Population and climate

The climate emergency, cost-of-living crisis and wellbeing are the top concerns of young people in the UK and I argue that the latter two issues can be reduced if climate change and energy poverty are properly addressed.

‘Too many people’ may be true in respect of, say, urban planning, but for understanding why climate change, and it’s knock on effects are happening, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the cause, effects and solutions.

Population control measures have been implemented to the point that the global birth rate is already very low at less than 2.4 people. And the reality is that our population will continue to increase. Yes there are a lot of people, but this is unhelpful in trying to resolve the problem of droughts, starvation, civil unrest, disease, refugees, energy inflation and cost of living crises, many of which are indirectly a result of climate change problems.

In terms of preserving nature, it’s important to remember that species loss is due, in part, to two separate issues: habitat loss and climate change, it’s an error to conflate them. And as for the cause of climate problems, the portion of blame for global emissions is unevenly distributed (eg North Americans emit most carbon dioxide per capita), so fewer people in less developed countries will make little difference.

Because radiophobia has been erroneously presented as a bigger issue than climate change, leading to confusion and obfuscation, few recognise that if we replace fossil fuels with nuclear fuels that we can be optimistic without endorsing greed, for example by dis-incentivising air travel.

So you see, the ‘too many people’ attitude is wrong, let alone nihilistic.¹

To propagate the thought that world climate problems result from the number of people, strips a person’s life of colour and meaning and evokes a personal sense of insignificance, shame and hopelessness. We need kind and caring people to shine their light, because all lives have meaning and purpose. ‘Too many people’ disconnects us from one another, separates us from nature, and above all does nothing, pragmatically, to address the rising emissions issue.

1_{: Nihilism is a philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning.}