Last year we reported a talk he gave to a posh gathering in London, chaired by no less a personage than Prince Phillip, in which he said only “flat earthers” disagree with his view that only population reduction can save the planet. Contraception, he said, “is the humane way, the powerful option which allows all of us to deal with the problem, if we collectively choose to do so.”

We haven’t previously mentioned that Sir David is also a patron of World Land Trust. This week he spoke on behalf of that group to yet another posh meeting in London, this one attended by “lawyers, city investors and business people.” (The meeting is reported in the UK Guardian.)

He repeated his message that Third World overbreeding is a huge threat, but this time he was less sanguine about the efficacy of “the humane way.”

In fact, he said, it just isn’t possible to stop population growth in time to save the planet. “Nothing we can do will stop that increase. We may be able to slow it, but stop it in our lifetimes we cannot.”

Since the population bomb can’t be stopped, Attenborough says we need to focus on “making sure mankind doesn’t spread willy nilly over every square yard of the globe.”

How? By buying large tracts of rainforest, and converting them into private wildlife reserves.

Two questions arise immediately. Who will pay for this land? And what happens to the people who live there?

The answer to the first question is simple. Attenborough thinks big businesses should contribute the needed cash to World Land Trust, which will buy the land and hand it over to local NGOs that promise to keep it safe.

Some might object that business doesn’t have a great record of environmental protection, but Attenborough is more than willing to slather greenwash over any corporation that makes a tax deductible donation. Businesses may have defiled the earth in the past, but they just didn’t know better. Today, he says, “Wealth empowers, and businesses have by no means been slow in helping. We’ve gone to multinationals over and over again.”

As for the second question – WLT preserves are no-go areas for those overbreeding locals. According to the WLT website, donors may be allowed to visit as ecotourists, but no one else gets in. “If there is occasional incursion into the forests this is quickly dealt with by the park wardens who are familiar with the borders.”

WLT is all in favor of REDD+, the UN-sanctioned program to privatize Third World forests and use them for carbon trading. In a recent statement, WLT president John Burton described the plan as “by far the best option on the table for raising significant funds for biodiversity conservation.”

The people who actually live in those forests, in contrast, say that REDD+ “threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities and could result in the biggest land grab of all time.”

Through Optimum Population Trust, Attenborough works to prevent poor people from coming to England. And through World Land Trust, he works to prevent them from living in their homelands.
And his rich donors, who do more to destroy the earth every day than his Third World victims do in their lifetimes, get tax deductions and carbon credits.

Population of world ‘could grow to 15bn by 2100′
“Nearly 7 billion people now inhabit planet but projections that number will double this century have shocked academics“

The headline in the Daily Mail, Britain’s largest circulation daily, was even more sensationalist:

“World population will more than double to 15 billion by 2100, says UN“

The Guardian story tells us:

“The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates….

“That figure is likely to shock many experts as it is far higher than many current estimates. A previous UN estimate had expected the world to have more than 10 billion people by 2100; currently, there are nearly 7 billion.”

The Guardian‘s editors repeated the claim in an editorial on October 23. “Without radical action, the UN now predicts the world’s population doubling again before the end of this century.”

Population Matters – the brand-name recently adopted by the arch-populationists of Optimum Population Trust – quickly posted the Guardian October 22 article on its website.

Populationists around the world have jumped on the wagon: less than 48 hours after the Guardian article first appeared, a Google search for “15 Billion by 2100″ found “about 10,900″ results.

But the Guardian article isn’t true. The UN isn’t releasing a new population forecast this week, experts aren’t shocked, and there is virtually no possibility that global population will ever reach 15 Billion.

For starters, the United Nations Population Fund doesn’t compile population statistics or produce population forecasts. Any statistics it publishes come from a separate UN agency, the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social affairs. The Population Division’s report, World Population Prospects, 2010 Revision, was published six months ago – another isn’t due until 2013.

In this year’s report, the Population Division says that if current population trends continue, the world’s population will be 9.3 Billion in 2050, and 10.1 Billion in 2100. Their projections stop there, but if the trends they describe continue, world population growth will stop early in the 2100s.

So where does 15 Billion in 2100 come from?

