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A conversation with environmentalist legend and author, Paul Ehrlich. The history of the IPAT equation, along with the history of population concerns, and overpopulation denialism are discussed.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
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EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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A conversation with environmentalist legend and author, Paul Ehrlich. The history of the IPAT equation, along with the history of population concerns, and overpopulation denialism are discussed.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #Ecofriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:00♪♪
00:00:10♪♪
00:00:20♪♪
00:00:32Welcome to The Population Factor,
00:00:34your home for honest and probing discussions
00:00:37about population and the environment.
00:00:39I'm your host, Phil Cafaro,
00:00:41Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University.
00:00:44For our first show, we're honored to have Dr. Paul Ehrlich,
00:00:48Bing Professor of Population Studies Emeritus
00:00:51at Stanford University.
00:00:53Paul is the author or co-author
00:00:55of over a thousand scientific articles
00:00:58and more than 40 books,
00:01:00including The Population Bomb,
00:01:02one of the most influential environmental works of all time.
00:01:05Paul, welcome to The Population Factor.
00:01:07Nice to be here.
00:01:09Glad there's a population factor.
00:01:12Yeah.
00:01:13Your book, Paul, was instrumental
00:01:16in helping put population matters front and center
00:01:19at the start of the environmental movement
00:01:21in the 60s and 70s.
00:01:23And I think young environmentalists today
00:01:25really have no idea
00:01:27of how central population discussions were
00:01:30during that time.
00:01:32Were you surprised by the book's success?
00:01:35Yeah, I was surprised by the book's success,
00:01:38although the people who asked me to do it
00:01:44had had an idiotic idea.
00:01:46Namely, they'd heard me speaking
00:01:49on a Bay Area radio and television
00:01:53and came to me, Ian Ballantyne,
00:01:56the inventor of Ballantyne pocketbooks,
00:01:59the first paperback books,
00:02:02and from the Sierra Club,
00:02:07I'm having a senior moment, Dave Brower.
00:02:09Dave Brower, right.
00:02:11Yeah, Dave and Ian had a publishing program
00:02:15and they said, look, write down
00:02:17what you've been saying on TV.
00:02:19We'll publish it and maybe we can influence the election.
00:02:23That was in early 1968.
00:02:26Well, they published it,
00:02:28but curiously enough,
00:02:30we didn't influence the election.
00:02:32So you weren't trying to get Nixon elected?
00:02:37It was really weird,
00:02:40but around the end of the year,
00:02:43early the next year,
00:02:46Johnny Carson got the book and liked it
00:02:50and invited me to be on The Tonight Show
00:02:54and that transformed things.
00:02:55It turns out it's very different
00:02:57talking to 15 million people at once
00:03:00as opposed to talking to 50 in a classroom
00:03:04or 500 or 5,000 on a Bay Area TV studio.
00:03:09We had founded Zero Population Growth,
00:03:12an organization trying to end population growth
00:03:16in the United States previously
00:03:19and Carson let me give on the first show,
00:03:23actually on the first three shows,
00:03:25which were all I think in the spring of 69,
00:03:28the address of CPG's headquarters,
00:03:32which was in Los Altos, California.
00:03:36That led to the highest level of mail
00:03:40received in that post office
00:03:43in its entire history
00:03:45and we went from six chapters and 600 members
00:03:49to something like 600 chapters
00:03:51and 60,000 members in one step.
00:03:55So it really convinced me
00:03:57that the mass media can be very useful.
00:04:01So why do you think then
00:04:04this powerful interest in population matters
00:04:07faded then in the decades that followed?
00:04:11It seems as if maybe there was a peak in the 70s,
00:04:14maybe early 80s
00:04:16and then in the 80s and 90s,
00:04:18it seemed like population discussions
00:04:21maybe became more difficult
00:04:23and certainly environmentalists
00:04:25started to talk a lot less about them.
00:04:27Why was that?
00:04:29There was a lot of pushback from vested interests.
00:04:34If you have to, first of all,
00:04:36face what is the worst thing
00:04:38about our global society
00:04:42and our global culture at the moment
00:04:44and that is it's got growth mania.
00:04:47The idea is that you've got to grow forever
00:04:50on a finite planet
00:04:52if everybody's going to be healthy,
00:04:54wealthy and particularly wealthy
00:04:57and of course anybody
00:04:59who doesn't have to take off their shoes
00:05:01to count up to 20
00:05:02knows that's gibbering nonsense
00:05:04but unhappily as we see
00:05:06in the political situation in the United States,
00:05:09there are tens of millions of people
00:05:11who have to take off their shoes
00:05:12to count up to 20
00:05:14and the ones who really make the money
00:05:17like the people who own Fox News
00:05:21calling it news being a preposterous notion
00:05:26want to have the number of people
00:05:28increasing steadily
00:05:30so that they can sell more advertisements
00:05:33and the people who make the advertisements
00:05:35want more people to be able to consume
00:05:38and so it turns out that
00:05:40some many of the most important
00:05:43parts of our culture
00:05:45particularly our idiotic economic system
00:05:49which is promoted full-time
00:05:51by departments of economics
00:05:53at places like Stanford University
00:05:56which I once was associated with
00:05:59don't want population discussed
00:06:01in the sense that we should have fewer people
00:06:04but in the sense that we always need
00:06:07more people
00:06:08and I know you're familiar with
00:06:10the many moronic arguments
00:06:12for how we have to have more brains
00:06:15to solve human problems
00:06:17how we don't have to worry about
00:06:19infinite growth and so on
00:06:21so that's one of the reasons
00:06:23another reason is people like kids
00:06:25I like kids
00:06:27particularly I found it's very important
00:06:30a rule that I would suggest to you is
00:06:32don't have children
00:06:34have grandchildren
00:06:35grandchildren are much better
00:06:37than children
00:06:38when they begin to smell bad
00:06:40you just hand them back to your children
00:06:42I'm looking forward to that very much
00:06:45I can tell you it's wonderful
00:06:48let me push back a little on something
00:06:50you said
00:06:51you suggested that
00:06:53you brought up Fox News for instance
00:06:55and pro-growthism
00:06:57wouldn't you say though that
00:06:58that's pretty much a bipartisan
00:07:01all parties kind of approach
00:07:04I don't get the sense that
00:07:05Democrats are any less interested
00:07:07in pushing growth than Republicans
00:07:09if I gave the impression
00:07:11that that was a Republican problem
00:07:14I was totally wrong
00:07:16because as you indicate
00:07:17it's a universal problem
00:07:20the problem at the moment
00:07:22is of course that we are
00:07:24facing existential threats
00:07:26in part due to our
00:07:28vast overpopulation
00:07:30the ones who talk about
00:07:31not to worry because
00:07:33growth is slowing
00:07:35which it is
00:07:36that we don't have to worry
00:07:39when we're already
00:07:40by my estimate
00:07:41something in the vicinity of
00:07:43two to three times more people
00:07:46than we can support
00:07:47even at a Mexican standard of living
00:07:49permanently
00:07:51so no it is not
00:07:53it is a bipartisan problem
00:07:55but we were beginning to move
00:07:59towards solving some of the symptoms
00:08:01of overpopulation
00:08:03until first the Reagan administration
00:08:06and then God help us
00:08:08I hate to call it a Trump administration
00:08:10because as you may have noticed
00:08:12they have no policies
00:08:14they have no programs
00:08:16and they have succeeded
00:08:18in screwing up
00:08:20the worst public health problem
00:08:22we've faced
00:08:23probably on the planet
00:08:24in the last hundred years
00:08:26and screwed it up at a level
00:08:28that just beggars the imagination
00:08:30right now
00:08:32the policy of our federal government
00:08:35has almost officially switched
00:08:38but unofficially switched
00:08:39to mass murder
00:08:41that is to the idea of what
00:08:43Trump calls
00:08:45herd mentality
00:08:47but of course it's herd immunity
00:08:49and every single person
00:08:52who can do arithmetic
00:08:53and knows anything about epidemiology
00:08:55and as we have seen in Sweden
00:08:58where they tried it
00:08:59it's a disaster
00:09:00and we're
00:09:02you got to remember
00:09:03that Trump and his facilitators
00:09:05are killing people
00:09:07day by day
00:09:08in large numbers
00:09:09it's a case of mass murder
00:09:11so I think I would agree with you
00:09:14that the administration's
00:09:16approach to this
00:09:17has been scattershot
00:09:19and poor
00:09:20and you know
00:09:22I think I'd share all those
00:09:24views with you
00:09:25what else do you think though
00:09:27besides we want competent government
00:09:30what else do you think
00:09:31we should be learning
00:09:32from this coronavirus pandemic
00:09:34are there environmental
00:09:37lessons that we should be learning
00:09:39oh there are many
00:09:41sort of major environmental lessons
00:09:43for example
00:09:4525 years ago
00:09:48Gretchen Daly and I wrote a paper
00:09:50on the disease effects
00:09:53of global change
00:09:55and these are effects
00:09:57that people had known
00:09:59for a very long time
00:10:00for example
00:10:02we pointed out the problem
00:10:04with the agricultural system
00:10:06in China
00:10:07where you combine
00:10:09pigs and ducks
00:10:10and ponds
00:10:11and people
00:10:12to develop as a machine
00:10:14for developing new flu strains
00:10:17and we've known
00:10:19we I should say
00:10:20the scientific community
00:10:22has known for many decades
00:10:24that the things
00:10:26that give us infectious
00:10:28diseases of human beings
00:10:29are things that transferred
00:10:31from other animals
00:10:33and so if you're destroying
00:10:35biodiversity
00:10:36and in part transferring
00:10:38animals for food
00:10:40and as pets
00:10:42into large markets
00:10:45so-called wet markets
00:10:47of live animals
00:10:48you're just begging
00:10:50to get a
00:10:53new virus strains
00:10:54that's how you get
00:10:56new virus strains
00:10:57and so the biodiversity crisis
00:11:00has played in various ways
00:11:03into the pandemic situation
00:11:06for human beings
00:11:08and nobody that I know
00:11:10who's technically interested
00:11:12in these issues
00:11:13thinks it's the present
00:11:16SARS-CoV-2 infection
00:11:19of human beings
00:11:20the so-called COVID-19
00:11:22pandemic
00:11:23is the last
00:11:24it's one of many
00:11:26it's the most recent one
00:11:28that's giving big problems
00:11:29if we manage to get it
00:11:31damp down with sensible policies
00:11:33we're almost certain
00:11:35to have more and more
00:11:37as we keep wiping out
00:11:38the other organisms
00:11:40on the planet
00:11:41that support our lives
00:11:42so these things are tied
00:11:44tightly together
00:11:45and they're also tied
00:11:47to climate disruption
00:11:48which is the most
00:11:51recognized
00:11:53population connection
00:11:55existential problem
00:11:57we face it
00:11:58may not be the worst
00:11:59but it's the most recognized
00:12:01and the population connection
00:12:04is super clear
00:12:05there's a wonderful study
00:12:07done a couple of years ago
00:12:09by Wynes
00:12:11W-Y-N-E-S
00:12:13and his colleague
00:12:14that you probably know
00:12:16that shows having one less child
00:12:19reduces greenhouse gas emissions
00:12:22as persuading 22 of your friends
00:12:25to stop driving
00:12:26in a rich country
00:12:28yeah that's just
00:12:30an incredible piece of work
00:12:32I mean it's
00:12:33as you say it shows that
00:12:35really having fewer children
00:12:38is the most important
00:12:41step that individuals can take
00:12:43and I think it's
00:12:45it got a lot of press
00:12:47for that reason
00:12:48it's interesting though
00:12:49people don't tend to scale
00:12:51that message up
00:12:52so you sort of say
00:12:54well if you're concerned
00:12:56about climate change
00:12:57don't have more than
00:12:58one or two kids
00:12:59but really the larger issue is
00:13:02government population policies
00:13:04wouldn't you say
00:13:05I mean this isn't a matter
00:13:07for just individual action
00:13:08climate change
00:13:09absolutely
00:13:10this has got to be
00:13:11collective action
00:13:13governments have to be involved
00:13:15because what are you know
00:13:16we invented governments
00:13:17to do things we can't do
00:13:19individually
00:13:20and me just having one kid
00:13:24has not solved
00:13:25the population problem
00:13:27or the climate problem amazingly
00:13:29so it's
00:13:31but I mean
00:13:32what we should be doing
00:13:33of course
00:13:34what the US government
00:13:35should be doing
00:13:36is absolutely the opposite
00:13:38of what the Trump
00:13:39administration is doing
00:13:40the Trump administration
00:13:41is trying to promote
00:13:43reproduction
00:13:45they're just trying to put
00:13:46an over reproducer
00:13:48on the Supreme Court
00:13:49an over reproducer
00:13:51who's against contraception
00:13:52an over reproducer
00:13:54who's against
00:13:56backup abortion
00:13:57whereas what we should
00:13:59we shouldn't be having
00:14:00the war on women
00:14:01that Trump is running
00:14:02we should be
00:14:03doing everything we can
00:14:05to give women
00:14:06more opportunities
00:14:07to give women
00:14:08more education
00:14:09to give women
00:14:10equal or more pay
00:14:12for the same job
00:14:13and we know
00:14:15from lots of data
00:14:16that if women are liberated
00:14:19in the most general sense
00:14:21that's one of the best ways
00:14:22to bring fertility rates down
00:14:24but of course
00:14:25Trump is doing
00:14:26absolutely the opposite
00:14:28and trying to put
00:14:30an idiot on the Supreme Court
00:14:32which he will succeed
00:14:33in doing
00:14:34I think it's important
00:14:35to emphasize
00:14:36that there's a lot
00:14:37of scientific backing
00:14:38for that point
00:14:39you just made
00:14:41obviously it's important
00:14:42to get people
00:14:43the contraceptive availability
00:14:45that they need
00:14:46in order to limit fertility
00:14:48but there's great research
00:14:50that's been done
00:14:51by Wolfgang Lutz
00:14:53and others
00:14:54showing that
00:14:55increasing education
00:14:57for young women
00:14:58is very effective
00:14:59at bringing fertility rates down
00:15:01especially in the developing world
00:15:03and increasing
00:15:05women's rights
00:15:06and economic power
00:15:10is also part of that equation
00:15:12so it's not just that
00:15:14those are good things
00:15:15to do on their own
00:15:16although they are
00:15:17but they're very effective
00:15:19at bringing down
00:15:21fertility rates
00:15:22and again as you point out
00:15:24not just bringing down
00:15:25fertility rates
00:15:26but giving people
00:15:27better lives overall
00:15:29one of the things
00:15:30that depresses me
00:15:33about the trend
00:15:35in the Trump administration
00:15:37and including
00:15:39the woman they're going to put
00:15:41on the Supreme Court
00:15:42is that somehow
00:15:44they're desperately interested
00:15:46in preserving
00:15:47the lives of fetuses
00:15:49but once they're born
00:15:50they don't give a damn
00:15:51about them
00:15:52in other words
00:15:53this is the same administration
00:15:54that's been tearing children
00:15:56away from their parents
00:15:57permanently
00:15:58along our southern border
00:16:00now how you can be
00:16:02in favor of
00:16:05preventing women from
00:16:07controlling their own bodies
00:16:09and desperately interested
00:16:11in unborn children
00:16:13and then totally ignore
00:16:15and torture born children
00:16:16is beyond my
00:16:18poor powers to comprehend
00:16:21well I'd like to just
00:16:23emphasize that
00:16:25this concern about
00:16:27population issues
00:16:28it's not just a
00:16:30concern that a few
00:16:31oddballs have
00:16:32a few retreads from the
00:16:3460s and 70s let's say
00:16:36it seems as if
00:16:38in the last couple of years
00:16:40the scientific community
00:16:42is waking up
00:16:43to the importance
00:16:44of population
00:16:46and one striking example
00:16:48that I'm sure you're familiar with
00:16:49is the 2018
00:16:51world scientist warning
00:16:52to humanity
00:16:54that was a document
00:16:55where over 15,000 scientists
00:16:57around the world
00:16:59signed on to a warning
00:17:00of the dangers
00:17:01of ecological overshoot
00:17:03and I'd just like to
00:17:05quote from that a little bit
00:17:07we are jeopardizing our future
00:17:09by not reining in our
00:17:10intense material consumption
00:17:12and by not perceiving
00:17:14continued rapid population
00:17:16growth as a primary driver
00:17:18behind many ecological
00:17:20and societal threats
00:17:22by failing to adequately limit
00:17:24population growth and reassess
00:17:26the role of an economy rooted in growth
00:17:28humanity is not taking
00:17:30the urgent steps needed to
00:17:32safeguard our imperiled
00:17:34biosphere and the
00:17:36scientist also advocated
00:17:38quote estimating a scientifically
00:17:40defensible sustainable
00:17:42human population size
00:17:44for the long term and rallying
00:17:46nations to support that vital
00:17:48goal so
00:17:50the scientific community
00:17:52seems to be on board
00:17:54with the importance of population
00:17:56but I want to ask you a question
00:17:58to follow up on that
00:18:00let's say we wanted to estimate
00:18:02a sustainable global human population
00:18:04how would we go about
00:18:06making such an estimate
00:18:08well let me say
00:18:10two things first of all
00:18:12well actually an important thing
00:18:14that was a follow up on a
00:18:161992 statement which
00:18:18said the same thing and there were two
00:18:20statements one signed
00:18:22onto by I think almost
00:18:24every
00:18:26national academy of sciences
00:18:28around the world the Royal Society
00:18:30our national academy
00:18:32scientists have never been
00:18:34confused about this with very
00:18:36rare exceptions in fact
00:18:38when I wrote the population
00:18:40bomb I got
00:18:42only support from my scientific
00:18:44colleagues one of the top
00:18:46maybe the top
00:18:48taxonomic
00:18:50environment and evolutionary
00:18:52scientist at the time
00:18:54two of them Ernst Mayr
00:18:56and Theodosius Dobzhansky
00:18:58both were extremely
00:19:00supportive I have many
00:19:02holographic letters from Ernst over the rest
00:19:04of my career until he died
00:19:06saying stay at it
00:19:08it's really important
00:19:10so I thought I might get
00:19:12a lot of flack from my colleagues
00:19:14for stepping out and going public on the
00:19:16issue but instead I got
00:19:18solid support all the way
00:19:20and still have it as you say
00:19:22the 15,000
00:19:24thing one was fired up by
00:19:26a guy named Bill Ripple who's an environmental
00:19:28scientist and
00:19:30very active in this area
00:19:32and fortunate to say there's a
00:19:34lot of young people coming along
00:19:36who have many of the same ideas as
00:19:38old farts had and in fact
00:19:40anybody
00:19:42who is numerate knows
00:19:44you can't grow forever
00:19:46now how do you make an estimate
00:19:48Ann and I and Gretchen
00:19:50Daly made an estimate in the
00:19:52early 90's
00:19:54just asking the question of
00:19:56if you don't have a
00:19:58dramatic change
00:20:00in technologies that are
00:20:02totally unanticipated
00:20:04how many people
00:20:06can you have, what would be an
00:20:08optimal population size
00:20:10and what we asked was
00:20:12how many
00:20:14people could you have
00:20:16and still maintain options
00:20:18that have as many
00:20:20people, have enough
00:20:22people so you can have
00:20:24nice big cities with lots
00:20:26of fine restaurants and so on
00:20:28for the people who like
00:20:30fine restaurants and
00:20:32big cities and
00:20:34also while feeding
00:20:36the people in the big cities maintain
00:20:38enough wild lands
00:20:40so that you can both
00:20:42preserve biodiversity
00:20:44and have a place for people who want to be
00:20:46hermits or like hiking and so on
00:20:48and so forth
00:20:50and at a reasonable standard of
00:20:52living we came up with something on
00:20:54the order of 2 billion people
00:20:56and if you think about it
00:20:58it fits our history
00:21:00because by pure coincidence
00:21:02I was the 2 billionth person
00:21:04born on this planet
00:21:06and
00:21:08that was the number of people
00:21:10there were in the early
00:21:12part of the 20th
00:21:14century
00:21:16and back if you think around say
00:21:181900
00:21:20there were plenty of big cities
00:21:22and there was also plenty of wilderness
00:21:24and so
00:21:26one might say if we're going to plan
00:21:28we should be planning to have a world
00:21:30somewhat like that until
00:21:32we see what tech, maybe that's
00:21:34too many in which case
00:21:36as we, it's going to take a long
00:21:38time if we did the shrinkage that's
00:21:40necessary and again
00:21:42I don't like the idea of stabilizing
00:21:44population, not
00:21:46until we're at a level that can be sustainable
00:21:48we are now
00:21:50at 4 times the
00:21:52sustainable level by that estimate
00:21:54so I don't know
00:21:56a single scientist who's knowledgeable
00:21:58about these things who doesn't
00:22:00think that we should be reducing
00:22:02the size of the human population
00:22:04as fast as we humanely
00:22:06can and yet
00:22:08it's not happening of course
00:22:10but it's going to take a while
00:22:12under any circumstances and
00:22:14we can do what
00:22:16sometimes called adaptive management
00:22:18that is we can redo the estimates
00:22:20as we see
00:22:22what technologies are really working
00:22:24what are not working
00:22:26or are causing all
00:22:28kinds of problems and so
00:22:30maybe 2 billion is too many
00:22:32we might want to go down more towards 1 billion
00:22:34or maybe we find out as
00:22:36we with new
00:22:38technologies that we haven't
00:22:40imagined yet that we can
00:22:42support 3 billion, the point is
00:22:44we're going to go through
00:22:468 billion very very soon
00:22:48and so the issue of
00:22:50whether it should be 2 or 3 billion
00:22:52is a very long
00:22:54way in the future if we
00:22:56reduce the size of the human population
00:22:58humanely, if we don't
00:23:00it's going to be reduced for us
00:23:02and that's one of the things that
00:23:04always have to remember
00:23:06that is there's no question
00:23:08population growth is going to stop
00:23:10what's in our control
00:23:12is how it stops
