Overpopulation
Resources for Understanding and Taking
Action
The sustainability papers of Al
Bartlett
Letter to Culture Change
July 20, 2003 - Dear Friends,
Thanks for your letter calling attention to the new website on
population. I thought the website was excellent. Focusing on
population is the correct thing to do, but it is politically incorrect. Of course you know this
already.
I am attaching some papers of mine dealing with these
problems. In the paper on sustainability you will find the Laws of
Sustainability. The First Law of Sustainability is: population growth
and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources is not sustainable.
Many thanks for focusing on the heart of the problem.
THOUGHTS TO REMEMBER:
Every increment of added population, and
every added increment of affluence
invariably destroys an increment
of the remaining environment.
Population growth and increases in affluence
make it impossible for reasonable increments
of improved efficiency in the use of resources
to enhance or even preserve the environment.
You cannot preserve the environment
by accepting the population growth
and the increased affluence
that are destroying the environment.
Sincerely, AL
ALBERT ALLEN BARTLETT
Professor Emeritus of Physics
University
of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder,
Colorado, 80309-0390
_________________________________
Two papers follow; more will be added.
Check back with us; bookmark this page! - ed.
THE
NEW FLAT EARTH SOCIETY
This
is a slightly revised version of an article that was published in the September
1996 issue of The Physics Teacher, Vol. 34, No. 6, Pgs. 342-343.
This journal is published by the American Association of Physics
Teachers, College Park, MD.
INTRODUCTION:
THE PROBLEM
There was a time, long ago, when people thought that the Earth was flat,
but now for several centuries people have believed that the Earth is round . . .
like a sphere. But there are problems with a spherical earth, and a now a
new paradigm is emerging which seems to be a return to the wisdom of the
ancients.
A sphere is bounded and hence is finite, which implies that there are
limits, and in particular, there are limits to growth of things that consume the
Earth and that live on it. Today,
many people believe that the resources of the Earth and of the human intellect
are so enormous that population growth can continue and that there is no danger
that we will ever run out of anything. For
instance, after a United Nations report predicted shortages of natural resources
that would follow because of continued population growth, Jack Kemp, who was
then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Cabinet of President
George Bush, is reported to have
said, "Nonsense, people are not a drain on the resources of the
planet." (2)
These people believe that perpetual growth is desirable, consequently it
must be possible, and so it can't possibly be a problem.
At the same time there are still a few remaining
"spherical earth" people
who go around talking about "limits" and in particular about the
limits that are implied by the term "carrying capacity." But limits are awkward, because limits conflict with the
concept of perpetual growth, so there is a growing move to do away with the
concept of limits. A friend
recently returned from an international conference in Germany and he reports
that whenever he brought up the subject of limits, the angry rebuttal was,
"We're tired of hearing of limits to growth!
We're going to grow the limits!"
Another friend sent me a clipping (3) in which an eminent national
economist closes an opinion piece by saying:
"A
3% to 3.5% growth rate is not only an achievable national objective: it is an
economic and social necessity."
A spherical earth is finite.
The pro-growth people say that perpetual growth on this earth is
possible. If the pro-growth people
are correct, what kind of an earth
are we living on?
THE
SOLUTION
A spherical earth is finite and hence is forever unappealing to the
devotees of perpetual growth. In
contrast, a flat earth can accommodate growth forever, because a flat earth can
be infinite in the two horizontal dimensions and also in the vertical downward
direction. The infinite horizontal
dimensions forever remove any fear of crowding as population grows, and the
infinite downward dimension assures humans of an unlimited supply of all of the
mineral raw materials that will be needed by a human population that continues
to grow forever. The flat earth
removes all the need for worry about limits.
So, let us think of the "We're going to grow the limits!"
people as the "New Flat Earth
Society."
EXAMPLE
The economist, the late Julian Simon is famous for his belief that there
are no limits to growth. (4) In a
recent article he wrote (5)
"Technology exists now to produce in virtually inexhaustible quantities
just about all the products made by nature - foodstuffs, oil, even pearls and
diamonds . . .
We have in our hands now - actually in our libraries - the technology to
feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7
billion years . . .
