Population

Last December, after more than 40 years teaching at the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at the University of British Columbia, Bill Rees gave his last lecture as a full-time professor. As one of his last students, I found his class captivating, and in following up with many of his former students, realized they felt the same way. His career defined the modern science of sustainability, and touched the lives of many, inspiring individuals to devote their lives towards adapting our species to live responsibly on this planet.

- Monbiot: Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere?
- Will the right turn green?
- Economists Push for a Broader Range of Viewpoints in Their Field
- Book review: "Debt" by David Graeber of OWS
- Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low

As The Big Engine That Couldn't has faltered for several years, it is becoming increasingly clear the economy is running off the tracks. Both investors and the public are beginning to realize the long-revered goal of endless economic growth is failing. Anger and fear are widespread, as the livelihoods and hopes of ordinary Americans are being destroyed. Anger runs among the "99%" over economic injustices that favor the "1%". Fear, however, may run among 100% over this question: How do we live when economic growth fails?

Last week, the flashbulb explosion met the population explosion, as news cameras clicked at several newborns identified as the seventh billion humans in the world. Now that the global birthday party is over, it’s time for new thinking about preparing food for a party of seven billion.

Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1%

- Ugo Bardi: The Club of Rome is back
- UN report: Population of world 'could grow to 15bn by 2100'
- Independent (UK): Western nations are now ripe for revolution
- New Scientist: Study reveals – the capitalist network that runs the world

The term "Demographic Transition" describes the movement of human populations from higher initial birth rates to a stabilzed lower one, and seems to be a general feature of most societies over the last several hundred years.

The demographic transition is not a product of wealth or cheap energy in large quantities - we can see that by viewing the history of demographic shifts in Europe and the US. Instead, it is mostly about enabling people to make different reproductive choices, and supporting those choices - it requires no coercion, no high energy infrastructure, and is comparatively cheap to achieve.

Bill Ryerson, Robert Walker, and Julia Whitty examine population’s complex, pervasive relationship to the most pressing issues of our time, including climate change, biodiversity losses, global equity and human rights.

Demographers are predicting that world population will climb to 10 billion later this century. But with the planet heating up and growing numbers of people putting increasing pressure on water and food supplies and on life-sustaining ecosystems, will this projected population boom turn into a bust?

More than two decades after the Brundtland Report, it’s past time to abandon this linguistic sleight of hand and rally around a new, shocking but this time realistic slogan: sustainable shrinkage! Within this new perspective, we can get on with saving species, restoring wastelands, improving efficiency, putting our life-support systems on sustainable bases—in short, finding solutions. But we’ll do so with a new urgency and clarity, conscious that if we are to survive on our little planet in some reasonably civilized way, human activity (and its impacts) must shrink. If we don’t shrink it, Gaia will shrink it for us, catastrophically.
(Ernest Callenbach is author of the prescient novel Ecotopia.)

Humans seem to be reaching a new bottleneckrelated to oil limits and financial crises that grow out of these oil limits, with the current example being the European Debt Crisis. Depending how this and other debt crises work out, it seems possible that human population will decline. If this should happen, it could lead to a reduced problem with species extinction.

Transition Voice's review of Richard Heinberg's latest book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality.

Throughout the past two centuries economic growth has translated to an increased capability to support more humans with Earth's available resources. More energy, more raw materials, more jobs, more trade, better sanitation, and key medical advances have all contributed to higher infant survival rates and longer life expectancy in general.