00:23:14and that's a very critical issue
00:23:16Paul, you
00:23:18spoke about both
00:23:20a sustainable population
00:23:22and an optimal population
00:23:24could you talk about the difference
00:23:26between those two concepts
00:23:28because it's easy to kind of confuse them
00:23:30but I think talking about
00:23:32the human carrying capacity is
00:23:34one thing and talking about
00:23:36what the optimal population
00:23:38might be something else
00:23:40I can quote my boss Gretchen Daly
00:23:42who was once my student
00:23:44but now she's boss
00:23:46she says
00:23:48what a battery chicken world for people
00:23:50in other words
00:23:52the number that you might be able to sustain
00:23:54everybody having
00:23:56an absolute minimum diet
00:23:58minimum activities
00:24:00and so on
00:24:02will be a higher number
00:24:04than you can have of
00:24:06Beverly Hills billionaires
00:24:08and it's a
00:24:10human choice in a sense of where you go
00:24:12in between, we often talk
00:24:14about an average
00:24:16standard of living something like the country
00:24:18of Mexico although obviously
00:24:20there are many things you'd want to do
00:24:22that would be non-Mexican
00:24:24just like if you had one of the standard
00:24:26of living of the United States
00:24:28there are a lot of things you'd want to do to change
00:24:30the United States
00:24:32one of the most critical problems
00:24:34of course in doing anything
00:24:36about the population
00:24:38and environmental situation
00:24:40is the issue of inequity
00:24:42getting worse around
00:24:44the world
00:24:46and there are still
00:24:48a series of idiots who keep
00:24:50saying it's not population
00:24:52size it's consumption
00:24:54curiously enough
00:24:56it's the people who consume
00:24:58if you have only
00:25:0010 people on the planet the consumption
00:25:02problem is going to be very much smaller
00:25:04than if you have 10 billion
00:25:06and it is
00:25:08certainly true that one of the problems
00:25:10is over consumption by the rich
00:25:12but the answer
00:25:14to solving that is not
00:25:16to make a lot more people
00:25:18rich it is to redistribute
00:25:20the wealth while you reduce the
00:25:22size of the population move
00:25:24to a high level of equity where
00:25:26everybody has a decent life
00:25:28including the people who
00:25:30are rich now but also
00:25:32including the people who aren't rich
00:25:34now and that means a much
00:25:36smaller population and
00:25:38much less consumption per person
00:25:40than you have say in the
00:25:42United States or Saudi
00:25:44Arabia or so on
00:25:46the model might be
00:25:48almost be Japan
00:25:50with reduced
00:25:52consumption in Japan
00:25:54per person Japan
00:25:56at least is beginning to shrink
00:25:58it's beginning to face how very
00:26:00limited its resources
00:26:02are just like the whole planet
00:26:04has very limited resources
00:26:06and Japan
00:26:08is not suffering terribly
00:26:10except in the minds of some of Japan's
00:26:12businessmen and politicians
00:26:14who are growth maniacs
00:26:16like most people
00:26:18so I mean that brings up an interesting
00:26:20point Japan is
00:26:22a good example Germany is another
00:26:24where the population
00:26:26in Germany I believe it's
00:26:28relatively stable at the
00:26:30moment but it might be down by
00:26:32a few million from what it was a few
00:26:34years ago
00:26:36these are wealthy societies
00:26:38that seem to have
00:26:40giving us some evidence that
00:26:42population can decrease
00:26:44at a minimum it doesn't have to keep
00:26:46increasing and yet we can still
00:26:48have pretty good
00:26:50lives and yet
00:26:52when you read the newspaper accounts
00:26:54about this
00:26:56there's a lot
00:26:58of horror stories about
00:27:00how terrible it is that the population
00:27:02isn't growing as fast
00:27:04as it used to so my question is this
00:27:06how do we convince
00:27:08the leaders out there
00:27:10that a world with a
00:27:12decreasing population
00:27:14could actually be a better world
00:27:16well one of the
00:27:18things that I've worked on
00:27:20hard for the last 30
00:27:22years is getting together
00:27:24with world class economists
00:27:26and trying
00:27:28to persuade them to
00:27:30fix the
00:27:32economics education and
00:27:34the economic system itself
00:27:36and my
00:27:38success has been limited
00:27:40but for example
00:27:42the top economist in the world
00:27:44today in my view is Partha Dasgupta
00:27:46in England who
00:27:48has been working on the economics
00:27:50of biodiversity
00:27:52and he also has done a lot
00:27:54of work on population
00:27:56he came to the conclusion that
00:27:58a sustainable population
00:28:00might be about 3.5 billion
00:28:02I think he's a little high
00:28:04but then again I may be
00:28:06too low but the
00:28:08point is he understands
00:28:10the issues 99%
00:28:12of professional
00:28:14economists have not got a clue
00:28:16we have one person
00:28:18in our economics department
00:28:20in the macro area
00:28:22who has any idea what's
00:28:24going on in the world and yet we pay
00:28:26them all salaries
00:28:28so it's a very
00:28:30difficult thing
00:28:32the standard line
00:28:34from economists as you
00:28:36probably know is if we
00:28:38get the prices right everything
00:28:40will be fine and getting
00:28:42the prices right means
00:28:44taking care of the externalities
00:28:46the things that are external
00:28:48to the market
00:28:50system. Unhappily
00:28:52for example
00:28:54the fact that the climate is becoming
00:28:56unlivable for people
00:28:58and for biodiversity
00:29:00and possibly for civilization
00:29:02if we don't change things fast
00:29:04is an externality
00:29:06and
00:29:08the first smart
00:29:10economist in recent decades
00:29:12Herman Daly put it
00:29:14very well when he said
00:29:16if the survival of your
00:29:18civilization is
00:29:20external to your model
00:29:22you probably need a new model
00:29:24and that is
00:29:26a fundamental thing. We are not
00:29:28going to solve our problems
00:29:30under the current global paradigm
00:29:32which has held for about
00:29:34the last 300 years at least
00:29:36that everything is financial
00:29:38and that not only that
00:29:40every value is financial
00:29:42but if you don't keep the financial system
00:29:44growing and that is the whole
00:29:46consumption system growing
00:29:48you can't be happy, you can't
00:29:50be secure and so on
00:29:52even though that's obviously
00:29:54patent nonsense because
00:29:56for most of human history
00:29:58things were not all financial
00:30:00I mean remember we have a 300,000
00:30:02year history
00:30:04economists think the last
00:30:06300 years is all
00:30:08of human history
00:30:10but they can be trained
00:30:12some of them are numerate
00:30:14and so one of the great challenges
00:30:16we have is shutting
00:30:18down business schools which are very
00:30:20dangerous and
00:30:22breaking up economics departments
00:30:24and scattering the economists
00:30:26around where they can learn something
00:30:28about the biophysics
00:30:30of the world. One of the
00:30:32famous paper written by economists
00:30:34on the training of economists
00:30:36points out they know nothing
00:30:38about biophysics
00:30:40they don't understand that for
00:30:42example there are little rules that
00:30:44keep you from recycling energy
00:30:46which you can't change
00:30:48and so on. So we have a
00:30:50huge problem there
00:30:52but if we don't change the whole paradigm
00:30:54sooner or later
00:30:56my grandchildren or
00:30:58great-grandchildren are going to suffer severely
00:31:00and so are yours.
