I have a somewhat cynical tendency to think that blaming population is a way that Western people (of a largely Protestant heritage) like dealing with climate change because it absolves them. Population growth is not happening because of ‘us’, it has happening because of people in India, China (now the one child policy is gone) and because of Muslims and Catholics who breed uncontrollably. This could be seen as an example of social category theory in action: it is an outgroup that is the problem, not us.
It probably does need to be said population could become a problem. 100 billion people is probably too many for any kind of civilization to survive and it probably would alter nature irreparably however we lived or died. We need to deal with population, but it is not our primary problem at the moment. It just intensifies the problem – we would still be in a mess if population growth stopped immediately.
A bigger issue is the question of how much in the way of resources people consume. The Murray Darling’s water was largely consumed by business, and these businesses were draining the water not because of population, but because of the demands that business always grow and because government values business over the environment (and everything else, we might add). Water could have been held back, but as we know through an article in the SMH yesterday, more water was allocated to business despite knowledge of the likely pressures faced by the river and its marginal safety. There was no consideration for the environment at all.
We have this reinforced by the official Coalition sponsored report which surprisingly mentions the forbidden term ‘climate change’ to explain the problem. [“The fish death events in the lower Darling were preceded and affected by exceptional climatic conditions, unparalleled in the observed climate record“. and “The recent extreme weather events in the northern Basin have been amplified by climate change.”] However, it hardly mentions irrigation usage at all. It also does not mention the facts that these irrigation businesses appear to have stolen water and engaged in fraud to get more water. Business as a explanatory cause is even more forbidden to the Right than ‘climate change’.
This has nothing to do with population – it has to do with an ideology that says business, and short term profit, must come first.
However, if we are going to blame population then how many people do we have to kill to solve the issue? 2 billion? 3 Billion? Reduction cannot happen naturally fast enough.
We as a population in Australia consume and destroy far, far more (massively more) than an equivalent population of people in India. Again this points to the fact that degree and style of consumption of resources by a population is the problem, not the population by itself. If the Average person in Australia or the US consumes 20 or more times what the average person does in China should we wipe out Australians or Chinese? It would clearly be more economic and easier to wipe out Australians and people in the US. Is that such an attractive proposition?
However, if we could solve the Murray-Darling crisis by penalising or regulating a few inappropriate businesses who use way too much water, wouldn’t that be easier and better? If businesses cannot work with the Murray Darling flowing, then they should not be there.
Clearly if we think that people in India or China have to consume as much as we have done, or as much as our businesses do, then there will be a problem in the future. Perhaps a solution is that we should consume and destroy less, rather than they consume and destroy more? But, in any case, lets not distract ourselves with future problems when we have problems which are being generated now, and can be fixed now through being aware of what they are.
Tags: Anthropocene, climate change, Disinformation, economics, social category theory
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