Even if no new knowledge were ever gained . . . we would be able to go on
increasing our population forever . . . "(6)
Two friends wrote me to call my attention to this article, and one of
them said in his letter that Simon had been contacted and that Simon said that
the
"7
billion years" was an error and it should have been "7 million
years." (7)
We should note two things. First,
there is a big difference between "million" and "billion."
In the U.S. a "billion" is a thousand million.
Second, even 7 million years is a long period of time.
One of these friends asked me: if the
world population in 1995 is 5.7
billion people (5.7 x 109), what
would its size be (P7) if it grew steadily at
1% per year for 7 million years
? (8)
ARITHMETIC
Although arithmetic is falling out of fashion, let's do some calculations
so that we can understand how the old fashioned "spherical earth"
scientists would treat the problem.
We will do this calculation assuming the
length of time is exactly
7 million years and the growth rate is
exactly 1%
per year. For the case of an
annual growth rate of 1% , the value of k
is 0.010 . . . per year. It
is easy enough to set up the equation for P7
, which is the world population after 7 million years of
1% annual growth:
1)
P7 = (5.7 x 109) exp(0.01 x 7 x l06)
= (5.7 x l09) exp(7 x 104)
Here
is where we separate out those who understand algebra from those who only know
how to do key strokes on a calculator. When
you do the keystrokes to evaluate
exp(7 x 104) many
calculators will flash the message "ERROR" because these calculators
are not able to handle numbers larger than 9.99... x 1099. (9) One must have some understanding of algebra to work around
this limitation.
What we want to find is the value of
B in Eq.2.
2)
exp(7 x 104) = 10B
If
we take the natural logarithm of both sides we have
7 x 104 = B ln(10)
B = 7 x 104 / 2.303 . . .
3)
B = 30400.6137 . . .
(Remember
that we assumed the input numbers were exact.)
Equation 1 now becomes
P7 = 5.7 x 109 x 1030400.6137 . . .
4)
= 5.7 x 1030409.6137 . . .
If
one wants to express this as an integer power of ten, we can note that
100.6137 = 4.11, so that
P7 = 5.7 x 4.11 x 1030409
5)
P7 = 2.3 x 1030410
This
is a fairly large number!
If we had used Simon's original number of
7 billion years, we would
have had B = 3.04 x 107.
It is hard to imagine the meaning of a number as large as the one given
in Eq.5. To try to understand the
meaning of this large number, let us compare it with an estimate the number of
atoms in the known universe. If we
assume the known universe is a sphere whose radius is
20 billion light years, the
volume of the sphere is about 3 x 1085 cubic centimeters.
If the average density of the universe is one atom per cubic centimeter,
then the number of atoms estimated to be in the known universe is about 3 x
1085. The number given in Eq.5 is
something like 30 kilo-orders of magnitude larger than the number of atoms
estimated to be in the known universe!
Note that in making this calculation we are assuming that the universe,
like the Earth, is spherical, which could hardly be correct if the Earth is flat
and is of infinite lateral extent.
A related question comes to mind: if world population growth continues at
a rate of 1%
per year, (k = 0.01 per
year) how long would it take for
the population to grow until the number of people was equal to this estimate of
the number of atoms in the known universe?
This calls for us to find t
in the following equation.
6)
3 x 1085 = 5.7 x 109 exp(0.01 t)
5.26 x 1075 = exp(0.01 t)
174 = .01 t
t = 17 thousand years
This
indicates that the population of the Earth, growing at
1% per year, would grow to a
number equal to the number of atoms estimated to be in the known universe, in a
period of time something like the period since a recent ice age.
We could also ask, what growth rate would be required for the world
population to grow from 5.7 x 109 to
3 x 1085 in
7 million years? We
must find the value of k
in this equation
7)
3 x 1085 = 5.7 x 109 exp(7 x 106 k)
Solving
this, we find k = 2.5 x 10-5
per year. This is
2.5 x 10-3 percent per year. In the first year this growth rate would produce an increase
of world population of about 1.42 x 105 people.
Contrast this with the present increase of about 9 x 107 per year.
These numbers make it clear to us old fashioned "spherical earth
people" that the world population cannot continue to grow for long at
anything like its present rate. There
are signs that the population growth rate is already slowing in some parts of
Europe and Asia.
Calculations similar to these remind us that the major effect of steady
growth in the rates of consumption of non-renewable resources is to shorten
dramatically the life-expectancy of the resources. (10)
Julian Simon has claimed that the human mind is "the ultimate
resource." As was noted in the
review of his 1981 book, this is true "only if it [the human mind] is
used." (11)
CONCLUSION
If the "we can grow forever" people are right, then they will
expect us, as scientists, to modify our science in ways that will permit
perpetual growth. We will be called on to abandon the "spherical
earth" concept and figure out the science of the flat earth. We can see some of the problems we will have to solve.
We will be called on to explain the balance of forces that make it
possible for astronauts to circle endlessly in orbit above a flat earth,
and to explain why astronauts appear to be weightless.
We will have to figure out why we have time zones; where do the sun, moon and stars go when they set in the west
of an infinite flat earth, and during the night, how do they get back to their
starting point in the east. We will
have to figure out the nature of the gravitational lensing that makes an
infinite flat earth appear from space to be a small circular flat disk.
These and a host of other problems will face us as the "infinite
earth" people gain more and more acceptance, power and authority.
We need to identify these people as members of
"The New Flat Earth Society" because a flat earth is the only
earth that has the potential to allow the human population to grow forever.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(1)
Earlier pieces in the series, "The Exponential Function," were
published in The
Physics Teacher as follows:
I.
Vol.14, October 1976, Pgs. 393-401
II.
Vol.14, November 1976, Pg. 485
III.
Vol.15, January 1977, Pgs. 37-40
IV.
Vol.15, March 1977, Pg. 98
V.
Vol.15, April 1977, Pgs. 225-226
VI.
Vol.16, January 1978, Pgs. 23-24
VII.
Vol.16, February 1978, Pgs. 92-93
VIII.
Vol.16, March 1978, Pgs. 158-159
IX.
Vol.17, January 1979, Pgs. 23-24
X.
Vol.28, November 1990, Pgs. 540-541
(2)
High Country News, (Paonia, Colorado), January 27, 1992, P. 4
(3)
Felix G. Rohatyn, TIME, May 20, 1996, P. 46
(4)
J.L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ, 1981
(5)
Cato Policy Report, "The State of Humanity: Steadily
Improving", Vol. 17, No. 5, September / October 1995, P. 131, Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.
(6)
The
Cato Institute report identifies the author:
"Julian L. Simon is a professor
of business and management at the University of Maryland and an
adjunct scholar
at the Cato Institute. This essay
[from which these quotations are taken]
is based on the introduction to his latest book, The State of Humanity, just published by the Cato Institute and Blackwell Publishers."
The Cato Institute is a think tank in Washington, D.C. that advises government leaders on policy questions.
At the annual meeting in February of 1995, Julian Simon was elected
a Fellow
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
(7)
I am indebted to Mark Nowak of Population-Environment
Balance, in Washington, D.C. and Dr. John Tanton, Petosky, MI, for calling this
article to my attention.
(8)
The growth rate of world population in the early 1990s was around 1.7% per
year.
(9)
In doing these calculations, I was surprised to find that my new Hewlett-
Packard Model 20S hand-held calculator will handle powers of ten up to
500.
(10) A.A. Bartlett, American Journal of Physics,
Vol. 46, September 1978, Pgs.
876-888.
(11) A.A. Bartlett, American Journal of Physics,
Vol. 53, March 1985, Pgs. 282-285
______________________________
September
9, 1998. This is an article that
was published in Wild Earth (A journal for creatures who care about their
habitat. P.O. Box 455, Richmond, Vermont, 05477) Vol. 7, No. 3, Fall 1997, Pgs.
88-90. It has been slightly
revised.
THE
WORLD'S WORST POPULATION PROBLEM
(IS
THERE A POPULATION PROBLEM?)
by
Albert A. Bartlett
My answer to the question is "YES" there is a problem.
The scale of human activities is now so large that we are appreciably
affecting the climate and ecosystems in the U.S. and the world.
The total impact of people on the environment is proportional to each of
two factors:
A) The number of people, and
B) The average impact of
each person.
If
we are to reduce the total impact of people on the global environment, we must
address the first, or preferably both, of these factors.
There are many strong forces that will cause continued growth of the
average impact of each person on the global environment.
To the extent that people in underdeveloped countries seek to increase
their material standard of living to levels more like ours, material consumption
per capita will grow. So we are
left with the imperative of halting population growth, and then of studying the
question, "Can this stable population be sustained?"
