Orange County Global Warming Committee

Introduction
Launch of the State of the World Population Report – 18 Nov 2009
UN: Fight Climate Change With Free Condoms – 18 Nov 2009

Introduction
The number of humans now inhabiting the Earth is around 6.6 billion. Our population has increased nearly 10-fold over the past 300 years and by a factor of 4 over the last century. This explosion in our numbers has greatly intensified our impact on the environment and it has profoundly changed our relationship to our natural support systems. There are also signs, however, that the rate of increase in the human population has begun to abate (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Long-term world population growth, 1750-2050. (Source: United Nations Population Division, ''The World at Six Billion'')
The current expansion in our population began with the Industrial Revolution, about 200 years ago. After reaching 1 billion around 1800, it took only 130, 33, 15, 13 and 12 years to add each succeeding billion, Around 1970, the increase in population maximized at a rate of about 2% per year— some thousand times faster than the increase in prehistoric times. Recently, the rate has dropped from 2.0% to 1.1%.

Figure 2. Total fertility trajectories of the world and major development groups, 1950-2050 (medium variant). (Source: United Nations Population Division, ''World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. Highlights'')
Fertility is now declining, and it has dropped below replacement level of 2.1 children in a woman's lifetime in most developed countries. Globally, an average woman gives birth to 2.6 live offspring; however in some countries, particularly in Africa, the average is 7 live births per woman. By contrast, in Japan and much of Europe the average woman bears 1.3 babies. The US has the highest population growth rate of any industrialized nation—roughly 1% per year – because of a combination of a high rate of both procreation and immigration.
The average human life-span has increased to 65 years compared with 30-40 years in pre-industrial times (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Life expectancy at birth for the world and major development groups, 1950-2050. (Source: United Nations Population Division, ''World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. Highlights”).
The demographic transition: The human population explosion reflects the excess of births over deaths. Until about 200 years ago, both birth and death rates were high. As the industrial revolution brought a relief from human hardship, the unintended consequence was a population explosion due to continued high birth rates combined with a decrease in death rates. To respond to this problem, some nations developed incentives to dramatically limit procreation, and fertility rates fell.
Figure 4 illustrates a 4-stage model of population growth called the demographic transition. At first there are high rates of births and deaths, resulting in a relatively stable population. During the 2nd stage, birth rates remain high, but death rates decline, and the population increases. In the 3rd stage birth rates decline and population growth slows. In the final stage, birth and death rates are low and growth slows further or declines. At this point, the population has expanded and longevity increased. Most countries are currently the 3rd stage of their demographic transition and other are in stage 4.

Figure 4. The classic stages of the demographic transition. ''Population Bulletin, Transitions in World Population'')
In some developing countries, mostly in Africa, the demographic transition process has stalled because low death rates have been achieved, but high birth rates continue. This may lead to a demographic trap in which rapid growth prevents the kind of economic, social, and technical progress that could resolve it. Currently, the developing nations as a whole have 80% of the world’s population and generate 96% of its growth.
Declining birth rates: In some traditional settings, children are economic assets. Sons are particularly valued because they generally inherit the family land and they are responsible for caring for their aging parents. A parent might expect to have 4 sons, one or two of whom might survive childhood. Such plans become institutionalized in cultural practices.
Parents who chose to limit family size, often do so because of the cost of raising children versus the expected benefit. Many cultures advocate limits in procreativity through celibacy, late marriage, sexual abstinence, and various natural methods of birth control. Other more desperate measures include abortion, that may account for termination of 20 million pregnancies a year, and when the sex of the fetus can be determined female babies are often aborted more frequently than male babies.

Figure 5. Average annual rate of change of the population of the world and major development groups, 1950-2050 (medium variant). (Source: United Nations Population Division, ''World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. Highlights”).
Modern societies provide a social safety net that enables families to limit their size while investing more resources in each child.  Empowering women encourages them to seek an education, marry later, and practice contraceptive techniques to limit their fertility.
The human death rate in developed countries is not likely to change substantially in the future; however, global birth rates will probably continue to decline, even without government coercion.  Nevertheless, there is a constituency of pro-birth voices in the world. Some of their thinking is summarized below:
If human capital drives wealth creation, the more people we have the better off we are.
Many counties want to see a more youthful population, since youth have greater strength and vitality. Also, young wage-earners are a source of tax revenues.
An aging population will have fewer wage earners per retiree, which will place an increase economic burden on national retirement plans.
Cultural and religious beliefs often encourage procreation. The number of children can be a sign of virility.
Employees welcome a large pool of potential workers.
Impoverished people may believe their progeny are their greatest hope for their own support as they age.
Affluent people can afford to enjoy large families.

For these and other reasons, governments often promote policies that encourage higher birth rates. But they fail to consider the possibility that humans might soon exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Articles

Article from United Nations Population Fund 18 November 2009

Link: http://www.unfpa.org/public/site/global/lang/en/pid/4195

Launch of the State of World Population Report

In a new report to be issued on Wednesday, 18 November, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will show how people, especially empowered women, could make a difference in the fight against climate change.
The State of World Population 2009, entitled Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate, will be launched in London, Washington, D.C., Paris, Bangkok, Johannesburg, Mexico City and more than 120 other capitals worldwide.
UNFPA will also release the report’s youth supplement, At the Frontier: Young People and Climate Change, featuring profiles of youth already facing the challenges of a warming world

Article from Associated Press 18 November 2009, by Maria Cheng

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/ap_on_sc/climate_population_growth

UN: Fight Climate Change With Free Condoms

The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.
The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions."
"As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the report said.
The world's population will likely rise from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, with most of the growth in less developed regions, according to a 2006 report by the United Nations.
The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. "The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect," the report said. It also said that while there is no doubt that "people cause climate change," the developing world has been responsible for a much smaller share of world's greenhouse gas emissions than developed countries.
Still, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the U.N. Population Fund's executive director, told a news conference in London on Wednesday that global warming could be catastrophic for people in poor countries, particularly women.
"We have now reached a point where humanity is approaching the brink of disaster," she said.
In three weeks, a global conference will be held in Copenhagen aimed at reaching a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
On Wednesday, one analyst criticized the U.N. Population Fund's pronouncements as alarmist and unhelpful.
"It requires a major leap of imagination to believe that free condoms will cool down the climate," said Caroline Boin, a policy analyst at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank.
She also questioned earlier efforts by the agency to control the world's population.
In its 1987 report, the U.N. Population Fund warned that once the global population hit 5 billion, the world "could degenerate into disaster." At the time, the agency said "more vigorous attempts to slow undue population growth" were needed in many countries.
According to Boin, "Numerous environmental indicators show that with development and economic growth we are able to preserve more natural habitats. There is no causal relationship between population density and poverty."
In this month's Bulletin, the World Health Organization's journal, two experts also warned about the dangers of linking fertility to climate change.
"Using the need to reduce climate change as a justification for curbing the fertility of individual women at best provokes controversy and at worst provides a mandate to suppress individual freedoms," wrote WHO's Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum and Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan.