Dismantle Civilisation

Some thoughts by Paul Chefurka

Introduction

One of the more contentious bun fights among environmental and ecological activists is over the role of overpopulation in the anthropogenic deterioration of the natural world. The debate coalesces loosely into two opposing camps: the overpopulation camp and the overconsumption camp.

The former insists that raw human numbers play a decisive role in the growing ecological damage. As evidence, the adherents point to the parallel curves of energy consumption, waste generation, resource depletion and population growth. They argue that aggregate human activity is responsible for much of the damage, and that a reduction in population would automatically result in both less ongoing damage and a greater opportunity for the Earth’s systems to heal themselves.

On the other side of the coin are those who locate the problem in our consumption habits. They point to the relative consumption patterns of industrialized and developing nations (where an American consumes 30 times as much of the world’s resources as a Bangladeshi), and argue that restraint in consumption trumps restraint in population growth.

Those who argue that overconsumption is more damaging have an easier time making their case. The evidence is intuitively obvious from the amount of resource use and waste generation in rich, industrialized countries. Even when these countries have very low (or even negative) rates of population growth, their overall consumption and waste production tends to grow. This situation supports the vehement insistence of low-consumption countries with higher levels of population growth that the rich nations must address their own consumption before insisting on population curbs.