To gain a better appreciation of the seriousness of the problem, let us
review some very elementary arithmetic. Let us consider a quantity that is
experiencing steady growth at a rate such as
5% per year.
First we note that this growing quantity will double in size in a fixed
time. This doubling time is found
by dividing 70
by the percent growth per year. For
example, the doubling time for a steady growth rate of
5% per year is
70 / 5 =
14 years.
Second, we note that a few doublings can give enormous numbers.
It is convenient to remember that ten doublings causes the growing
quantity to increase in size by a factor of approximately 1000:
twenty doublings will cause an increase by a factor of 1,000,000, etc.
Let us look at some current approximate, data (1997).
United States World
Population
270 million 5700 million
Annual increase
3 million
90 million
Annual growth rate
1
% per year
1.6 % per year
Doubling Time
70 years
44 years
The
smallness of the annual growth rates is both deceiving and disarming.
We might initially think that surely nothing bad could happen at growth
rates as small as 1 % or 1.6 % per year.
A study of the doubling times brings us back to reality.
If the world population continues to grow at its present rate, it will
double before today's (1997) college students are my age (74)!
Think what this means in terms of food and resource consumption.
Population growth rates do not remain constant; they change in response
to physical and social factors. The
world population growth rate was close to zero through most of human history,
and it started to increase significantly a few centuries ago.
Around 1970 it reached a high of about
2 % per year, from which it
has recently declined to the estimated 1.6
% per year.
Detailed social studies and more elegant mathematical models can give us
insight into the mechanisms that affect these rates of growth.
Why, then, do we need to look at the simple models of constant growth
rates?
First, they are a useful, though approximate, representation of the
facts.
Second, we in the United States are in a culture that worships growth.
Steady growth of populations of our towns and cities is the goal toward
which the powerful promotional groups in our communities continuously aspire.
If a town's population is growing, the town is said to be
"healthy," or "vibrant," and if the population is not
growing the town is said to be "stagnant."
Something that is not growing should properly be called
"stable." Yet, the
promoters of growth universally use the word "stagnant" to describe
the condition of stability, because "stagnant" suggests something
unpleasant while "stable" would suggest something worthwhile, pleasant
and desirable.
Since continued growth is the goal of the promoters in our communities,
we should understand the arithmetic of steady growth.
Now let's look at some global aspects of our population problem.
1) Global Warming.
There is a growing scientific consensus that the early phases of global
warming may be upon us now. With
each passing year, our knowledge of the situation will increase so that we will
know better if the earth is warming, and if so, how rapidly change may occur.
Whether or not the earth is warming, it is clear that by pouring
increasing quantities of greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere each year,
we are embarked on a global experiment whose outcome we don't know.
We don't know if the effects of increasing the greenhouse gases in the
earth's atmosphere are reversible. We
don't know if the atmosphere go back to its pre-industrial condition if we
stopped all emissions of greenhouse gases, and if it would go back, we don't
know how long it would take.
On the scale of a human lifetime, these changes happen very slowly.
So the burden of dealing with the unknown outcome of the present global
experiment, will not fall on today's political decision makers: it will fall on
our children and grandchildren. Present
population growth, so ardently advocated by the many in the older generations,
is putting our children and grandchildren at risk. For centuries, parents have worked so their children could
have better lives and opportunities than they had.
We may now be doing just the reverse.
We may be guaranteeing that our children will not have the resources,
opportunities and environment that we have enjoyed.
2) The Ozone Hole
The destruction of ozone in the high atmosphere allows more ultra-violet
light to reach the surface of the earth where it can have serious biological
effects on plants and animals, including humans.
3) Food Grain
The Worldwatch Institute reports that global annual per capita production
of grain dropped from 346 kilograms per person in 1984 to 313 kilograms per
person in 1996. ii This is a drop
of 9.5 % in just 8
years.
We've all heard it said that per capita food production has been growing
ever since the time of Thomas Malthus, and that this growth has proven him
wrong. Since the late 1980s grain
production has leveled off, so the continuing growth of populations means that
the per capita production of food is declining.
Perhaps Malthus was right after all.
4) World Oceanic Fisheries
Growth in the annual oceanic fish catch stopped in 1989, and since then
the available fish per capita has been declining.
