World population surge imperils environment, says commentary

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 15, 2010 at 6:51 am

From the Bangor Daily News, this commentary by Kenneth Roy, a member of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy:

“The ship Titanic, the crown jewel of the White Star Line, boasted as unsinkable by its owners and foolishly driven by them on that premise to its destruction, is a grave warning to mankind. Our mother ship Earth, captained by fools recklessly ignoring nature’s warnings, is on a parallel course with the Titanic. The population bomb is planet Earth’s iceberg.

America’s rapidly growing population is wreaking havoc on the environment. Because I am a conservationist, I am also a populationist and advocate having a stable population for America and the world.

The pressures associated with population growth are dominating our public discussion with issues such as traffic congestion, school overcrowding, loss of open spaces and increases in municipal taxes, said Robert Puentes, a scholar with the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. America has become much more urban and crowded. An average of 84 people now live on each square mile, up from 56 per square mile in 1967. Under President Lyndon Johnson, the U.S. had only five cities with at least 1 million in population. Today there are 44 urban areas of this size. … “

Continue reading this commentary by clicking here.

March 15, 2010 · Filed Under Water & Population

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On the Public Record blog on water, population and planning

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 15, 2010 at 8:05 am

From the On the Public Record blog:

“Just listened to the High Country News interview with Matt Jenkins*. No surprises until about minute 12, when the interviewer asked Jenkins if any agency at any level is addressing the issue of population. Jenkins said no, which isn’t quite right. The 2009 California Water Plan, written by DWR, is broaching the matter in the most discreet and non-suggestive way possible, and denying that they mean anything at all by it if you ask them directly. It is all extremely coy.

But, when they project future demand, they model demand for three scenarios (pgs 14-15). The three scenarios have different land use patterns (from dense to sprawling) and three populations (from 45 million to 70 million people, up from 38 million now). The models show that demand is lower in the denser, lower population future. (Climate change increases demand in all three scenarios. The 2013 Update should have supply numbers to pair with those demand numbers.)

Now, DWR does not mean to suggest anything by that. They would never. It is not the jurisdiction of the water department to make such personal and touchy policy recommendations. That would be wrong! The legislature should do that! Or maybe no one should! It should happen however fate intends! However, DWR cannot help but notice that demand would be lower if there are fewer people in 2050. … “

January 15, 2010 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Population growth and global warming

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 22, 2009 at 2:57 pm

From the New York Times Green Inc.:

“Are condoms and birth control pills more cost effective than windmills and solar panels as tools to curb global warming?

Yes, and by a wide margin, contends Thomas Wire, a postgraduate researcher at the London School of Economics and author of a recent study asserting that family planning is nearly five times more cost effective in mitigating global warming emissions than green energy technologies like wind and solar power.

“It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions –- the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up,” Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, the British environmental group that sponsored the study, said in a statement. “The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal.” … “

December 22, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Peter Gleick: Water and population. 2

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 22, 2009 at 4:43 pm

From Peter Gleick at the City Brights blog:

“In a previous post here, I raised the population and water issue in a general way. My point was that ignoring the population component of our resource challenges was a mistake, certainly in the long term and in some places, in the short term. I think this is indisputable — resource constraints are worse than they would otherwise be if populations are large and growing rapidly rather than small and growing slowly, or even shrinking.

I also made the point, which I repeat here, that addressing water problems in the face of population growth comes down to three choices: (1) increase the water supply, (2) decrease the water demand per person, and (3) change the number of people. We must do all three, in the right way.

Over the past 100 years, our water policy has focused on (1) — expand supply. Even today, some people cannot imagine any other approach to water, and so we get the knee-jerk calls for new dams in California, even when they cannot be shown to provide the solutions we need. Some people just cannot imagine any other approach. In many parts of the world, expanding supply is still critically important, but ultimately, supply is limited (by either the availability of water, or by its ultimate economic and ecological costs) if demand is not constrained. Sure, desalination is effectively unlimited — at least for rich, coastal communities. But desalination is not an option for the vast majority of our water use, which is for agriculture, far from our coasts. There are true limits to supply. …”

Read more from Peter Gleick’s blog post by clicking here.

October 22, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Peter Gleick: Population and water. 1

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 14, 2009 at 8:41 am

From Peter Gleick at the City Brights blog:

“Population discussions raise lots of hackles. And they bring the crazies out of the woodwork like termites when the Orkin Man appears. But I hope to post a series of pieces on population and water because we must stop ignoring the role of population in our environmental and water problems.

