GEOS2121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, Kuznets Curve, Water Scarcity
23 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Population and Scarcity
Introduction:
1. What are the relationships between population, environmental change and scarcity?
2. How do theories of the relationship between population and environmental change differ?
Why does it matter?
Compare these theories and how they imagine to impact the environments or cause
environmental changes.
a. Malthus
b. IPAT
c. Kuznets curves
3. What would happen if we flipped the question? What if we faced the problem of a baby
bust, not a baby boom?
Population and the environment
Is population and environmental crisis? Are there simply too many people?
Argument…
To do your bit for climate change you should have one fewer baby an article connotes.
• Climate change was targeting your intimate decision making about family. The article says
that when we are making individual decision about environmental changes the kinds of
policies and solutions that are proposed to us by companies and governments effectively
have very little impact on environmental change e.g. recycling, changing lightbulbs etc. have
e little ipat o oes otiutio to liate hage. Those idiidual o osuptio
choices have very little impact on the future of climate change.
• Instead if we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions we would have one fewer child.
In order to avoid what the global consensus declares as dangerous climate change our Co2
emission need to drop down precipitately. We currently in Australia use 16 tonnes per
person a year of Co2 and that will need to drop to 1-2 tonnes. This small contribution can
lead to 58.6 tonnes of co2 equivalent per year if we are one fewer child, the next is living car
free.
• Things like using bicycles and public transport and living car free have health and
environmental impacts for instance better air quality, better health, eating vegetable based
diet is another thing. Producing win win benefits for the environment and our health and
reducing our carbon dioxide emissions.
Couter Arguet…
• Opponents have said that this type of green consumer is not worth any ones time, it has
very little effect. Research has shown since the 1980s that 70% of global carbon dioxide
emissions have come from only 100 companies. instead of targeting our actions at the
individual level we should instead target these large companies, collective action is most
important.
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• The point is that is raises questions about over population and the affect this has on climate
change. It prompts questions of whether population contributes to environmental crisis.
Whether we should instead talk;
o What about affluence and lifestyle?
o Can the world support us all?
o Will the population ever stop growing?
• Population alone is an insufficient explanation -Population alone is not a good predictor of
environmental impacts
In the case of water as a scarce resource, the number of people alone cannot explain our relative
consumption of scarce water resources. Very little of the worlds water is available for consumption
although ate is audat it is sae. A uate of those liig i deelopig outies dot hae
access to water. The number of people making a demand on this resource also seems to be growing
in these areas however which exacerbates the situation of water scarcity. Also the opposite
abundance of water bottles and water access in less populated areas for example greater water
access in North America for domestic purposes mostly. Water availability (abundance or scarcity) is
also affected by different factors or uses of the water for example domestic use of water in the US
surpluses industrial and agricultural water uses. This regional distribution of water consumption
raises questions about whether the relative availability or constraints on resources is to do more
with the consumption choices people are making than it is to do with number of people.
Different kinds of scarcity of water: hydrological, techno-economic, perceptual. This lead Robbins to
argue that there are different kinds of scarcity of water. Number of people alone cannot explain the
consumption of resources. Scarcity is produced in different kinds of ways hydrological (absolute
scarcity of water in a particular place), techno-economic (kinds of infrastructures that use water
which can constrain the amount of water available to someone as well as quality of water that can
be accessed), perceptual (e.g. bottle water healthier than tap water therefore greater consumption
of bottled water/perception of scarce quality of water).
Different Theories of population and scarcity
Malthus:
➢ This idea of population is really ancient and has been expressed best by Thomas Robert
Malthus famous for his arguments about over population.
➢ The capacity of the human population to grow is greater than the ability of the Earth to
provide them resources. Human population is the single greatest cause in the decline of
natural resources, influence on the availability of resources and the availability of resources
is the limit to the earths growing population.
He argued:
• Populatio goth is geoeti epoetial - because the capability of humans to
reproduce is great one couple can have a number of children
• Environmental Resources are fixed, o go aithetiall liea - the eaths esoues
cannot change however they can increase arithmetically or linear
• Obviously, over time, population radically outpaces resources
Malthus (in his Essay on the Principle of Population from 1798) argues the implications of this are:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
To do your bit for climate change you should have one fewer baby an article connotes: climate change was targeting your intimate decision making about family. Those i(cid:374)di(cid:448)idual o(cid:396) (cid:272)o(cid:374)su(cid:373)ptio(cid:374) choices have very little impact on the future of climate change. Instead if we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions we would have one fewer child. In order to avoid what the global consensus declares as dangerous climate change our co2 emission need to drop down precipitately. We currently in australia use 16 tonnes per person a year of co2 and that will need to drop to 1-2 tonnes. Producing win win benefits for the environment and our health and reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. Cou(cid:374)ter argu(cid:373)e(cid:374)t : opponents have said that this type of green consumer is not worth any ones time, it has very little effect. It prompts questions of whether population contributes to environmental crisis.