00:31:02So we need a new
00:31:04view of economics
00:31:06and by the way
00:31:08if you read Partha
00:31:10Dasgupta's work, Time and the
00:31:12Generations, his recent book
00:31:14I mean the key
00:31:16difference, in a lot of what
00:31:18he says he sounds like a conventional
00:31:20economist
00:31:22but where he differs is he takes
00:31:24seriously some of the
00:31:26discussions about overshoot
00:31:28and the
00:31:30ecological footprint and things like that
00:31:32and he weaves it into his discussion
00:31:34And poverty
00:31:36And poverty too, he's very
00:31:38Distribution is really
00:31:40Absolutely
00:31:42The standard economic system is to focus
00:31:44on efficiency rather than distribution
00:31:46Absolutely
00:31:48and what that means
00:31:50is that
00:31:52well nature gets short shrift
00:31:54but also
00:31:56poor people get short shrift in conventional
00:31:58economics
00:32:00So we need a new view
00:32:02of sort of macroeconomics
00:32:04but I want to talk about a different aspect
00:32:06of that particular problem
00:32:08and
00:32:10the best way
00:32:12to put it is this, if you look at how
00:32:14conservation biologists
00:32:16have justified
00:32:18environmental protection, wildlife
00:32:20protection over the past 20 years
00:32:22an awful lot of the focus
00:32:24is on so called ecosystem
00:32:26services. The idea
00:32:28is if we lose biodiversity or
00:32:30too much biodiversity, various
00:32:32services that we depend on
00:32:34for our well-being, human well-being
00:32:36will be lost
00:32:38It's always seemed to me that whatever
00:32:40the truth in that
00:32:42it's basically an argument that
00:32:44you present to philistines who
00:32:46can't really appreciate the world
00:32:48I mean, so here's
00:32:50my question to you, when you think about
00:32:52the extinction
00:32:54of a life form
00:32:56when you think about the loss of those
00:32:58populations of butterflies that you
00:33:00studied at Stanford's
00:33:02ecological
00:33:04ecological research center
00:33:06for so many years
00:33:08what is the
00:33:10what's the real loss when we lose
00:33:12a species forever?
00:33:14Well
00:33:16first of all
00:33:18there's been this
00:33:20difference
00:33:22that you're
00:33:24just pointing out
00:33:26among conservation biologists
00:33:28there are the ones who say
00:33:30it's basically
00:33:32an ethical, moral
00:33:34issue
00:33:36the other organisms on the planet
00:33:38are our only known living
00:33:40relatives in the universe
00:33:42they may or may not be
00:33:44I don't think that I'll ever know the answer
00:33:46to that, but
00:33:48we certainly, they're the only ones
00:33:50we know about
00:33:52and therefore
00:33:54it's a big mistake
00:33:56and probably unethical
00:33:58depending on your ethical system
00:34:00to wipe them out
00:34:02the other side is
00:34:04what you mentioned, the ecosystem service
00:34:06side, they're absolutely essential
00:34:08we're embedded in them, people who think
00:34:10that we're separate from nature just don't
00:34:12get it, we're just
00:34:14we're no more separate
00:34:16from nature than a brain cancer
00:34:18is separate from the person who has it
00:34:20and
00:34:22the
00:34:24advantage of that view
00:34:26is that you
00:34:28can explain it to growth
00:34:30manic morons
00:34:32who only care about themselves
00:34:34I mean in a sense
00:34:36human civilization is
00:34:38sort of Trumpian, it only thinks
00:34:40about itself
00:34:42and there's
00:34:44been a lot of debate about that
00:34:46but I think there was a paper actually
00:34:48run by a lot of women
00:34:50although I think I signed
00:34:52on to it
00:34:54saying this is a ridiculous argument
00:34:56to have, both arguments are correct
00:34:58it's very
00:35:00hard to have
00:35:02you can't have, in my view
00:35:04you can't have ethics that's
00:35:06agreed upon principles
00:35:08for running society and associating
00:35:10with other people without
00:35:12language with syntax which means
00:35:14ethics is something restricted
00:35:16to human beings
00:35:18and in my view
00:35:20we don't have anywhere near enough
00:35:22discussion of ethics, on the other hand
00:35:24I've been a big promoter of
00:35:26ecosystem services
00:35:28because the people who don't have any
00:35:30idea about ethics, like Trump
00:35:32you can persuade them that
00:35:34in fact, if we
00:35:36change the climate enough
00:35:38Trump Tower will fall
00:35:40because the ocean will rise
00:35:42flood the subways of New York
00:35:44and there's a wonderful book by
00:35:46Phil Weissman, you've probably read
00:35:48The World Without Us
00:35:50most people don't realize that
00:35:52if you don't keep the pumps going
00:35:54the foundations of the
00:35:56skyscrapers go
00:35:58so anyway
00:36:00it's an active
00:36:02debate, but it's a silly
00:36:04debate, in my view
00:36:06because of my
00:36:08personal ethical
00:36:10or I should say the ethical
00:36:12feelings of me
00:36:14and most of my friends and colleagues
00:36:16about what the right thing to do
00:36:18is
00:36:20and as you know
00:36:22you're a philosopher, are you not?
00:36:24I am, I'm an ethicist
00:36:26I was going to say, ethics are
00:36:28really complicated
00:36:30and
00:36:32ethics are complicated
00:36:34and I take your point
00:36:36that any argument
00:36:38that can help us
00:36:40to convince people to protect the environment
00:36:42preserve other species
00:36:44is a good argument, including
00:36:46the ecosystem services arguments
00:36:48and it's absolutely true
00:36:50we do depend
00:36:52on their existence for our
00:36:54well-being and yet
00:36:56I still have to feel that
00:36:58there's a
00:37:00problem with our general
00:37:02outlook and it's not just the economists
00:37:04it's people in
00:37:06our society in general where
00:37:08the default really is
00:37:10to think about these questions
00:37:12in terms of economics
00:37:14your first thought when you hear that
00:37:16a bird species is about to go extinct
00:37:18shouldn't be
00:37:20boy I might, or my grandchildren
00:37:22might lose some ecosystem services
00:37:24I don't think, I mean
00:37:26there's something else that's more
00:37:28You and I agree on this, the trouble is
00:37:30most people, I mean
00:37:32that's what I meant when I said the
00:37:34financialization of everything
00:37:36you know, the idea that the
00:37:38your value and
00:37:40the value of anything else, your value
00:37:42is in your salary
00:37:44and your work
00:37:46to get the salary, that's the only
00:37:48reason you work, right?
