Alviston Blog

I remember learning about the “population explosion” in elementary school, which was a while ago now. People were worried about how we were going to produce enough food if the population continued to grow at the rate it was.

In talking about climate change, most experts focus on the burning of fossil fuels as the main cause of excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Others, like Dr. Joseph Bookstein from UCSD, say we are missing a very simple point. He says that all the technological fixes are fine, but they will not be enough if we do not do anything to control the exploding population.

Dr. Bookstein says that we will need to get the fertility rate down worldwide, to the point that will cause the global population to decline instead of increase. We are at 6.7 billion now, and predicted to hit 9 billion around 2050. Dr. Bookstein says to curb global warming, we need to get the population down to 4.5 billion by 2050 in addition to all the tech fixes, such as solar and wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric, and other renewables. Moreover, we need to eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source altogether. Otherwise, we will just continue to get warmer as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

While population control may not be a popular idea, it seems to fit into the “sustainable” model. Many countries have taken steps to control population, by making contraceptives more available, and empowering women to make the choice to have fewer children. Some countries have fertility rates less than one.

As we have said many times, everything is connected, and we need to deal with the hard questions if we are going to solve this. We have realized for many years that climate change was coming, and yet we have gone on putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We have known for a long time that there was a limit to how many people the Earth can sustain. By using the stored carbon in fossil fuels, we have been able to produce enough food. Although we knew there was a limit, we may not have known what would eventually cause the limit. Now we do.

All the countries in the world know about climate change. For twenty years, the world has held conferences to try to reach an agreement as to what to do. As of yet, world leaders have not seen the seriousness of the situation. They are fixated only on money, referring to the negative effect renewable energy usage and population declines would have on the economy. However, it seems obvious that if civilization collapses, the economy will not matter all that much.

–Mark Alvis