Transcript Diamond v3

"Oh Diamond! Diamond!
Thou little knowest
the mischief done!"
Isaac Newton 1643-1727
Thin Ice
Population growth throughout history is shown. The world population has quadrupled in less
than 100 years. The annual increase in population of about 79 million persons means that
every week an extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live. Resourcing
contraception therefore helps to combat climate change. British Medical Journal 2 Aug 2008
"Picture of the week"
BMJ
Population control and uncertainty—a doctor’s role by Fiona Godlee, editor
• BMJ’s recent coverage of climate change has ignored a key issue—
the need for population control.
• John Guillebaud and Pip Hayes give the same rebuke in their
editorial this week (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a576).
• They may be right that "population" and "family planning" are taboo
words.
• The BMJ hasn’t actively avoided these issues, but we could do more
to highlight them. As Guillebaud and Hayes portray it, every week an
extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live,
amounting to "a huge new city each week, somewhere, which
destroys wildlife habitats and augments world fossil fuel
consumption."
• Every person born adds to greenhouse gas emissions, and
escaping poverty is impossible without these emissions increasing.
BMJ
• Population control need not be coercive, they say. Half of
pregnancies worldwide are unplanned. Simply by meeting women’s
unmet contraceptive needs, several developing countries have
halved their fertility rates.
• Clear evidence points to the demand for contraception increasing
when it is available, accessible, and properly marketed.
• Guillebaud and Hayes call on doctors to take an active role in
overcoming barriers to the universal availability of contraception and
ensuring that patients and the public understand the environmental
consequences of population growth.
• Controversially, as evidenced by the responses to the editorial since
it was published online on 24 July
(http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/07/29/david-payne-its-the-economymum-and-dad/), they say that doctors should advise patients on
limiting family size for environmental reasons and should set their
own example.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a
geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an
arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers
will show the immensity of the first power in
comparison with the second.
[Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter 1, p13]
People: P(t)=P0.e kt Food:F(t)=F0(1+kt)
"The power of population is indefinitely greater
than the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man".
Malthus delaying factors
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1800 Industrial Revolution
1850 Mechanized agriculture
1900 Haber-Bosch process
1950 Globalization
2000 Pandemics (HIV, flu)
2050 ?
Haber-Bosch process 1909
N2(g) + 3H2(g) = 2NH3(g), ΔH = -92.4 kJmol-1
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The Haber process now produces 100 million tons of nitrogen
fertilizer per year, mostly in the form of anhydrous ammonia,
ammonium nitrate, and urea.
3-5% of world natural gas production is consumed in the Haber
process (1-2% of the world's annual energy supply).
That fertilizer is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's
population (2.3 billion people)
• "Could Food shortages bring down
civilization?"
Scientific American, May 2009, page 38.
• "The biggest threat to global stability is the
potential for food crises in poor countries to
cause government collapse. Those crises are
brought on by ever worsening environmental
degradation" They give a list of 20 countries in
the world that are closest to collapse already (in
2007). Here ranked from worst to better on
social, economic, political and military indicators
of national well-being are:
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Somalia
Sudan
Zimbabwe
Chad
Iraq
DR Congo
Afghanistan
Ivory Coast
Pakistan (nuclear!!)
Central African Republic
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Guinea
Bangladesh
Burma
Haiti
North Korea (nuclear!!)
Ethiopia
Uganda
Lebabon
Nigeria
Sri Lanka
Swarm
"To survive,
people will have to swarm
over borders,
which will
inevitably lead to conflict"
• Since multi-celled life first appeared 540 million years ago mass
extinction events generally related to climate change have
eliminated 40 to 92 % of species on the planet.
• 70,000 years ago a catastrophic climate change associated with the
Sumatran eruption of Toba left just 5,000 breeding human females
alive from whom we are all descended.
• 5,000 years ago there were 5 million humans worldwide, their small
groupings able to move with the weather. There are now 7 billion.
• Scientists predict the sea level will rise 91 cms by the year 2100.
This would flood 17.5% of Bangladesh. Perhaps for these reasons
the Indian government is completing a 4,500 km fence along its
entire border with Bangladesh.
• Scientists predict that by 2050 over 1 billion people will face water
shortages. Food availability will also suffer.
• Temperatures might be expected to rise dramatically after 2020.