00:37:50That's the
00:37:52very common view that everything
00:37:54has to be measured in monetary
00:37:56terms, which I think is
00:37:58dead wrong and lethal for our
00:38:00society and I think
00:38:02as the stuff that Bill
00:38:04Ripple has been promoting and so on
00:38:06but that you and I have been involved in a long
00:38:08time
00:38:10the biggest issue to
00:38:12me today is is there any
00:38:14chance at all of civilization
00:38:16persisting to the end of this
00:38:18century, in other words
00:38:20a lot of scientists
00:38:22are just concerned with what will the
00:38:24collapse be like and will
00:38:26there be enough left for
00:38:28a reset
00:38:30and therefore most
00:38:32of the arguments for instance that the
00:38:34politicians of both parties
00:38:36are going through now are
00:38:38less than rearranging the deck chairs
00:38:40on the Titanic
00:38:42in other words
00:38:44if we get rid of Trump
00:38:46there will be in my view a slightly
00:38:48larger chance
00:38:50of avoiding a
00:38:52collapse from which
00:38:54there will be no recovery
00:38:56and
00:38:58I don't see
00:39:00any clear path
00:39:02to anything that most people
00:39:04would consider to be
00:39:06a return
00:39:08to the
00:39:10kind of world they think we
00:39:12had four years ago
00:39:14We have to
00:39:16move forward and ask some
00:39:18fundamental questions about our
00:39:20societies and how our societies
00:39:22fit into the natural world
00:39:24Paul
00:39:26I want to
00:39:28get back specifically to the topic
00:39:30of population here and
00:39:32an approach to it that I think
00:39:34it hasn't just been very influential
00:39:36it's been very helpful
00:39:38to a lot of us in thinking about these matters
00:39:40and it's the IPAT
00:39:42formula which you first
00:39:44coined in an article you co-wrote
00:39:46with John Holdren
00:39:48back in 1971
00:39:50I believe
00:39:52could you explain to listeners
00:39:54what IPAT means
00:39:56and how it helps us better
00:39:58understand environmental issues
00:40:00Well I can
00:40:02do that in part by telling you why we
00:40:04developed it
00:40:06back in at that time
00:40:08population was
00:40:10being discussed fairly
00:40:12extensively I can't remember when
00:40:14it happened but there was even during
00:40:16the Nixon administration a
00:40:18population
00:40:20commission
00:40:22set up by the president
00:40:24to look at it
00:40:26and one of the things that disturbed
00:40:28John and me and a lot of other people
00:40:30was somehow the idea
00:40:32that the population problem
00:40:34was too many Mexicans
00:40:36or too many Africans
00:40:38possibly pushing through our borders
00:40:40and so on something you can still
00:40:42see for example
00:40:44in Trump administration policies
00:40:46and we wanted to point
00:40:48out and it's been
00:40:50difficult and we've worked at it now
00:40:52for 60 years or
00:40:54so that the worst population
00:40:56problems are in the rich countries
00:40:58because of course the rich
00:41:00people are the ones
00:41:02who use the resources fly the airplanes
00:41:04dump the most
00:41:06carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
00:41:08and so on
00:41:10and so we decided to point out to people
00:41:12that the impact
00:41:14that the impact
00:41:16of a population that's the
00:41:18I of the IPAT equation
00:41:20was a product of three
00:41:22things how many people
00:41:24there were
00:41:26how much on average each one
00:41:28consumed that was per capita
00:41:30consumption but in
00:41:32since IPICT didn't work
00:41:34too well we called it affluence
00:41:36so you have population times
00:41:38affluence times a T
00:41:40factor which we used for technology
00:41:42but include in technology
00:41:44the
00:41:46systems you develop to employ
00:41:48the technology
00:41:50and that the impact could
00:41:52be increased by raising
00:41:54the number of people by
00:41:56increasing per capita
00:41:58consumption or by
00:42:00inventing more sloppy
00:42:02technologies and in reverse
00:42:04the impact could be reduced
00:42:06by having fewer people by
00:42:08each person consuming less and
00:42:10by using let's say
00:42:12shoe leather rather than
00:42:14Cadillac engines to move around
00:42:16with
00:42:18and it attracted
00:42:20the interest of social scientists
00:42:22it's a very easy idea
00:42:24it makes people think
00:42:26more clearly I think about
00:42:28population problems
00:42:30and it doesn't
00:42:32include everything I mean
00:42:34for example
00:42:36it's hard
00:42:38to see in that
00:42:40one of the main things about
00:42:42population that we know
00:42:44is that
00:42:46population growth does
00:42:48not lead necessarily to prosperous
00:42:50countries that in fact
00:42:52the poor countries that did most
00:42:54about their population
00:42:56particularly in East Asia
00:42:58thrived
00:43:00when the ones that did less about
00:43:02population and say in Sub-Saharan
00:43:04Africa haven't thrived
00:43:06so
00:43:08IPAT doesn't cover everything
00:43:10I'm always
00:43:12amused by
00:43:14people who want to be critical of it who say
00:43:16you got to remember
00:43:18that
00:43:20they're not
00:43:22independent factors
00:43:24that the technologies used
00:43:26are related to the consumption
00:43:28and the consumption amount
00:43:30and of course we wrote about if you read the paper
00:43:32ever we covered all that stuff
00:43:34right
00:43:36there is one
00:43:38environmentalist who's
00:43:40on the right side of most issues
00:43:42but on the wrong side of this one
00:43:44a guy named George Monbiot
00:43:46who keeps writing idiotic articles
00:43:48about how it's all consumption
00:43:50it can't be all consumption
00:43:52the amount of consumption
00:43:54is curiously enough tied to the number
00:43:56of people consuming I don't know
00:43:58why he can't figure that out
00:44:00it doesn't seem all that difficult to me
00:44:02well it's probably
00:44:04ideologically driven right I mean he
00:44:06he wants to be on the side
00:44:08of
00:44:10people who support more immigration
00:44:12into the UK and
00:44:14therefore he argues that
00:44:16population numbers don't matter
00:44:18a little
00:44:20quote from yours and I think you've used
00:44:22this in a few books
00:44:24this quote comes from the
00:44:26Annihilation of Nature which I think was
00:44:282015 you say
00:44:30many environmentalists are convinced
00:44:32that over consumption is a much
00:44:34larger contributor to environmental
00:44:36deterioration than over
00:44:38population this is roughly
00:44:40like being convinced that the length of a
00:44:42rectangle is a much larger
00:44:44contributor to its area than
00:44:46its width the two factors
00:44:48are inseparable
00:44:50explain
00:44:52that idea explain
00:44:54why you can't separate them
00:44:56if you what you
00:44:58can if you look
00:45:00at the
00:45:02area of a rectangle
00:45:04you know it's a product
00:45:06of the length and the width
00:45:08now
00:45:10you can't tell which
00:45:12one contributes more
00:45:14to the area the only thing
00:45:16you might tell is if you change
00:45:18one you can
00:45:20say that the increasing width
00:45:22is increasing the area
00:45:24right or
00:45:26decreasing the length will
00:45:28decrease the area
00:45:30but you can't say which is
00:45:32contributing more to the area of
00:45:34the rectangle and
00:45:36it's the same thing with population
00:45:38and consumption you have fewer
