Population Dynamics - History

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• Population Dynamics - History
• Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
• English parson
• Became concerned that unrestricted population
  growth would cause demand to exceed availability
  of resources
• Predicted widespread poverty and famine
• Global population lt 1 billion
• Malthusians - People who forecast disaster due to
  overpopulation
• Many of Malthus predictions did not occur
• Agricultural improvements (did not foresee)
• Birth control (rejected on moral grounds)

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• Demographic Transition
• Theory developed to explain human population
  dynamics in response to economic development
• Cohen Four Stages
• High birth death rates (nearly equal but
  variable) ? Growth rate low
• Death rate falls, becomes less variable birth
  rate still high ? Growth rate rises, population
  increases. Mortality transition
• Birth rate drops, death rate remains low or
  declines, growth rate slows, population
  increases. Fertility transition
• Low birth death rates (nearly equal, not
  variable), growth rate low or negative,
  population larger than before (1)
• This process has occurred in many developed
  nations
• United States, Canada, Japan, Western Europe

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• Demographic Transition
• In recent years death rates in many developing
  nations have decreased
• Status of social and economic changes that will
  supposedly lead to stable populations is unclear
• Some neo-Malthusians pessimistic that fertility
  transition will occur
• Garrett Hardin - Lifeboat Ethics

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• Population Dynamics - Trends
• Demographics
• Global population reached 6 billion in Oct 1999
  and 7 billion in Oct 2011
• Most population growth currently taking place in
  developing nations
• Developing nations contain 80 of global
  population
• Percentage of global population growth in
  developing nations
• 1950 85
• Today 99

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Roberts 2011
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• Population Dynamics - Trends
• Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
• TFR Fecundity
• 2.0 Replacement level fertility
• Global TFR
• 1950 5.0
• 2010 2.49 (50 decrease)
• Africa 4.27 (Niger 6.86, Somalia 6.17)
• Asia 2.26 (India 2.52, China 1.79)
• N America 1.98 (Canada 1.62, Mexico 2.04,
  USA 2.02)
• Europe 1.53 (Bosnia 1.24, Belarus 1.29,
  Poland 1.29)
• PRB Map

Source UN Population Division
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UN Population Division
Roberts 2011
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Roberts 2011
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• Population Dynamics - Trends
• Population Projections - UN
• Low Variant (TFR 2.20 ? 1.55 by 2100)
• 2050 8.1 billion, 2100 6.2 billion
• Medium Variant (TFR 2.45 ? 2.03)
• 2050 9.3 billion, 2100 10.1 billion
• High Variant (TFR 2.70 ? 2.51)
• 2050 10.6 billion, 2100 15.8 billion
• Constant Variant (TFR 2.60 ? 4.44)
• 2050 10.9 billion, 2100 26.8 billion

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Roberts 2011
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• Population Dynamics - Trends
• Population Projections UN
• All scenarios include shifts in geographic
  distribution of population
• Medium variant
• Africa 22.0 of population in 2050 (15.0
  today)
• Asia 57.5 in 2050 vs. 60.6 today
• Europe 7.6 in 2050 vs. 10.7 today
• N. America 4.9 in 2050 vs. 5.1 today
• Latin America 8.0 in 2050 vs. 8.6 today
• Shifts in age structure

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Roberts 2011
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Roberts 2011
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• Population Environmental Effects
• I PAT (Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971)
• I Environmental Impact of nation
• P Population
• A Affluence (reflects consumption)
• T Technology (reflected in pollution)
• Ex Changes in CFC emissions related to
  technology, not population
• Developments in technology historically not
  directed toward environmental preservation
• Ecological Footprint
• Area per capita to provide resources utilized
• Compare to area available per capita in nation

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I PAT

• A number of people claim that A in I PAT is
  more important than P or T.
• We typically talk about affluence in terms of
  consumption.
• Many people (including all the people in this
  class) claim that they overconsume. Can we
  quantify overconsumption? Can we give an ethical
  account of overconsumption?

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Ecological Footprints
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Ecological FootprintsDefinition and Comparative
Statistics

• The ecological footprint of a specified
  population is
• the area of ecologically productive land and
  water in various classes
• (cropland, pasture, forests, etc.) that would
  be required on a
• continuous basis
• 1. to provide all the energy/material resources
  consumed, and
• 2. to absorb all the wastes discharged
• by that population with prevailing technology,
  wherever on Earth
• that land (and water) is located.
• According to one estimate from the Global
  Footprint Network, the average person on Earth in
  2007 used 2.7 global hectares per capita.
• Lowest Afghanistan 0.6 ha.
  and Bangladesh 0.6 ha.
• Highest United Arab Emirates 10.7 ha
  and Qatar 10.5 ha.
• United States 8.0 ha.
• http//www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?conten
  tnational_footprints

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The Power is Yours!

• Consumers should adjust their activities out of
  concerns for the Earth!

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Commercial Break

• The Power is yours
• to be happy!
• She or he who dies
• with the most toys
• wins!

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Two Concepts of Consumption

1. Buying, using, and discarding of specific
   commodities or goods.
2. Depleting the Earths resources and exhausting
   its capacity to safely absorb effluents and
   emissions.

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Consumption in the Developed World

• We increasingly think of ourselves as consumers
  rather than citizens.
• Much of what is produced is not necessary for
  biological survival and caters to consumers
  discretionary subjective preferences and wants,
  often shaped by targeted marketing.
• Economic well-being increasingly is tied to a
  quest for subjective experiences (e.g., music
  versus a CD), but such experiences still require
  material flows.
• Economic well-being also increasingly is
  service-oriented, in that people seek
  labor-intensive activities (e.g., going out to
  dinner for a the experience of having an
  aesthetically attractive meal), but such
  activities still require material flows.