May 2008 edition of RCA Bulletin by Dr H. Montgomery, Consultant
Intensivist, University College, London.
• The melting of the arctic ice cap and the
warming of Siberia are predicted to release large
quantities of methane gas which will accelerate
the global warming already taking place due to
increased carbon dioxide emissions.
• Unless we can grasp the nettle of
overpopulation of the planet and help and
empower all women, especially those in the
developing world, to limit their family size, then
the four horsemen of the apocalypse will do it for
us.
Mark Jackson 2008 RCA Bulletin
"Rearranging the deckchairs on
the Titanic"
China's 400 Million fewer
• China's population reached 1.3 billion people in 2005
- one-fifth of total world population.
• Zhang Weiqing, director of the National Population
and Family Planning Commission, has pointed out
that thanks to its family planning policies over the
last three decades, China has curbed fast population
growth and prevented 400 million births by 2005.
• "The 400 million births, if not prevented, would
postpone China's drive to build a well-off society,"
said Zhang. "Such an achievement should be
recognised as many developed countries spent over
a century before reaching low birth rates."
[Xinhua News, 3 May 2006].
The Prophet of Climate Change:
James Lovelock
• One of the most eminent scientists of
our time says that global warming is
irreversible - and that more than 6
billion people will perish by the end of
the century.
Copied from:
www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/
the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock By
Jeff Goodell Posted Nov 01, 2007 2:20 PM
Optimum Population Trust
www.optimumpopulation.org
• Main Aims
• To advance the education of the public in issues relating
to human population worldwide and its impact on
environmental sustainability;
• To advance, promote and encourage research to
determine optimum and ecologically sustainable human
population levels in all or any part or parts of the world
and to publicise the results of such research;
• To advance environmental protection by promoting
policies in the United Kingdom or any other part or parts
of the world which will lead or contribute to the
achievement of stable human population levels which
allow environmental sustainability.
Patrons
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Sir David Attenborough CVO CBE, Naturalist, broadcaster and trustee of the British Museum and
Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; and a former controller of BBC Two.
Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge
Professor Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University
Jane Goodall PhD DBE, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute, and UN Messenger of Peace.
Susan Hampshire OBE, Actress and population campaigner
Professor John Guillebaud Former Co-chair of OPT, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and
Reproductive Health, University College, London. Former Medical Director, Margaret Pyke Centre
for Family Planning.
Professor Aubrey Manning OBE, President of the Wildlife Trusts and Emeritus Professor of
Natural History, University of Edinburgh
Professor Norman Myers CMG, Visiting Fellow, Green College, Oxford University, and at
Universities of Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, California, Michigan and Texas
Sara Parkin OBE, Founder Director and Trustee of Forum for the Future and Director of the
Natural Environment Research Council and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and
Head Teachers into Industry.
Jonathon Porritt CBE, Founder Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK
Sustainable Development Commission.
Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, Chancellor of Kent University, Director of the Policy Foresight
Programme at the James Martin Institute, and former UK Permanent Representative on the
United Nations Security Council
Population Policy
OPT campaigns for policies to achieve environmentally sustainable
population levels both globally and in the UK. The ecological issue is one of
population numbers, resource demands and the environmental impacts
created by different sizes of population at given levels of affluence and
technology. For more details see the Fertility, Migration, Population policy
projections, Briefings and submissions and other sections of this website.
OPT recommends the following population policies:
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Globally, that full access to family planning should be provided to all those
who do not have it, that couples should be encouraged voluntarily to "Stop
at Two" children to lessen the impact of family size on the environment, and
that this should be part of a holistic approach involving better education and
equal rights for women.
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In the UK, that population should be allowed to stabilise and decrease by
not less than 0.25% a year to an environmentally sustainable level, by
bringing immigration into numerical balance with emigration, by making
greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies, and by encouraging couples
voluntarily to "Stop at Two" children.
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
www.VHEMT.org
Text from Wikipedia
Basic concept
• As summarized in Disinfo in 2001, the basic concept
behind VHEMT is the belief that the Earth would be better
off without humans, and as such, humans should refuse to
breed.
• Or, as the movement puts it: "The Movement presents an
encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and
wholesale destruction of Earth's ecology. The hopeful
alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants
and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species:
Homo sapiens... us. When every human chooses to stop
breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its
former glory, the day there are no human beings on the
planet."