00:45:40people that will reduce
00:45:42the amount of it can reduce the amount of
00:45:44consumption unless you raise the
00:45:46amount of consumption to
00:45:48compensate for
00:45:50it but you can't say whether that's
00:45:52the population size or
00:45:54the per capita consumption
00:45:56that is giving the
00:45:58overall consumption and it is the
00:46:00overall consumption which
00:46:02attacks the planet basically
00:46:04our life support systems
00:46:06so ipad
00:46:08is very convenient for
00:46:10explaining that to people and
00:46:12I found that they do understand
00:46:14that better
00:46:16if you use the analogy of
00:46:18whether or not you can tell whether it's
00:46:20the length or the width
00:46:22that is contributing more
00:46:24area to your backyard
00:46:26or to the swimming pool or whatever
00:46:28else now you know
00:46:30I suppose that one way that
00:46:32a focus on overconsumption might
00:46:34be justified would be
00:46:36a lot easier to correct
00:46:38overconsumption than overpopulation
00:46:40so they could both be important
00:46:42population numbers and per capita
00:46:44but if it was really easy
00:46:46to get people to consume less
00:46:48then perhaps you could
00:46:50suggest that we should focus
00:46:52on overconsumption
00:46:54but that doesn't seem to be the case
00:46:56well first of all
00:46:58we know that
00:47:00at least in the short term
00:47:02if you have a
00:47:04really serious
00:47:06problem tied to
00:47:08the amount of
00:47:10total amount of consumption
00:47:12you can
00:47:14change the amount of consumption
00:47:16more rapidly and
00:47:18more humanely than you
00:47:20can change the size of the population
00:47:22and we have evidence
00:47:24of that from
00:47:26say December 7th
00:47:281941 which I remember
00:47:30but you don't
00:47:32which was when the Japanese
00:47:34bombed Pearl Harbor and up to that time
00:47:36we produced almost 4 million cars
00:47:38in the United States
00:47:40and for the next 4 years
00:47:42we didn't produce any civilian
00:47:44cars in the United States
00:47:46we produced tanks and guns
00:47:48and etc, etc, etc
00:47:50we rationed
00:47:52rubber, we rationed fuel
00:47:54we rationed meat
00:47:56and so on
00:47:58we changed the consumption patterns
00:48:00very dramatically
00:48:02and then in 1945-46
00:48:04we reversed it
00:48:06equally rapidly
00:48:08and began to do all these
00:48:10so you can change
00:48:12consumption very rapidly
00:48:14the problem is of course
00:48:16that meanwhile population
00:48:18is just continuing to grow
00:48:20so yeah
00:48:22rapid changes in consumption can be
00:48:24made but if you want to change
00:48:26the overall
00:48:28pattern of
00:48:30consumption
00:48:32you're going to have to change population
00:48:34as well and of course
00:48:36on that we should have started
00:48:38about 1940
00:48:40when the human population
00:48:42was
00:48:44not quite 3 billion people
00:48:46as I recall
00:48:48coming up on Partha Dasgupta's
00:48:50limit and if we'd started
00:48:52then and we only had
00:48:543 billion people today
00:48:56for example the chances of
00:48:58the climate wrecking us in the next
00:49:0010 years would be much smaller
00:49:02than it is today
00:49:04so it takes
00:49:06longer to humanely change
00:49:08the size of the population
00:49:10well let me push back on that
00:49:12a little Paul because I've
00:49:14heard you make this argument before
00:49:16and it is true you know
00:49:18in World War II
00:49:20the US and other countries did
00:49:22radically change consumption
00:49:24but that was with our backs
00:49:26to the wall and as you said
00:49:28there was a huge rebound after
00:49:30the war and there was almost
00:49:32bound to be such
00:49:34a rebound a desire
00:49:36and a push for more consumption
00:49:38I would argue that
00:49:40it might well be easier
00:49:42to slowly
00:49:44reduce or
00:49:46quickly reduce fertility levels
00:49:48than it is to reduce consumption
00:49:50levels after all
00:49:52in the last 75 years
00:49:54we've seen many countries around
00:49:56the world
00:49:58with family planning programs
00:50:00reduce their fertility relatively quickly
00:50:02but I can't think of a single
00:50:04country where its
00:50:06leaders have said we're going to work to
00:50:08reduce consumption
00:50:10and the people have sort of said yes
00:50:12that's what we want instead consumption
00:50:14has gone up per capita
00:50:16consumption. No I agree with
00:50:18you it's not
00:50:20it's
00:50:24I'm not sure exactly
00:50:26how to put it but
00:50:28we have excellent
00:50:30examples of how rapidly
00:50:32fertility rates can change
00:50:34in some places and I agree
00:50:36with you that the
00:50:38people are more
00:50:40willing to do that
00:50:42than they often are to change their consumption
00:50:44patterns. It depends on
00:50:46levels of consumption. It depends
00:50:48a lot on the
00:50:50overall culture which brings
00:50:52us back to what I think we agree
00:50:54is the basic problem that
00:50:56is we need a brand new
00:50:58cultural paradigm for the
00:51:00entire planet
00:51:02which says
00:51:04what Herman Daly used to call
00:51:06satisficing that is not maximizing
00:51:08your consumption but
00:51:10having enough to satisfy you
00:51:12getting rid of
00:51:14competitive consumption
00:51:16that is that if your neighbor
00:51:18has six big cars
00:51:20you need seven to
00:51:22prove that you're a real
00:51:24person
00:51:26it means
00:51:28not
00:51:30having an evidence based
00:51:32society not a faith based
00:51:34society having
00:51:36faith that the climate is not
00:51:38going to kill us it's not going to change
00:51:40what's happening in the
00:51:42atmosphere
00:51:44a whole lot of things need to be
00:51:46changed with maybe the most basic
00:51:48one in a way is getting rid of the financialization
00:51:50of everything and people don't
00:51:52understand for example
00:51:54the way we make money the way we
00:51:56create money
00:51:58that is fractional reserve
00:52:00banking demands
00:52:02continual growth as long
00:52:04as you're demanding continual growth
00:52:06it's not going to be good on either
00:52:08the population or the consumption
00:52:10side
00:52:12so
00:52:14again
00:52:16consumption can be
00:52:18let's put it this way
00:52:20we have 10 billion
00:52:22people if people
00:52:24suddenly understood
00:52:26that the threat of climate
00:52:28disruption is much worse
00:52:30than the threat that was posed to the
00:52:32west by Adolf
00:52:34Hitler or combined
00:52:36with the Japanese military
00:52:38if we
00:52:40all of a sudden understood that
00:52:42we could change the consumption
00:52:44almost overnight
00:52:46but if you don't kill people
00:52:48you can't change the size of the population
00:52:50overnight to get down
00:52:52to the 3 billion from 10 billion
00:52:54no matter how
00:52:56you try and do it it's going to take
00:52:58a long time as long
00:53:00as you're humane in how
00:53:02you do it. I think
00:53:04that's true and it suggests
00:53:06if we take
00:53:08seriously the idea that we're pushing
00:53:10past planetary boundaries right
00:53:12now
00:53:14it's a much more difficult situation
00:53:16than I think
00:53:18people realize you know there's a
00:53:20sense you get that
00:53:22well first people kind of
00:53:24say climate change is the whole of
00:53:26environmentalism when we have a lot of
00:53:28other environmental problems