The 10.1 Billion figure, called the Mid-Range projection, is based on a careful, country-by-country analysis, combining the latest statistics with the Division’s considered assumptions about long-term trends. The UN has been making these calculations since 1950, and its projections have consistently been off by less than 4%.

But to show that the results aren’t certain, the Population Division also produces two other projections by simply assuming that each adult woman will have 0.5 more or fewer children than the detailed Mid-Range projection. The choice of 0.5 seems to be entirely arbitrary: I’ve been unable to find any explanation of why the UN uses it it instead of a larger or smaller number.
This year, that calculation produced projections for 2100 that range from a low of 6 Billion to a high of more than 15 Billion, as shown in this graph. (click image for a larger version.)

The highest line assumes that fertility doesn’t change at all from now on, taking us to 27 Billion in 2100. Not even the most extreme populationists quote that number.

It’s important to understand that the 6 Billion to 15 Billion range is not comparable to the “margin of error” figure often reported in statistical studies. No probability whatsover is attached to it – it is just the result of a very crude calculation using an arbitrary adjustment.

In fact, the chance that population will reach 15 Billion this century is very close to zero. For that to happen, global fertility rates would have to be 20 to 25 percent higher than the UN’s best estimates, every single year for the next 90 years. Countries where birth rates have been falling for years would have to experience nine unprecedented decades of baby boom. Global birth rates, which have been declining for half a century, would have to reverse direction immediately, and stay high until the next century.

As noted above, previous UN Mid-Range projections have been accurate within 4%. Reaching 15 Billion in 2100 would be 50% off the mark. That’s extremely unlikely, to say the least.

The Guardian report is sloppy journalism, by reporters and editors who likely aren’t familiar with population projections.

But Optimum Population Trust claims to be a source of population expertise. For them to highlight the Guardian‘s grossly inaccurate article qualifies as either ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation. Either way, their judgement obviously can’t be trusted.

Unfortunately, as Mark Twain said, a lie can travel round the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots. Eventually the truth will win, but I expect we’ll see the “15 Billion by 2100″ lie quite a lot for a while.

I might take this a little more seriously if the money were used to reduce the birth rate among rich Brits. Just think how much lower England’s emissions would be if aristocrats and bank directors were limited to one spoiled child each. How many Bentleys and Jaguars could be taken off the road if the Royal Family stopped reproducing altogether?

The Royal Wedding confirms my judgement.

The New Zealand environmental research group Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research has prepared a rough estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the merger of the Windsor and Middleton families.

The results indicate that the activities on the day of the wedding could be responsible for an estimated 2,808 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) in greenhouse gases, for the scope of emissions calculated. Emissions due to travel by crowds lining the streets might amount to another 3,957 tonnes of CO2e and the Royal Airforce flyover might add another 1.95 tonnes of CO2e.

Total: 6,767 tonnes.

Landcare emphasizes that this is a very rough estimate, compiled as a “fun exercise.”

What’s more, their estimates aren’t complete: the London Telegraph points out that the estimated Royal Wedding emissions don’t include “emissions from the millions of tons of bunting, cheap Union Jacks and confetti flooding the streets on the day, or the flights of the international media.”

Nor, we can add, did Landcare include emissions from police operations, helicopter surveillance, pre-emptive arrests of dissidents, or other actions associated with what the Independent calls “the biggest security operation in a generation.”�

But Landcare’s estimate is high enough. The company says that emissions associated with the Royal wedding were 1230 times greater than an entire year’s emissions from an average UK household. It’s even 12 times the annual emissions produced by Buckingham Palace.

Landcare doesn’t say so, but in one day the Royal family was responsible for pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than 67,700 people in Madagascar produce in an entire year.

That puts the entire “too many people” argument into proper perspective. Anyone who really wants to reduce global emissions should be campaigning to abolish the English monarchy.

The rich countries in the “North”, i.e. the West, have a “rapidly decreasing” population which is “expected to decline over the next forty years.” Developing countries such as India, China and most of Africa on the other hand is where we will see future population numbers increasing.

And yes. It seems so easy to blame countries with an overwhelming rising population for being responsible for wrecking our planet, climate and environment. Because surely more people must mean more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Right?

