Climate change and the overpopulation argument (original) (raw)
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The Environmental Politics of Population and Overpopulation
Numerous environmental theorists characterize human population growth as an unsustainable pandemic accountable for a variety of ecological problems. However, regional consumption patterns amplify the environmental impact of a population, making the two factors (consumption and population) difficult to evaluate separately. Many environmentalists advocate for wider distribution of family planning services, contraception, and sexual education to prevent population growth. Meanwhile, some rights advocates insist that population growth is the symptom of larger cultural injustices and that contraceptives are inappropriate tools to address these underlying inequities.
Book Review ‘Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation’
The Trumpeter, The Journal of Ecosophy, 29(1):64-72, 2013
Life on the Brink is an unusual volume in that it allows non-academic, activist voices as well as politicians, environmental studies scholars, and social scientists to participate in the argument that concerns us all, the argument about the future of our planet and of humanity. The common thread running through the essays of two dozen nature writers and activists hailing from a range of disciplines and offering varied perspectives is their shared concern about population growth. All contributors see population growth as a major force behind our most serious ecological problems, including global climate change, habitat loss and species extinctions, air and water pollution, and food and water scarcity. Despite the differences in perspectives, all contributors argue that ending population growth worldwide is a moral imperative that deserves renewed commitment.
Editors' Introduction: Are We Too Many? Sustainability and Population Politics
In-Spire, Journal of Law, Politics and Societies, vol.4, n.1, 2009
In posing the question "Are We Too Many?" for this issue of In-Spire we sought to confront and debate a controversial question in global politics -population control. Since Thomas Malthus' famous Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), the issue has been debated in relation to subjects as diverse (but interrelated) as food, resource scarcity, famine, overcrowding, birth control, migrations, security, reproduction and gender. Today population is even being discussed as one of the ingredients of a recipe to take us out of the current economic crisis: a transition to a low resource and energy economy accompanied by a decrease in population numbers. But can this nexus between population and contemporary global challenges be accepted? The papers in this issue present a range of perspectives on the topic, focusing mainly on the environment-population link, from debating the question and examining the discourse, to presenting case studies which challenge and redirect the focus of the debate. What these contributions have in common is that they show that the population question cannot be solely answered in scientific terms. It goes beyond calculations of the carrying capacity of nature and natural limits. Population is a social issue and a question of distribution.
Journal of Global Economy, 2010
Climate change and disasters are fast emerging as the most significant challenges of the 21st century as global risks with impacts far beyond just the environment and implications on national security and development. As the world continues its contemporary patterns of production and consumption, the future is at immense risk. Climate Change has the potential to alter the ability of the earth’s physical and biological systems to provide goods and services essential for sustainable development. Today, a number of mainstream population and environment groups are claiming that population growth is a major cause of climate change and that lesser birth rates are the solution. If we cannot stabilize population, there is not an ecosystem on earth that we can save. If developing countries cannot stabilize their populations almost immediately, many of them face the disintegration of ecosystem. But in reality, even if we could today achieve zero population growth that would barely touch the...
Overpopulation Discourse: Patriarchy, Racism, and the Specter of Ecofascism
Perspectives on Global Development and Technology , 2019
As our current climate crises increase in severity, discussions on solutions have found themselves at the forefront of mainstream media, and talked about by political actors and economic elites. While many of these solutions may seem ethical or even the an- swer to our ecological problem, we must take a critical look at the root causes in order to understand what actions are necessary. Without this, our discussions fall short, and tend to negatively affect marginalized communities. Family-planning programs aimed at the suppression of certain populations is one example used when discussing how to combat overpopulation in order to alleviate climate change. This superficial, West- ern, capitalist-driven idea and discussion, laced with sexist and racist undertones, is the discourse we will be analyzing. By employing a critical decolonial and ecofemi- nist lens, we will critique this discourse, and argue that it’s an all-too-common tool of deflection and scapegoating that white environmentalism employs in order to ignore historic power relations. Further, we will illuminate historical roots and trends around the family-planning movement, such as anti-immigrant sentiment, nationalism, and ecofascism.
Population Engineering and the Fight against Climate Change
Social Theory and Practice, 2016
Contrary to political and philosophical consensus, we argue that the threats posed by climate change justify population engineering, the intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations. Specifically, we defend three types of policies aimed at reducing fertility rates: (1) choice enhancement, (2) preference adjustment, and (3) incentivization. While few object to the first type of policy, the latter two are generally rejected because of their potential for coercion or morally objectionable manipulation. We argue that forms of each policy type are pragmatically and morally justified (perhaps even required) tools for preventing the harms of global climate change.
No One Is Illegal, UK, 2010
There is a conventional view in Britain that racism has been driven onto the defensive or even banished completely from most areas of daily life. The political Right, indeed, constantly portrays itself as the victim of “liberal oppression” and “political correctness gone mad”. Yet somehow, racism has won some huge victories in recent years, in all the liberal democracies, with very little opposition, to such an extent that the terms “fortress Britain”, “fortress Europe” and “fortress USA” are now quite normal usage; and, without even needing to be told, everybody understands what these fortifications are for: to stop the poorer, darker-skinned peoples of the world “flooding” into its richer, paler parts.