This is the second part of a series. Part one, which you can read here, discussed the inexorable rise in carbon dioxide levels and how it is manifesting in extreme weather events.
Explosive population growth
From about half a billion people in 1600, one billion in 1800, world population is now around eight billion, and forecast to be ten billion by about 2060. This inevitably puts enormous pressure on the world’s natural and environmental resources and is probably unsustainable.
“Populations expand in such a way as to overtake the development of sufficient land for crops”
– Thomas Malthus, 1798.
This, Malthus conjectured, would cause widespread hunger and death, and would act as a limiting factor on unconstrained population growth.
This theory may yet prove correct, though could perhaps be rephrased as:
“Populations contract when environmental conditions deteriorate making life unsustainable”
Human populations are no different to other animal species in that respect. They rise or fall depending on their environment. But the idea of politically inspired ‘population control’ is probably unrealistic and undesirable.
Human nature
Humans naturally seek to make a living, house and feed their families, and improve themselves. If you live in a shack, you will strive to build a house. If you grew up uneducated, you will strive to obtain an education for your children. If you live in a small, damp, or cold flat or house without a garden, you will strive to move to something bigger and better equipped.
But this natural and reasonable process has now reached absurd lengths in some sections of society, where every car/house/holiday/boat/job/clothing outfit has to be regularly followed by something newer, bigger or better than the last one, or bigger and better than ones’ neighbour, in an endless race for additional comforts, pleasures, competitive advantage or status. Both reasonable consumption and conspicuous consumption and the consumer society has exploded. My early years, like most others in the 1940s, were spent without central heating, carpets, a washing machine, a fridge, a vacuum cleaner, a car, a garden, an electric blanket etc. Floating gin palaces, private jets and multiple home ownership are the most blatant examples of excessive consumption. Private affluence for a few, public squalor for many.
Growth in inequality
There have been rises in inequality of income, wealth and peoples’ carbon footprint in many countries. The rich have become richer, fuelling their acquisitiveness and adding disproportionately to global warming, and the poor relatively poorer, making them more vulnerable.
According to Oxfam, the richest 10% of the world’s population accounted for over half (52%) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015, and in 2019 the super-rich 1% were responsible for the same quantity of emissions (16%) as 66% of the lowest income people (5 billion).
Explosive industrial growth
From about $1trillion in 1800, world GDP grew to $8.5tn in 1950, and $119tn in 2020 (constant 2011 prices, source: Our World in Data). Over the decades, technology and productivity endlessly improved, demand and supply endlessly increased, better products and methods were endlessly invented, and the global economy grew and grew as transportation costs per unit fell. The system worked incredibly well, with increased human longevity and rising average living standards and quality of life for most people over the medium and longer term, despite many being left behind or trampled on in the process.
Fossil fuel subsidies
Governments provide financial help to their fossil fuel companies to encourage economic growth, employment, energy security and wealth-creation. The subsidies take various forms, such as tax breaks, direct payments, grants, price controls, tax credits, exploration tax reductions, offsets of losses, preferential loans, and implicit subsidies such as favourable public infrastructure improvements. It is estimated that world-wide fossil fuel subsidies amount to $10.5 tn per annum (The Conversation).
Short-termism
Major countries have made some progress, although most have not made nearly enough, especially Australia, the USA, and Canada. Priority has been given by so many countries to their own economy, the tax revenues and employment that comes with continued use of fossil fuels, and to their understanding of government survival and re-electability in the short term.
This short-termism, prioritising the economy now, eating jam today, comes at the expense of the medium and longer term, tomorrow. Through support of a more extensive and faster green transition with greater attention to social justice, there could be lower energy costs, and a good chance of averting a climate-induced catastrophe for the human race. The current prioritisation of the short term is a trajectory which is likely to lead to the longer-term elimination of the human race as we know it. No tomorrow.
But it is a trajectory which is being widely followed, and indeed advocated, for example in The Daily Telegraph. Author Jeremy Warner asks, why should the UK be actively pursuing net-zero when it only represents 1% of world emissions and when other countries like China, USA and Norway ignore their UN COP commitments and prioritize their own economies over protecting the climate? When other countries are cheating, so should the UK.
There are several replies to that. A faster transition to a green economy will provide the UK with more self-sufficiency and security in its energy supply, and deliver power to consumers and industry at a cheaper price; it will show the world that the UK honours its international obligations, which will inspire other countries to follow suit; and it will help to avert the climate catastrophe which is rapidly approaching and which will spell disaster and death to the UK and to the many people and communities around the world to whom we owe a moral obligation.
Also in The Daily Telegraph, author David Blackmon welcomes ‘The Return of Sanity to the Business World’ and the roll-back, he claims, of ‘the madness of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing’, as fossil fuel companies like BP, Shell, and Glencore adjust their portfolios away from sustainable sources and back to fossil fuels, including coal, and China doubles down on its use of coal. Business, not morality. But surely this is a very biased, regressive, irresponsible, and partisan view of such developments, and is in the face of repeated and urgent pleas from the United Nations not to act in this way.
Many people would choose, perhaps through force of circumstances or because of other priorities, not to save for their own future retirement. Psychologically, delaying gratification is hard. But the UK Government requires them to do so, through their national insurance, tax and employee superannuation payments.
Delaying a swift transition to a green economy is just as foolhardy. It will condemn future generations to a much harder life or extinction, which is not a legacy that current parents or grandparents would wish for their children and grandchildren. But as with pension saving, it will only happen if governments require them to do so. This should be a relatively easy sell, though it would be important to relate the payments to the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
Downsides
All the extra people, with their drive, cooperation and ability to succeed intact, have participated in and driven the economic system, causing the world economy to grow exponentially as the industrial revolution has spread. This was all largely made possible and supported by relatively cheap and available fossil-fuelled energy to drive all the mining, production, development, investment, packaging and transportation.
The natural environment, such as forests, green spaces, farmed land, oceans, rivers, ice sheets, air, plants, animals and natural resources such as coal, oil and gas, have been used freely, extensively over-exploited and plundered, and used as a dumping ground for waste.
Authoritarian governments proceed according to their own priorities. Democratic societies are run on shareholder capitalist lines, where company survival, size and profit are the main objectives, achieved by meeting and expanding demand. Laws, regulations, and taxes do place some boundaries on the drive for profit, securing some limited consideration of other objectives such as employee welfare and environmental impact.
Environmental boundaries
But environmental impacts have been very largely neglected, or only lightly considered, and nature, including its ability to store and process carbon, has been extensively depleted by all the excesses, with much of that unthinking, careless or wanton behaviour still on-going.
The planet’s environmental boundaries and limits have been comprehensively breached. The effects, most evident in global warming and nature depletion, and the consequences, are now glaringly obvious and threatening to all. Humans as a species are now becoming the victims of their own success. The Club of Rome, in their 1972 report ‘The Limits to Growth’, first drew the world’s attention to the consequences for planet Earth and its inhabitants. Their dire but far-sighted forecasts are seen in this graph:
Their report was greeted with woefully myopic scepticism at the time.
Now, the Guardian tells us ‘Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought’:
“ … many climate scientists predict a 3°C rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, and a 3°C temperature increase will cause ‘precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100 … the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels and curbing the impacts of climate change, while not trivial, pale in comparison to the cost of climate change itself”
In fact many respected climate models are forecasting 4°C or 5°C rises by 2100. Because these rises are averages, this could mean rises of 6°C, 8°C or 10°C at the poles, the ice sheets wiped out, and sea level rises sufficient to wipe out many coastal cities and areas.
Part Three will consider possible ways forward for the people and the planet. Click here to read it
More from Paul Ryder
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