Not really. The West is responsible for about 80% of the worlds CO2 increase. An average person living in Great Britain will in only 11 days emit as much CO2 as an average person in Bangladesh will during a whole year. And just a single power plant in West Yorkshire in Great Britain will produce more CO2 every year than all the 139 million people combined living in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.

As Fred Pearce from the Yale Environment 360 blog notes, only a small portion of the world’s people are using most of the planets resources as well as producing the most of the greenhouse gases. And those are living in the West:

“The world’s population quadrupled to six billion people during the 20th century. It is still rising and may reach 9 billion by 2050. Yet for at least the past century, rising per-capita incomes have outstripped the rising head count several times over. And while incomes don’t translate precisely into increased resource use and pollution, the correlation is distressingly strong.

[…]By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world’s people take the majority of the world’s resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Take carbon dioxide emissions — a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world’s richest half-billion people — that’s about 7 percent of the global population — are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.”

According to Pearce overpopulation in the developing countries is not the problem. Instead the increasing overconsumption among the planets 7% richest people and countries is to be blamed. And he is not alone in claiming this. George Monbiot, Europe’s leading green commentator, also agrees with this viewpoint. As Monbiot notes in a recent published article on the Guardian:

“As one the graphs King displayed demonstrated, and as the UN and independent scientists predict, the world’s population is expected to peak at around 9 billion by 2060 and then to decline to around 8.5 billion by 2100.

Of course the bisophere can ill-afford to carry these numbers, and they will load an extra 40 or 50% of pressure onto every environmental constraint. It’s an issue, in other words. But the issue?

Until the recession struck, the global rate of economic growth was 3.8%. The world’s governments hope and pray that we’ll be back on this track as soon as possible. Population, of course, is one of the components of economic growth, but the global population growth rate is currently 1.2%.

It’s responsible, in other words, for one-third of normal economic growth. The rest is supplied by rising consumption. Consumption, on this measure, bears twice as much responsibility for pressure on resources and ecosystems as population growth.”

Let’s take a look at the ecological footprint between developing countries and developed countries in the West. An ecological footprint is the estimate on how much land is required to provide you and me with food and other resources as well as cleaning up our pollution. The global average ecological footprint is 2.7 hectares per person.

Sweden, my own country, has an ecological footprint of 5.1 hectares. The UK is on 5.3. Australia has 7.8 and Canada has an average of 7.1 hectares. The United Arab Emirates and the United States of America are on the top spot with an ecological footprint of 9.5 and 9.4. Developing countries such as China only has an ecological footprint of 2.1 hectares while India is on 0.9. And most countries in Africa are around or below 1.0 hectares.

Pearce gives even more examples of unfair consumption between the rich and poor countries:

“Americans gobble up more than 120 kilograms of meat a year per person, compared to just 6 kilos in India, for instance.”

“Just five countries are likely to produce most of the world’s population growth in the coming decades: India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The carbon emissions of one American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians.”

“A woman in rural Ethiopia can have ten children and her family will still do less damage, and consume fewer resources, than the family of the average soccer mom in Minnesota or Munich. In the unlikely event that her ten children live to adulthood and have ten children of their own, the entire clan of more than a hundred will still be emitting less carbon dioxide than you or I.”

Just like Monbiot and Pearce claims overpopulation is not the problem. Even if we were to get a zero population growth around the world it wouldn’t help us against the climate crisis. Instead the overconsumption among the rich few in the world is the main problem which we must deal with.

Climate Progress writes: “To avoid catastrophic global warming impacts, the rich countries need to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% to 90% by mid-century. The developing countries (not including China) mostly must slow emissions growth, peak by mid-century, then decline — while ending the vast majority of deforestation by 2020. China must peak its emissions by 2020 and then reduce after that, first slowly, then quickly by mid-century.”

Overpopulation is only seen as a major problem because it’s the only thing we in the West can blame the developing countries for.

Photo credit: Taras Kalapun

The environmental footprint per capita in developed countries is more than 10 tones per year. For example, 10,8 tones of carbon is emitted per capita by British, 12,7 per capita by Greek and 22,4 tones per capita by Americans. It takes both governments and the citizens to take measures to reduce the impact of each nation on Earth. Many every day habits need to be reconsidered and altered drastically.

