vegetation caused the number of days above 35°C to increase by six to 18 days, and the number of dry days to increase by five to 15 days (Geophysical Research Letters, in press).

“Land clearing may be having a similar impact on the drought as greenhouse gases,” says McAlpine. Reforestation could minimise future droughts, he adds.

“It’s a nice piece of work,” says Andy Pitman of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, but he adds that the modelling needs to be confirmed.

Trees and vegetation attract and retain moisture, so it is not surprising to attribute one cause of the ongoing drought in south-eastern Australia to continued land clearance. Population expansion is accelerating this, with former open grasslands being smothered under the continued assault of housing developments (“More loss than gain in encroaching urban sprawl on threatened open plains”, The Age, 31/5/2008).

“David Attenborough: Our planet is overcrowded”, New Scientist, 15/5. An interview, where David Attenborough gives his views on the problem. He is somewhat restrained in his opinions, perhaps because he does not want to alienate.

The latest venture for this veteran of wildlife documentaries is as controversial as anything he has done in his long career. He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. “For the past 20 years I’ve never had any doubt that the source of the Earth’s ills is overpopulation. I can’t go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet.”

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s – a fact that has convinced him that if we don’t find a solution to our population problems, nature will. “Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation.”

Trying to pin him down about the specifics of what to do, however, proves tricky. He says it involves persuading people that their lives and the lives of their children would be better if they didn’t exceed a certain number of births per family. And that dramatic drop in birth rate rests on providing universal suffrage, education – particularly for women – and decent standards of living for all. It’s a daunting task, but the first step, he argues, is to acknowledge that population is a problem.

But isn’t the problem solving itself, as people have fewer children and population growth rates slow? Yes, he says, if you discount immigration, the UK’s population is more or less static, but it is not so elsewhere. This troubles Attenborough: sounding off about high population and fertility rates in other countries can sound patronising – or worse.

The world at the start of Attenborough’s career half a century ago was clearly a very different place. His passion about population seems to connect to a feeling that part of the joy of living rests in the natural world – a world without too many people, where seeking out wildlife means hard days canoeing rather than watching tourist boats arrive twice daily.

Two dumb letters (for obvious reasons) from the Herald-Sun this week:

Future needs population plan

The Budget speech and responses to it seem to have missed the most important issue. Australia is not producing enough children. If a society has a shrinking population, it will automatically have a shrinking economy. The most important issue for the Australian Government to grapple with is not the economy, but the shrinking population.

Where are the measures to ensure men at family-forming age (16-30) are able to earn an income that will support women at their prime age of fertility (16-30)? Women will not have babies if they cannot see reliable support into the future.

– Jeremy Hearn, Carnegie, 14/5

Jeremy Hearn (“Future needs population plan”, May 14): Babies are the solution to our problems. More babies, more workers, growing nation and more money.

– Brian Harris, Glenroy, 18/5.

Incidentally, Brian Harris has been writing anti-abortion letters to the H-S for years; he seems obsessed with the issue.

I sent in a letter, but it might be too late to get it published:

Jeremy Hearn (“Future needs population plan”, May 14) evidently hasn’t noticed that Australia’s population is already at an unsustainable level – with water supplies dwindling and infrastructure unable to cope with the increasing numbers – so the last thing we need are more babies.

My published letter – 30/4

Got published, in today’s Herald-Sun! Same as my last entry (only slightly edited), but I’ll reproduce it below, along with another:

Plan to restrict population instead

Planning Institute of Australia Victorian president Jason Black can surely not be serious in proposing to destroy pleasant, leafy suburbs and replacing them with hideous high-rise apartments (“Bulldoze the ‘burbs”, April 29). Any government that tried that strategy would face a citizens’ revolution. Far better to restrict population growth so housing demand is lessened and amenity can be preserved, though that would not please the greedy developers and construction industry.

– Suzanne McHale

Planners, politicians are out of touch

The Planning Summit referred to in your report, “Bulldoze the ‘burbs” (April 29) was for professionals, not for residents. It was too expensive for us, and they did not want any of us speaking. Planners and politicians are out of touch with reality and out of touch with the people.