00:53:30and then we sort of feel like well if we
00:53:32simply made the necessary
00:53:34changes to deal with climate
00:53:36change
00:53:38we could basically continue living the lives
00:53:40we've been living and
00:53:42it seems like there's good evidence that's not the
00:53:44case. It's a matter of lack of education
00:53:46you can go all the way through
00:53:48Stanford University and not
00:53:50have any idea why
00:53:52that argument is dead wrong
00:53:54you can by taking
00:53:56the right courses you can find that
00:53:58out but it's not taught
00:54:00to everybody and
00:54:02the basic
00:54:04problem
00:54:06is that the
00:54:08time course of these
00:54:10events the fact that we're already
00:54:12beyond thresholds
00:54:14and that the population
00:54:16element is
00:54:18getting worse and worse
00:54:20even though rates of
00:54:22population growth globally
00:54:24are going slowly down
00:54:26because we're already way beyond it
00:54:28so from that point of view we
00:54:30should have started on the population problem
00:54:3250 to
00:54:3470 or 100 years ago
00:54:36and we should be starting on it right
00:54:38now so
00:54:40We've talked a lot
00:54:42about global population
00:54:44I want to bring the discussion
00:54:46a little closer to home
00:54:48you once wrote an article
00:54:50called the most overpopulated
00:54:52nation I believe in the
00:54:541990s and
00:54:56listeners might be surprised to know
00:54:58that that wasn't China or India
00:55:00but America
00:55:02can you explain how you came to that conclusion
00:55:04and whether you still agree with it or not
00:55:06well
00:55:08we are certainly
00:55:10the most overpopulated
00:55:12huge nation
00:55:14and the reason of course
00:55:16is again the iPad equation
00:55:18we not only have a huge
00:55:20number of people
00:55:22we also are super consumers
00:55:24and the technologies
00:55:26that we've adopted to use it
00:55:28make it even worse
00:55:30the most outstanding
00:55:32example may be
00:55:34what we
00:55:36did after the second world war
00:55:38was building
00:55:40many many many
00:55:42roads everywhere and
00:55:44developing suburban areas
00:55:46paving over much of the country
00:55:48rather than moving to
00:55:50mass transit
00:55:52and concentrated cities
00:55:54so there's three reasons
00:55:56we're the most overpopulated
00:55:58nation in the world
00:56:00we have too many people
00:56:02each of us on average consumes too much
00:56:04and we focus much too much
00:56:06on the automobile
00:56:08and roads
00:56:10you talked about the optimal global population
00:56:12if the US is overpopulated
00:56:14today
00:56:16what would be the optimal US population
00:56:18in your view
00:56:20in my view
00:56:22probably back around 70-80 million
00:56:24because I'd want to have
00:56:26I'd want to be able to
00:56:28restore as some people
00:56:30are trying to do or have talked about
00:56:32a lot of the wild lands
00:56:34I'd want to rebuild
00:56:36some of the cities
00:56:38and change
00:56:40some of the major aspects
00:56:42of the country one of the most dangerous
00:56:44things is the way
00:56:46we are
00:56:48electricity is generated
00:56:50and distributed
00:56:52people don't understand
00:56:54for example
00:56:56when you talk about the balance of
00:56:58imbecility that is the Russians and us
00:57:00with so many nuclear weapons
00:57:02years ago when John Holder and I
00:57:04were drunk one night we did a calculation
00:57:06on how many
00:57:08Hiroshima sized bombs
00:57:10that's firecrackers by today's standards
00:57:12it would take to destroy
00:57:14the United States or Russia
00:57:16as functioning entities
00:57:18and the number
00:57:20for the United States
00:57:22was something like 12
00:57:24and for Russia something like
00:57:269 because all you
00:57:28have to do is
00:57:30hit the transport centers
00:57:32and the
00:57:34financial centers
00:57:36and bring down the electric grid
00:57:38and
00:57:40virtually everybody starves to death
00:57:42that is you can't move food
00:57:44even by truck
00:57:46because without electricity you can't
00:57:48pump gas
00:57:50and yet
00:57:52we have thousands of these
00:57:54weapons on hair trigger alert
00:57:58with a moron
00:58:00who is high on drugs
00:58:02with his hands on the football
00:58:04the nuclear button
00:58:06right now
00:58:08so
00:58:10let's say
00:58:1275-80 million people would be an
00:58:14optimal US population
00:58:16let's say maybe double that
00:58:18might be a sustainable population
00:58:20even if people weren't living
00:58:22depends on what happens in the rest of the world
00:58:24that's true too
00:58:26so in any case at 330 million
00:58:28we're very overpopulated
00:58:30today
00:58:32so okay the current
00:58:34US fertility rate
00:58:36is about 1.8 children
00:58:38per woman
00:58:40we've been below replacement fertility rate
00:58:42since the 1970s
00:58:44but our population continues to
00:58:46grow through immigration
00:58:48and at current immigration levels
00:58:50our population is set to grow from
00:58:52330 million today
00:58:54to about 525
00:58:56million in 2100
00:58:58that's almost 200 million more
00:59:00people so my question
00:59:02then is should US
00:59:04immigration levels be lowered
00:59:06to help lower our population
00:59:08down the line
00:59:10well what I've always
00:59:12said what Ann and I have always said
00:59:14is that
00:59:16you adjust the size of a nation's
00:59:18population
00:59:20either by changing the
00:59:22fertility rate or
00:59:24changing the rate of leaving and
00:59:26coming in
00:59:28and one of the truly insane
00:59:30things in the United States
00:59:32is that we tend to discuss
00:59:34migration
00:59:36immigration which is an
00:59:38ethically as you know
00:59:40probably loaded issue
00:59:42without ever discussing
00:59:44how many people there ought to be in the country
00:59:46it's like telling an airplane
00:59:48manufacturer to design me an airplane
00:59:50that will
00:59:52load 10 people a minute
00:59:54and you say well but how
00:59:56many should it fly
00:59:58should it carry oh don't worry about that
01:00:00just plan one that will load
01:00:0210 people a minute or load
01:00:0450 people a minute or throw
01:00:06out 10 people a minute or so on
01:00:08the ethical issues
01:00:10are huge and they're tied
01:00:12to the ethical issues of the nation's
01:00:14state system which is part of our general
01:00:16global system that's
01:00:18going to have to be changed
01:00:20you know
01:00:22for an ethicist you probably realize
01:00:24but there is a huge question
01:00:26of whether borders are
01:00:28ethical the
01:00:30resources of the planet are not
01:00:32evenly distributed there's
01:00:34the old line about how did our oil
01:00:36get under their sand
01:00:38and these
01:00:40are ethical issues that have to be discussed
01:00:42and you can't really
01:00:44as Ann and I have written about extensively
01:00:46discuss
01:00:48migration issues
01:00:50without looking at issues of foreign
01:00:52policy so
01:00:54maybe I think we've covered a lot
01:00:56of ground here today and
01:00:58I just want to really thank you
01:01:00for participating
01:01:02and I've
01:01:04got to say you've been one of my heroes
01:01:06for a long time so to be able
01:01:08to really meet you finally
01:01:10and to talk to you a little bit
01:01:12has been a great pleasure for me
01:01:14we've had a fair amount of contact
01:01:16before