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Consumption in the Developing World

• Many people aspire to live the consumptive
  lifestyle of the developed world.
• However, one central concern tends to be poverty
  and meeting basic needs.
• 
  
• Today 2.5 billion people live in poverty
  (households whose consumption expenditure per
  person per year has less purchasing power than
  785.76 had in the United States in 1993)
• Flushing out poverty
• 830 million people are chronically undernourished
• 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water
• 2.6 billion people lack access to basic
  sanitation
• 1 billion people lack adequate shelter
• 2 billion people lack access to needed medicine
• 774 million people are illiterate
• 18 million people die prematurely from
  poverty-related causes each year (50 thousand a
  day, 27 thousand of whom are children)

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I PAT

• While we can quantify people and population
  growth rates, and while we can attempt to
  quantify affluence or consumption in terms such
  as the ecological footprint, it might be
  difficult to think of how we might quantify
  technology.
• Technology results in two kind of things (1)
  artifacts used for production and consumption,
  and (2) unwanted by-products pollution and
  waste.
• There is an entire field of philosophy called
  philosophy of technology that examines what
  technology is and how we are related to it.

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Thinking about TechnologySome Contemporary Ideas

• Technological determinism As technology
  develops and changes, the institutions of society
  change.
• Autonomous technology Technology increasingly
  works in an autonomous fashion, independent of
  humans.
• Autonomous technological determinism More and
  more, technology operates autonomously and
  reduces human life to the narrow demands of
  efficiency,
• Human nature and technology
• Philosophers who tend to see technology in
  positive terms as primarily beneficial tend to
  define human nature in physical terms of
  tool-making. Our hands define who we are.
• Philosophers who tend to see technology in
  negative terms as a danger or a curse tend to
  define human nature in mental terms of
  language-using and meaning-making. Our minds
  define who we are.

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The Technological Vision

• Progress might be defined as acquiring
• 1. the most numerous,
• 2. the widest variety,
• 3. and the very latest or most refined
  commodities
• that are
• a. easier to use,
• b. more instantaneous,
• c. more pervasive,
• d. safer,
• e.
  and more aesthetically
• 
  pleasing than what you
• 
  currently own.

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Some Ethical Concerns about Technology

• Technology tends to outrun ethics, as we invent
  more and more novel forms of technology and only
  afterward begin to think about the ethics of
  creating or using the technology.
• It can be difficult to locate ethical
  responsibility within modern (or postmodern)
  technosocial systems.
• Technological progress, consumption patterns, and
  thinking of ourselves in a fundamental sense as
  technoconsumers tends to become so important
  that it can subvert ethics, politics, religion,
  and our own personal conceptions of the good
  life.

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Ulrich Beck (1992) We live in a risk society

• To be modern is to live in a modern nation-state.
• A modern nation-state is a risk society. This is
  marked by an exponential increase in the
  production and use of hazardous chemical
  substances that permeate social institutions,
  human bodies, and the natural world.
• The new hazards of the risk society
• 1. Are unlimited in time and space.
• 2. Potentially put everyone at risk.
• 3. May be minimized but not eliminated.
• 4. Are irreversible.
• 5. Have diverse sources that make tracking
  responsibility impossible.
• 6. Are incalculable in ways that exceed the
  capacities of organizations to provide insurance
  against them or compensation.
• 7. May be identified and measured only by
  scientific means.

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Human Populations The Classic Debate

• Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
• English parson who advocated moral restraint as a
  
• check on population growth for working and poor
• classes because population unchecked increases
• geometrically while food supplies only grow at
  arithmetic rates.
• Malthusians or NeoMalthusians such as Paul
  Ehrlich.
• Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794)
• French political economist who advocated a
  liberal
• economy, equal rights for all, and the
  advancement
• of scientific knowledge to continuously improve
  
• the human condition.
• Optimists or Technological Optimists such
  as Julian Simon.

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Julian Simon

• Lets not be so pessimistic. The supply of
  natural resources is infinite. Why?
• Finite is a mathematical and not an empirical
  concept.
• Finite has no precise, unambiguous meaning.
• Natural resources services and not amounts of
  things.
• We cannot determine all the natural resources
  that exist.
• We become more efficient and adept at discovering
  new resources and exploiting old ones.

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• Resource Availability The Bet
• Resource Costs
• In 1980, Julian Simon issued a public offer to
  stake US10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of
  non-government-controlled raw materials
  (including grain and oil) will not rise in the
  long run.
• Paul Ehrlich and two colleagues accepted
  challenge
• The Bet
• Ehrlich and colleagues selected five metals
  (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, tungsten) they
  felt would undergo large price increases.
• They purchased (on paper) 200 worth of each on
  Sep 29 1980.
• They designated Sep 29 1990 as the date to
  evaluate the bet.
• If the inflation-adjusted prices of these metals
  rose, Simon would pay Ehrlich 10,000. If the
  prices fell, Ehrlich would pay Simon the loss in
  value.
• During this 10-year period, the worlds
  population grew by over 800 million people.
• The price of each of the five metals dropped, in
  some cases substantially (e.g. tin fell from
  8.72/pound to 3.88/pound).
• Ehrlich lost the bet, to the tune of 576.07.

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I PAT Population, Affluence/Consumption, and
Technology

• Is I PAT a good way to think about human
  environmental impact? Why or why not?
• What is the proper place/role for technology, or
  what forms of technology are appropriate?
• How much do we need to consume, and to what end
  do we consume?
• Is the Earth overpopulated? Why or why not?