It is time we had a summit on population. Do we want Melbourne to have a population of five million? Would it stop there? Let’s discuss alternatives. Let the people have a say. I challenge the Government to organise a population summit that includes residents.

– Mary Drost, convener, Planning Backlash (a network of 150 resident groups), Camberwell Plan to restrict population instead

“High-rise plan to halt the sprawl”, The Age, 30/4. Another plan to accommodate a projected population of 5 million by building ugly high-rise apartments along transport routes and shopping centers. These would overshadow the streets.

“Australia’s Dry Run”, National Geographic, April 2009. This is an alarming report on the degradation of a major river system in Australia (the Murray-Darling Basin) and the consequences for the people and animals dependent upon it (the river has been a major source of irrigation and water supplies). (If the article is taken offline, I will reproduce it below.) It shows how human carelessness can destroy an ecosystem. The capital city of Adelaide is precariously dependent upon the Murray for its water supply, and is now on permanent water restrictions.

My published letter – 23/3

Got the IVF letter (22/3 entry) published in today’s The Age:

Needs versus wants

Lisa Campbell (Letters, 21/3) needs to learn the distinction between needs and wants (hers are the latter). Infertility is not a disfiguring, painful or life-threatening condition. Before IVF, people had to deal with infertility and find other means of fulfilment. Taxpayers’ money should not be used to bring people into an already overpopulated world who would not otherwise be here – there are far more urgent social programs that need funding.

A related article from 22/3 Herald-Sun:

IVF babies warning

British couples having IVF treatment will be warned for the first time that their children have a higher risk of genetic flaws and health problems.

IVF babies may be up to 30 per cent more likely to suffer from heart valve defects, cleft lip and palate and digestive system abnormalities. They also have an increased risk of rare genetic disorders such as Angelman syndrome.

One reason for infertility in older women and men is poor-quality eggs or sperm (which decline as they age), so they obviously should not be passing these defects on. Another reason for men:

Infertility caused by DNA defects on the Y chromosome is passed on from father to son. If natural selection is the primary error correction mechanism that prevents random mutations on the Y chromosome, then fertility treatments for men with abnormal sperm (in particular ICSI) only defer the underlying problem to the next male generation. (Wikipedia: Infertility)

“Britain set to become most populous country in EU”, Guardian, 22/3. Britain is going to be an increasingly unpleasant place to live in as it gets ever-more overcrowded. Exacerbating the problem is the thousands of refugees anticipated as a result of climate change.

In addition, there is the issue of humanitarian responsibility. Britain is likely to be one of the few nations to survive the worst effects of climate change while other nations, particularly those in the developing world, have their farmland and fishing grounds destroyed. It could be argued that the UK has a moral duty to provide shelter for as many refugees as our shores can support.

It could also be argued that Britain has a greater responsibility to its own citizens first and foremost, and should not take in more people than it can handle.

But many climatologists believe that by then life on the planet will already have become dangerously unpleasant. Temperature rises will have started to have devastating impacts on farmland, water supplies and sea levels. Humans – increasing both in numbers and dependence on food from devastated landscapes – will then come under increased pressure. The end result will be apocalyptic, said Lovelock. By the end of the century, the world’s population will suffer calamitous declines until numbers are reduced to around 1 billion or less. “By 2100, pestilence, war and famine will have dealt with the majority of humans,” he said.

One of the few places to survive the worst impacts will be Britain. “Our climate will be one of the least affected by global warming,” added Lovelock. “As a result, everyone will want to live here. We will become one of the world’s lifeboats. The trouble, of course, will be that, even if we wanted to, we will not be able to pick up everyone. There will be some hard decisions to make.”

If governments of the least-afflicted countries wish their societies to survive, they will have to be brutally pragmatic.

Keep migrants coming?

“Despite job fears, we must keep migration door open”, The Age, 1/3. An apologist argues that we should keep immigration levels high despite fears from some that this will increase jobs competition.