The amount of water on Earth is fixed. We’re not losing it to space and we’re not getting more (with negligible exceptions). The amount of water in a river basin or watershed is fixed. It goes up and down with natural variability, and it may change over time due to climate changes, but water is a renewable resources and our use of it does not affect the amount we get next year.

But population is not fixed. It is growing, and growing rapidly in some places. As a result, the amount of water available per person (”per capita”) is declining. Here is a simple example: assume that the average flow of water in a river basin is 10 million acre-feet per year and the population using that water is 20 million people. Then on average, the water available for use is around 450 gallons per person per day, if you could use it all (which would, of course, destroy the river ecosystem, but that’s another topic). If the population of the basin doubles to 40 million, the water availability per person drops in half, to around 225 gallons per person per day. If the population doubles again, water availability drops to just over 100 gallons per person per day. The math is easy, but the consequences can be severe: abundance can become shortage. In simple terms, addressing water problems in the face of population growth come down to three choices: (1) increase the water supply, (2) decrease the water demand per person, or (3) change the number of people. …”

Read more from Peter Gleick at the City Brights blog by clicking here.

October 14, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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David Cehrs commentary: California’s unsustainable water demand

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 12, 2009 at 7:00 am

From the Fresno Bee, this commentary by David Cehrs, a hydrologist on the Kings River Conservation District board of directors:

” I agree with Rep. George Radanovich ["Valley Ag Future at Crossroads," Aug. 25] that California ag is in jeopardy and that there is a struggle to achieve long-term solutions.

Most people think that California water solutions require new water infrastructure and that infrastructure increases water supply. I have a different view of the problem — that demand exceeds supply and until demand is reduced there will be no resolution of the problem. …”

The simplistic view of the problem is this, says David:

” … Either we can grow food or grow people with our water, but not both. If we grow people, food will become more expensive (hurting the economy), with less total food, and less choice of foods (grains and beans instead of fruits and vegetables). Arizona has taken this option. If we decide to grow food, it will require a limit or stop to growth, the building industry will be hurt and we will suffer an economic slowdown.

The populace, therefore, faces a huge choice. They don’t know this choice is coming. There is no “good” choice, and either choice will affect them greatly. …”

Interesting commentary, well worth the click through! Read the full text of David’s commentary by clicking here.

September 12, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Robert Glennon: Our water supply, down the drain

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 23, 2009 at 11:00 am

From the Washington Post, this commentary by Robert Glennon:

“In the United States, we constantly fret about running out of oil. But we should be paying more attention to another limited natural resource: water. A water crisis is threatening many parts of the country — not just the arid West.

In 2008, metro Atlanta (home to nearly 5 million people) came within 90 days of seeing its principal water supply, Lake Lanier, dry up. Rainstorms eased the drought, but last month a federal judge ruled that Georgia may no longer use the lake as a municipal supply. The state is now scrambling to overturn that ruling; but Alabama and Florida will oppose Georgia’s efforts.

In Florida, excessive groundwater pumping has dried up scores of lakes. In South Carolina, a paper company recently furloughed hundreds of workers because low river flows prevented the company from discharging its wastewater. That state’s battle with North Carolina over the Catawba River has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Water has become so contentious nationwide that more than 30 states are fighting with their neighbors over water.

Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, is too shallow to float fully loaded freighters, dramatically increasing shipping costs. North of Boston, the Ipswich River has gone dry in five of the past eight years. In 2007, the hamlet of Orme, Tenn., ran out of water entirely, forcing it to truck in supplies from Alabama.

Droughts make matters worse, but the real problem isn’t shrinking water levels. It’s population growth. Since California’s last major drought ended in 1992, the state’s population has surged by a staggering 7 million people. Some 100,000 people move to the Atlanta area every year. Over the next four decades, the country will add 120 million people, the equivalent of one person every 11 seconds. …”

Read more of Robert’s commentary by clicking here.

August 23, 2009 · Filed Under National water news, Water & Population

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On American sustainability: Most Americans stupid as a box of rocks as to overpopulation, says commentary

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2009 at 6:52 am

From the Examiner.com, this commentary by Frosty Wooldridge:

With millions of Americans reading my columns on 50 websites across the country, I receive thousands of letters concerning my stance on overpopulation and immigration. Additionally, I speak to millions on radio shows. My latest book, America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans, describes our accelerating population predicament. As a civilization, we stand nostril-deep in a world of hurt on a dozen fronts.

Most of the time, readers thank me for my outspoken courage and integrity. Others lambaste me with names and other epithets.

