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| Exponential human population growth (this chart shows how the rate of growth has been underestimated) |
By Mireya Navarro, The New York Times, October 31, 2011
Major American
environmental groups have dodged the subject of population control for decades,
wary of getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health.
The
condoms' packages were designed to start a discussion about how human
population growth affects other species.
Yet, virtually alone, the Center for Biological Diversity is breaking
the taboo by directly tying population growth to environmental problems through
efforts like giving away condoms in colorful packages depicting endangered
animals. The idea is to start a debate about how overpopulation crowds out
species and hastens climate change — just when the world is
welcoming Baby No. 7 Billion.
“Wrap with care, save the polar bear,” reads one of the packages.
“Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” says another.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the center, a membership-based
nonprofit organization in Tucson, said he had an aha moment a few years ago.
“All the species that we save from extinction will eventually be gobbled up if
the human population keeps growing,” he said.
In the United States, the birth rate has fallen steadily since the
baby boom, from 3.6 births per woman in 1960 to 2.0 today, or just under the
replacement level, at which a population replaces itself from one generation to
the next. Yet even at that rate, demographers estimate, the country will grow
from 311 million people now to 478 million by the end of the century, because
of both births and immigration.
The highest birth rates — from five to more than six births per woman
— are occurring in a handful of nations in Africa and Asia, including Nigeria
and Yemen. Yet among large economies, the United States is second only to
Australia in the amount of carbon dioxide it emits per capita, according to the
latest figures from the federal Energy Information Administration.
“Every person you add to the country makes all these tremendous
demands on the environment,” said Joel E. Cohen, chief of the Laboratory of Populations
at Rockefeller University and Columbia University.
But experts are reluctant to suggest an ideal birth rate. “There isn’t
any magic number,” Dr. Cohen said.
As recently as the 1970s, the subject of population control was less
controversial, partly because the baby boom years had given rise to concerns
about scarcity of resources, some population experts and environmentalists
said. Then came China’s coercive one-child policy and a rise in social
conservatism in the United States, combined with the country’s aversion to
anything perceived as restricting individual freedoms, be it the right to bear
arms or children.
Some groups also fear whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment and
opposition to family planning. Immigration now accounts for about one-third of
the growth rate in the United States.
“We see reluctance and fear to deal with this issue,” said Jose Miguel
Guzman of the United Nations Population Fund.
Groups contacted for this article generally declined to discuss the
issue or did not return calls.
The Center for Biological Diversity’s condom campaign, begun on
college campuses last year, now includes video ads in Times Square and lobbying
in Washington for more family planning services. It is an aggressive strategy
even for the center, which is best known for barraging federal agencies with
lawsuits intended to protect species and ecosystems.
The condom campaign is intended to raise awareness
and help reduce unintended pregnancies. “Reproduction is always going to be a
matter of free will,” said Randy Serraglio, the manager of the campaign. “This
is about getting people to make the connection.”
A study published last year in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences showed how slowing the country’s population
growth rate to 1.5 births per woman from 2.0 could result in a 10 percent drop
in greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and a 33 percent drop by the end of
the century.
But the notion that curbing births is an effective way to control
emissions is not an easy sell.
When Oregon State University released a study two years ago
calculating the extra carbon dioxide emissions a person helps generate by
choosing to have children, the researchers received hate mail labeling them
“eugenicists” and “Nazis.”
The study, which also calculated the impact of a birth beyond the
child’s lifetime “should the offspring reproduce,” said that each American
child generated seven times as much carbon dioxide over time as one child in
China, and 169 times as much as one in Bangladesh. Reducing car travel,
recycling and making homes more energy efficient would have a fraction of the
impact on emissions that reducing the birth rate would, it found.
“There are
important consequences to having children, and we tried to quantify them,” said
Paul A. Murtaugh, an associate professor of statistics and one of the study’s
co-authors. “It should be on the table. It needs to be.”
Some groups, like the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation
International, said they worked on population-related issues mostly
internationally. The president of the National Audubon Society declined an
interview without explanation. The chairwoman of the Green Group, a loose
association of several dozen environmental organizations, did not return calls
or e-mails.
The Natural Resources Defense Council president, Frances Beinecke,
said her group focused on addressing climate change through energy strategies
and conservation efforts. “Particularly in this economic environment, we’re not
in a position to just add, add, add,” Ms. Beinecke said of her group’s agenda.
Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said
the research on reducing emissions by cutting birth rates was not yet “robust”
enough to make a convincing case for a clear way forward.
A country’s carbon footprint does not necessarily shrink when the
birth rate drops, Mr. Knobloch said. In India and China, he pointed out,
smaller families have consumed more as their incomes rose — a common trend in
developing countries. “It gets complex very quickly,” he said.
Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club, said his organization now
had one population officer on staff who was working on international
reproductive health services. In this country, Mr. Pope said, there are reasons
for keeping a low profile on the issue.
“Look at Planned Parenthood,” he said, recalling the group’s bruising
battle with Republican lawmakers over federal financing last spring. “There’s a
huge atmosphere of intimidation. The moment you say ‘family planning,’
immediately somebody pulls out abortion.”
The 2.0 fertility rate in the United States is higher than the rates
in other developed countries, including Germany and Japan (1.3), Canada (1.6)
and Britain (1.8), according to figures from the United Nations.
John Seager, president of the group Population Connection, said
organizations had been more assertive about lobbying the Obama administration
for money to finance family planning services overseas.
Unintended pregnancies account for roughly half of all annual births
in the United States, according to studies by the Guttmacher Institute, which
is based in New York and promotes reproductive health worldwide.
By tackling such pregnancies, the fertility rate could be brought down
to about 1.9 births per woman, slightly below replacement level yet high enough
to ease concerns about economic stagnation and support for the elderly, said
John Bongaarts, a demographer with the Population Council, a research group in
New York.
Dr. Bongaarts described the inaction by environmental groups as a
missed opportunity. “The global warming community is staying away from anything
having to do with population,” he said, “and that’s frustrating.”
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