Critics of immigration conveniently forget that immigrants do more than just work – they buy houses and consume products too. Hell, they even pay taxes. Adding more people into the economic mix is a recipe for long term growth – this is as true when the economy is slowing down as it is when the economy is booming. After all, there are a lot of things to do in an economy, even during a recession.

But those extra immigrants will require taxpayer-funded health care, social security and so on, too. Growth in a country of finite resources can’t be infinite. And, yes, it is reasonable for citizens to resent the extra competition from immigrants in a time of increasing unemployment.

He does have a point that undesirable jobs (e.g. fruit-picking) tend to have high job vacancies. I don’t know what the solution for this is.

Sure, there are now a lot of people actively seeking work since the global financial crisis really hit six months ago. But there have been unemployed people since before then, and those jobs in the fruit-picking industry have long been unfilled.

Only when the finance industry’s brightest sparks begin seeking agricultural employment should we start denying farmers the labour force they need – and denying eager migrant workers the opportunity to earn. Ever since the First Fleet landed, Australia’s most pressing economic problem has been our population size. Our labour force has always been small, our consumer base small, and the size of our national market small.

Small is beautiful! Australia is mostly infertile land (desert) and cannot support a high population – it is already straining to support the 21+ million now occupying it.

Compounding this has been the fear of an inexorably ageing workforce. But the credit crunch has presented long-term opponents of immigration with an opportunity to flog their favourite dead horse. Even more erroneous is the belief held by many opponents of immigration that we should limit the entry into Australia of certain non-Western religions because our cultures are incompatible.

Probably because religious fanatics who advocate blowing others up with suicide bombers tend to make citizens rather nervous!

Anyway,we have a moral necessity to maintain a high immigration intake. Much more than foreign aid, charity, Live Aid wristbands, and even the bulk-purchase of fair trade coffee, the most effective way we can help somebody living in the third world to crawl out of poverty is allowing them to move to the first world.

An even more effective and preventative method would be to help those impoverished countries become normal functioning ones so their citizens don’t feel such a pressing need to emmigrate.

“Young mums grab bonus”, Herald-Sun, 2/3. This reports the not-very-surprising news that the baby bonus has encouraged teenage pregnancies. Obvious solution: ban the BB for under-18s! Even better: scrap it altogether. I would instead not object to, say, government-funded 6 months’ maternity or paternity leave at minimum wage, which seems a reasonable compromise to me (a year, as some want, is too excessive to fund).

Also annoying is that IVF gets a Medicare rebate!

“Medicare rebates for IVF births in the same period were $295,000, which works out at less than $20,000 for each baby,” said Professor Robert Jansen, a director of Sydney IVF.

Infertility is not a painful, life-threatening or disfiguring condition, and should not be government-funded! The money could be much better used elsewhere (e.g. funding the health care system).

“Despair and rage among Gaza’s youths”, BBC News, 27/2. Another not-very-surprising report on the overcrowding in Gaza, this focusing on the Angry Young Men who are a symptom of this, and the social unrest that results from boredom, hopelessness and unemployment among such – and who are prime recruitment material for militants. Israel should start air-dropping contraceptives (or put them in the water supply, if there is one)!

“How to survive the coming century”, New Scientist, 25/2. A worst-case scenario of how climate change might affect the environment this century, if the temperature rises by 4°C.

The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained. But maintaining the current global population of nearly 7 billion, or more, is going to require serious planning.

Well, obviously, we shouldn’t – it’s overpopulation that has got us into this mess!

So if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like [James] Lovelock, are less than optimistic. “Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don’t think they are clever enough to handle what’s ahead. I think they’ll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge,” he says. “The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."

Others believe that the large population can be relocated to still-fertile areas of the world and crammed into megacities:

Imagine, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that we have 9 billion people to save - 2 billion more than live on the planet today. A wholescale relocation of the world’s population according to the geography of resources means abandoning huge tracts of the globe and moving people to where the water is. […] These precious lands with access to water would be valuable food-growing areas, as well as the last oases for many species, so people would be need to be housed in compact, high-rise cities. Living this closely together will bring problems of its own. Disease could easily spread through the crowded population so early warning systems will be needed to monitor any outbreaks.

That does not seem like a desirable way to live, though!