From John Rowley, People & the Planet

In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, A Final Warning, James Lovelock is quite clear that the underlying cause of our environmental predicament is the huge growth of the human population, whose activities and wastes are polluting and heating up the earth and destroying its rich biodiversity.

It is not a popular idea. Nor is his conviction that it is now too late to reverse the process. Gaia must take its course, cull the human population to something like one billion – most of them living nearer to the poles, well away from the deserts that will cover much of the remaining regions of the earth. Evolution may then, eventually, give humanity another chance. (See an interview with Lovelock in the New Scientist here).

Not every one is so pessimistic. A recent study by McKinsey says that if we move resolutely to a ‘green global economy’, this could not only protect the planet from the worst effects of climate change but be surprisingly affordable. (See: 'Global green economy can save the planet'). James ‘Gus’ Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, is not so sure we can move that fast, based on our past failure to stop the rise in carbon emissions.

"All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in human population or the world economy. Just continue to generate greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in." But, as he says, human activities are not holding at their current level, but continuing to grow, alongside the human population, already set to reach 7 billion by 2012. (See Speth’s paper here and population projection here)

Fatoumata, a 15-year-old in Mali, holds her newborn son Moussa. She was 14 when she got married and she has never attended school. Her husband is 27. Photo © Save the Children

So it seems sensible, alongside every effort create a global ‘green economy’, to make a much greater effort to stabilise and reduce human numbers through all those socially desirable policies which educate girls, improve reproductive health and make good quality family planning services readily available.

Lester Brown explains how this can help ease pressure on the land and on the environment in an article on the People & the Planet website (See COMMENTARY: Why population still matters). The good news is that President Obama has already moved to restore family planning funding to the UN Population Fund, an act that will spur fresh interest in population planning around the world. (See Obama ends Gag Rule and pledges UNFPA funding).

This will be of special importance in Africa where millions of poor and increasingly stressed farming families urgently need investment of this sort. We report on this website on how agencies in Uganda, where population is on course to reach 130 million by 2050, are trying to put a revised population programme into action. (See Uganda revises its population policy.)

And we have commissioned a special report on the population situation in Ethiopia, where eight out ten of that country’s people, seek to eke a living from the drying land. Action on all fronts must be the order of the day, if Lovelock’s grim forecast is to be avoided.

Related Reading:
Can Burying Charcoal Cool Down the Planet?
Climate Proofing the World's Food Supply