19.312 Kilometers an average car travels per year, producing 6 tones of greenhouse gases. But you would have to travel 150.107 Kilometers by train to produce the same amount of carbon for the same period. At the same time, 18 times more carbon is emitted per mile per passenger in a car than in a bus. Buses emit less carbon per passenger than trains, planes, boats or automobiles (in that order). In 2007, of the European Union’s total CO2 emissions, the 12% was created by passenger cars.

All these facts demonstrate the crucial need to ‘wean off’ private cars and opt for public means of transport. Such a decision made by the citizens actually alters their everyday life, as new habits are substituting old ones. To help them make such a decision, governments have to rearrange bus, train and metro schedules. They should be frequent, punctual and efficient, so that citizens can rely on them.

But it’s not only about transportation. Overpopulation and consumerism have similarly dramatic impact on the amount of carbon dioxide on the planet.

The British government has set a goal of 60% reduction on carbon emissions by 2050. Renewable sources of energy will be developed, substituting coal. Most governments have not made similar plans. However, all developed countries ought to make a plan for a considerable reduction on carbon emissions.

The number of six billion human lives would never have been reached if it wasn’t for fossil fuels. The energy sent by the sun and received by the Earth every day could ever sustain more than two billion people. Fossil fuels combine a sort of energy saved below the surface of the planet, now extracted by humans to use this energy and cover their needs. And with all needs easily covered, humanity was and is able to rise in population.

But there is a great difference of four billion people between the number of humans the planet can sustain and the number of humans existing, a fact that has a bad impact on the Earth. Using fossil fuels releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And since there are so many people on Earth, there are more and more gas emissions. All this leads to global warming, climate change and pollution in general.

Even if overpopulation didn’t cause environmental problems of that kind, there are other consequences to be taken into account. And that’s because all these people need accommodation, private space, public areas and services, fields and farms to produce food. All this space needed is taken from ecosystems, mostly by deforestrating large areas. This act alone is enough to reduce the amount of oxygen produced by plants, and the space that natural habitats used to cover.

Tropical rainforests have the largest biodiversity of all ecosystems on Earth. The soil is rather poor, but it sustains a great variety of plants. It is estimated that 65% of the known plant species are found in rainforests.

During the past three decades, rainforests have been decreasing in size for various reasons, though all of them are connected with human activities. Human populations living near rainforests had the impression that the soil must have been really fertile, as it could sustain such a variety of plants. So, when human started to need more fields for cultivation, they choose rainforests’ earth, and thus they set big fires to get rid of big trees and to obtain space. By the time it was understood that the soil wasn’t suitable for agriculture, many square kilometres of rainforests had already gone.

Apart from agricultural reasons, the rainforests are cut down in order to provide wood. Most of the paper, toilet paper or furniture manufactured nowadays is based on wood from tropical rainforests. Deforestation also takes place in order to extend cities and build roads. Increasing human needs, due to overpopulation, lead to mass deforestations all over the globe.

The pace with which it’s been done is so high, that every year an area of the size of half Greece is lost. 50 years ago rainforests would cover double the area they do today. Thousands of species, whether they are animals or plants become extinct and even more face extinction.

Humanity also depends on rainforests. A variety of building materials, food (bananas, vanilla, coffee), and even caoutchouk come from rainforests. Medical science, from the ancient times till today, also depends on substances from plants that grow there.

Quinine, a range of medicine against pain and stress are only some examples of medicine that require substances from rainforests in order to be manufactured. Nowadays, 20% of the medicines found in pharmacies are produced by the use of plants from rainforests.

Researchers have studied less than the 2% of the 100,000 species of plants that grow in rainforests, and are sure that most of them can be really useful in medicine or other fields. Though most of them point out that ”potentials for the future are endless, as long as scientists and pharmacologists reach the rainforests before chainsaws…”

And let us not forget that rainforests produce oxygen. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of Earth’s oxygen. Cutting them down means that oxygen levels decrease, while less CO2 is absorbed by plants and thus increases in the atmosphere, causing the green-house effect. Humanity has to re-examine its needs and reduce them, so that less quantities of substances from rainforests are used. We have to set limits on our activities, otherwise those huge forests will one day belong to history.