Last week, a reader tried to bait me into arguing with his myopic support of immigration and population growth. His inane arguments do not hold water because they stem from his emotional paradigm. I receive dozens of letters from well-meaning writers, but they all fail to understand that our present resource base cannot and will not sustain our population today let alone 30 years from now with an added 100 million Americans.

Our national leaders and regular citizens prove dumber than a box of rocks!

That’s the problem! We suffer an entire society thinking and standing on the fractured glass legs of the 20th century. We think our “expand forever” paradigms of the last century can continue in the 21st century. They cannot! They will not!

Yet, we persist in our folly. We defend it! We wallow in it! And, if we continue, we will collapse in it.

Read the rest of Frosty’s commentary by clicking here.

June 26, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Population and sustainability: Can we avoid limiting the number of people?

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 10, 2009 at 12:34 pm

From Scientific American:

In an era of changing climate and sinking economies, Malthusian limits to growth are back—and squeezing us painfully. Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each. Less water for every cattle herder in the Horn of Africa. (The United Nations projects there will be more than four billion people living in nations defined as water-scarce or water-stressed by 2050, up from half a billion in 1995.) Less land for every farmer already tilling slopes so steep they risk killing themselves by falling off their fields. (At a bit less than six tenths of an acre, global per capita cropland today is little more than half of what it was in 1961, and more than 900 million people are hungry.) Less capacity in the atmosphere to accept the heat-trapping gases that could fry the planet for centuries to come. Scarcer and higher-priced energy and food. And if the world’s economy does not bounce back to its glory days, less credit and fewer jobs.

It’s not surprising that this kind of predicament brings back an old sore topic: human population and whether to do anything about it. Let’s concede up front that nothing short of a catastrophic population crash (think of the film Children of Men, set in a world without children) would make much difference to climate change, water scarcity or land shortages over the next decade or so. There are 6.8 billion of us today, and more are on the way. To make a dent in these problems in the short term without throwing anyone overboard, we will need to radically reduce individuals’ footprint on the environment through improvements in technology and possibly wrenching changes in lifestyle.

But until the world’s population stops growing, there will be no end to the need to squeeze individuals’ consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources. A close look at this problem is sobering: short of catastrophic leaps in the death rate or unwanted crashes in fertility, the world’s population is all but certain to grow by at least one billion to two billion people. The low-consuming billions of the developing world would love to consume as Americans do, with similar disregard for the environment—and they have as much of a right to do so. These facts suggest that the coming ecological impact will be of a scale that we will simply have to manage and adapt to as best we can.

Read more from Scientific American by clicking here.

June 10, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Hold steady: Population growth on a shrinking planet; If the population were to shrink, what would that mean for an economy based on growth?

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 10, 2009 at 6:39 am

From CommonDreams.org:

It’s highly unlikely that life as we know it – or want it – can continue for long unless we rein in population growth. Too many measures indicate that the great mass of us burning fossil fuels, gobbling up renewable resources, and generating toxic trash is overloading our life support ecosystems. In the central North Pacific Ocean gyre, swirling plastic fragments now outweigh plankton 46 to one. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is far higher today than at any point in the past 650,000 years, and climbing. Nearly one in four mammals is threatened with extinction, as is one in three amphibians and a quarter of all conifers. In many parts of the world, including the High Plains of North America, human water use exceeds annual average water replenishment; the United Nations predicts that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. Unsustainable farming practices cause the destruction and abandonment of almost 30 million acres of arable land each year. The list runs far too long.

Meanwhile, our population continues to grow in leapfrog fashion. Despite declines over the last several decades in the annual global population growth rate and near zero population growth in several countries, the number of humans is still increasing by 1.18 percent per year. That sounds manageable – until we do the math. With more than 6.7 billion of us, even a growth rate of just over one percent translates into 80 million more of us annually, the equivalent of nearly two Sudans, or three and a half Taiwans. Each year, China must find room and resources for eight million more people even though its population is growing by only a little more than a half of one percent annually. The US, with a growth rate of nearly one percent per year, increases by more than 2.9 million people annually, the equivalent of almost four new San Franciscos.

But dare we, as a matter of international or domestic policy, make an effort to reduce our population to a size that better fits our environment? Given that our economy is based on the idea of growth, wouldn’t a decrease in human numbers lead to a fiscal catastrophe? After all, it’s no coincidence that the last 200 years of historically unprecedented economic growth have been accompanied by an equally unprecedented increase in world population. During the 1800s and 1900s, up to half of world economic growth was likely due to population growth. As Georgetown University environmental historian John McNeill explains: “A big part of economic growth to date consists of population growth. More hands, more work, more things produced.”