For many of the world's people, fish is a major source of protein.
Most of the world's major fishing areas are seriously depleted.
The Grand Banks off of Newfoundland was one of the world's major
fisheries, with stocks of fish once thought to be unlimited.
Now, these fish stocks are apparently almost gone.
5) Fresh Water
A report in January of 1997 from Stockholm indicated that by the year
2025, two-thirds of the world's people will suffer from water shortages, and the
report noted that the rate of use of fresh water was growing at twice the rate
of world population.
All of these problems are caused by population growth, and none of these
problems can be "solved" if population growth continues.
Today we hear many people talking about "Sustainability," as
though we can accommodate continued population growth with something vague and
ill-defined that is called "sustainable development."
The thought seems to be that there is no need to worry about population: all we need to do is to make minor modifications of our way
of life, (conserve, recycle, etc.) and this will suffice to make our society
"sustainable." Please
remember the First Law of Sustainability: iii
It is not possible to sustain population growth or growth in the rates
of consumption of resources. We now must address two questions:
1) Where on Earth is the
population problem the worst?
It is my opinion that the
world's worst population problem is right here in the United States.
This is because of our high per capita resource consumption.
It has been estimated that a person added to the population of the United
States will have 30 or more times the impact on world resources as will a person
added to the population of an underdeveloped nation. Indeed, resource consumption in North America is roughly the
same as resource consumption in the entire rest of the world.
2) Where should we apply our
efforts to have the most beneficial effect in helping to solve the population
problem?
The answer is, right here in the U.S.
For many people, the population problem is a problem of "those
people," in distant undeveloped countries.
In early 1997, many people successfully lobbied Congress to restore
family planning assistance in the U.S. foreign aid programs.
This was a great victory, but it treats "those people" as
though they were the big problem. As
one member of Congress said,
"Unchecked population growth in the Third World means depletion of water
resources. It means famine.
It means suffering. It
pushes populations to clear rainforests. It
pushes populations to go out and graze on land that cannot sustain cattle, and
that leads to expansion of deserts worldwide.
We all have a stake in the global environment." iv
It
is so easy to blame the problem on others and to identify what other people
should do to solve the problem, while we ignore our own responsibilities and
avoid doing anything to reduce the population problem in the U.S.
We need to work to stop population growth in the U.S.
There are two sources that contribute approximately equally to population
growth in the U.S.: the excess of births over deaths, and immigration.
Both of these must be addressed.
Let's compare three aspects of efforts to stop population growth in other
countries with efforts to stop population growth in the United States.
1) When we give family
planning assistance to other countries, we are dealing with countries over which
we have no legal jurisdiction and where we have little or no immediate political
responsibility.
When we confront population growth in the United States, we are dealing
with a country where we as citizens have full and complete jurisdiction, and
where we have political and family responsibilities.
It should be much easier to solve our problem than it is to solve other
peoples' problems.
2) The negative effects of
runaway population growth in an underdeveloped country are generally felt only
in that country and in its immediate neighbors.
The negative effects of population growth in the U.S. are felt throughout
the entire world, because of our enormous per capita consumption of resources.
Indeed, one of the aims of the many free-trade agreements about which we
currently hear so much, is to open up the world's resources for consumption by
consumers in the U.S.
3) In countries receiving
family planning assistance from the U.S. there will always be individuals who
will claim that this assistance is a form of "genocide."
They will be strengthened in this belief if we in the U.S. fail to take
steps to halt our own population growth. As
Tim Wirth of the U.S. Department of State has said, the best thing that we in
the U.S. can do to help other countries stop their population growth, is to set
an example and stop our own population growth.
As you think about addressing the problem of population growth in the
U.S., please ponder this challenge:
Can
you think of any problem, on any scale, from microscopic to global,
- Whose
long-term solution is in any demonstrable way,
- Aided,
assisted, or advanced, by having continued population growth
- At
the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?
So we can see that Pogo was right:
"We've met the enemy, and they's us!"
Ed. note: This article is
adapted from a talk Prof. Bartlett gave on a panel on population at the
49th annual World Affairs Conference at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
April 9, 1997
The other speaker on the panel was the distinguished Russian physicist
Sergey Kapitza from Moscow.
Presiding was Dr. Judith Jacobsen of Boulder.
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