How Population Amplifies Our Climate Emergency

As of October 2021, our human population is at ~7.9 billion people, and we are adding roughly 80 million humans in net sum to that every year. This is roughly a 1% increase each year, and the equivalent of adding a country the size of Germany every year – only without adding any extra space or resources. Simply 80 million new living, breathing souls, each of whom will consume natural resources, discard waste, and demand clean air, water, food, and shelter.

This has put our planet in ecological overshoot: it is unable to produce or replenish the resources needed at the rate that humans are multiplying. Humans are (literally and figuratively speaking) “eating up” the biophysical basis of our very own existence. “This is the very definition of (fatal) biophysical unsustainability,” says Dr. William Rees, founder of the Ecological Footprint concept, bio-ecologist, and ecological economist at the University of British Columbia.

Population growth and consumption magnify all our planetary crises, including our climate emergency.

While human actions account for almost 100% of current climate change, there are two factors to the problem that human population poses to the climate.

Firstly, the rate at which humans are multiplying is unsustainable: while roughly half of the nations have already achieved below replacement value fertility (e.g., below 2.1 Total Fertility Rate), more than 100 nations have not yet achieved this “demographic transition.”

The second problem stems from humans’ behaviors, especially in the consumer economies and wealthy regions. Humans with disposable income consume at ever-growing levels that are obscenely wasteful, exorbitant, reckless, and disproportionate. Humans are using and wasting more resources than ever before.

This discussion should not descend into a blame game. Higher fertility rates in some developing nations do pose great threats to our planet, as these nations transition into the global middle class, with an ever-growing ecological footprint. However, lower fertility rates do not exempt more developed nations from also considering having fewer children. The average western person’s carbon footprint is at least two to eight times – or for the richest, even up to 30 times – than that of a modest farmer in a rural village in Bangladesh.

What can be done?

The good news is, we have it in our collective power to bend the global population curve through ethical, just, and empowering strategies, especially focused on women and girls. But urgent actions and shifts in mindsets, societal and cultural approaches, and behaviors are needed.

In collaboration with some of the world's leading scientists, we have compiled a list of initiatives that we must act on and demand our local and global government leaders to implement now:

Investment in women’s education and voices

A top priority is creating and strengthening access to education, economic empowerment, and leadership opportunities for women and girls across the globe. This includes increasing funding for educational programs in developing countries, as well as heightening the impact of women’s empowerment and raising up women’s voices everywhere.

This effort will fall short, however, if we don’t manage to marshal sufficient funding for worldwide access to family planning technologies and programs, not only for all women and girls but also for men. Thoughtful and robust investment in ethical reproductive norm shifting media programs, which have a proven track record, will also be required.

Supporting and broadening mindset shifts

Urgent – yet culturally sensitive – shifts in mindsets, sex education, child-rearing practices, and religious guidance on family planning are required. We must speak up against gender inequalities, such as gender discrimination, tolerated harassment, child marriage, rape culture, and domestic violence. Women and girls are key leaders and resources in the fight against our climate emergency and essential to planetary restoration. The suppression of women’s rights and freedoms has had a profoundly negative effect on all of humankind.

Changing how we measure countries’ wellbeing and prosperity

We must undo the fallacy of holding a country’s GDP as the right measure for its peoples’ wellbeing and prosperity. The misconception that an ever-larger workforce is advantageous to our economic health ignores income inequality, job-replacing technological advances, and the depletion of natural resources, which results in a “smaller piece of the pie” for all. Instead, we must improve the systems and programs that support our workforce, such as investments in education, skill development, health insurance, and financial stability to ensure economic and community wellbeing.

Promotion of the benefits of smaller families

In smaller families, each child can receive better care, better education, more space, more personalized attention, a greater chance at naturally distributed resources, and ultimately a better life. Leaders in government and business can help promote smaller families by implementing advantageous policies. Independent organizations and individuals can help by spreading awareness that “smaller families live better” (such as popular campaigns that have run around the world with great success, which exposed people to changed attitudes toward women’s roles, family violence, and contraception).

Adapting individual thinking and contribution

We must acknowledge we don’t have the luxury, space, or time anymore of ignoring humanity’s population dynamics, and their impact on our planet. While it may create awkward or uncomfortable conversations, we must be clear that there are ethical, just, and empowering strategies that can help us achieve a lower, more sustainable population plateau, while roundly rejecting the coercive approaches that have been tried in the past.

There is no need to demonize having kids or those who have larger families. Many people have no children at all, for a variety of reasons. On average, humanity needs to achieve far below replacement value fertility, so that we can bring ourselves in balance with our planet. What we must do, is compassionately advocate and raise awareness, even and especially in prosperous communities, that if we all have “one less child”, our planet, and future generations would hugely benefit.

Does it really affect you?

While the climate emergency will affect every single one of us, this is not only about stabilizing our climate, biodiversity, and natural resources. Getting our population to a sustainable level is about the quality of your life: every day the number of people eating the pie gets bigger, but the pie doesn’t.

Whether or not you must act to help curb population growth can be answered with one simple question:

“If you’re in the middle of a disaster and you could have one less person to rescue, why wouldn’t you?”

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