More from CommonDreams.org by clicking here.

June 10, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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National Geographic special report: Global Food Crisis – What will it take to feed the world’s skyrocketing population?

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 28, 2009 at 7:58 am

From National Geographic:

It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, oblivious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound.

Read this National Geographic Special Report by clicking here.

May 28, 2009 · Filed Under Agriculture, Climate change & water supply, Water & Population

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UN Report: More people, climate change spark water crisis

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 12, 2009 at 5:14 am

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste are placing the world’s water supplies at threat, a landmark UN report said on Thursday. Compiled by 24 UN agencies, the 348-page document gave a grim assessment of the state of the planet’s fresh water, especially in developing countries, and described the outlook for coming generations as deeply worrying.

Water is part of the complex web of factors that determine prosperity and stability, it said. Lack of access to water helps drive poverty and deprivation and breeds the potential for unrest and conflict, it warned.

“Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” the third World Water Development Report said.

“Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity at various levels.”

Read more from the Sydney Morning Herald by clicking here.

March 12, 2009 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply, Water & Population

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Are we breeding ourselves to extinction? Cutting back on fossil fuels, shutting down our coal plants, and building seas of wind turbines, will be useless unless we nip population growth

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 11, 2009 at 6:53 am

From AlterNet:

All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.

We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms — an estimated 8,760 species die off per year — because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam’s elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is “the monster on the land.” Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic — the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.

The populations in industrialized nations maintain their lifestyles because they have the military and economic power to consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources. The United States alone gobbles up about 25 percent of the oil produced in the world each year. These nations view their stable or even zero growth birthrates as sufficient. It has been left to developing countries to cope with the emergent population crisis.

Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.

March 11, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Faustian dilemma and Hobson’s choice for Colorado: water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 10, 2009 at 5:36 am

From the Denver Examiner, columnist Frosty Wooldridge has written a commentary to a recent Denver Post article, but he brings up the issue of population growth and water resources (the ‘elephant in the room’, in my opinion). This is a discussion relevant to our problems here in California as we prepare to watch our population grow substantially, but we don’t discuss it either. Here’s an excerpt:

Everything driving the water crisis originates via hyper-population growth. Every crisis we face stems from overpopulation. The reason Shell thrusts itself into water rights issue stems from the fact that this nation faces a declining oil future.

Colorado added 1.5 million people in the last 15 years. It adds 100,000 people annually. Demographic projections show exponential population growth increasing, and by 2050, Colorado faces a mind numbing five to six million added humans. Because of it, the Denver Post in a piece by Mike Matz, “Losing Spaces” showed this state lost 1.65 million acres in the past 15 years to concrete and asphalt and expects to lose 3.1 million more acres by 2022. The destruction race in this state knows no bounds!

But, did you hear one mention about moving toward a stable population? Living within carrying capacity? Ecological footprint? Resource depletion? No! You didn’t! It is as if the Denver Post, on purpose, via ‘political correctness’ which provides them with a 21st century form of censure—will not address the great taboo.

Did journalist Jaffe interview any population experts like Governor Lamm, Dr. Albert Bartlett, Rob Beck, Fred Elbel, Stan Weekes or Dr. Diana Hull? No! Let’s make sure NOT to address what’s causing our crisis.

In other words, let’s continue our Faustian dilemma where we sell our water rights and souls in the present to make sure our children pay a terrible price in the future when we actually DO run out of water to grow crops, feed livestock and sustain ourselves.

Read the full text of Frosty’s column in the Denver Examiner by clicking here.

March 10, 2009 · Filed Under Water & Population

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Farmers face rising food demand, declining water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 13, 2009 at 1:40 pm

From Forbes:

A growing world population that’s eating more food will put more pressure on western plains farmers to boost yields while dealing with limited water supplies, experts said at a sustainability conference Thursday.

The world adds roughly 80 million people each year, and by 2023, it will need close to 400 million more metric tons of grain, said Rich Pottorff, chief economist for Doane Advisory Services. Per capita consumption also is rising. Yet yields are not rising fast enough to meet world demand, particularly for corn, which also is in demand for biofuels, he said.

Simply adding acreage is not an easy option, given rising land prices and loss of land for conservation, to protect threatened species or development. “We’re challenged to grow enough food with diminishing resources,” said Clay Scott, who raises wheat, cattle and corn in Ulysses, Kan.