Without trying to get into the specific debating points in this thread, I find the unreality of the debate to be numbing. There are a number of points that I think we can all agree on.
1. That there is a growing threat that global warming is a real and imminent danger.
2. That global warming is, at least in a significant part, caused by the use fossil fuels, in particular petroleum.
3. That attempting to raise the standard of living of the existing population of the developing world to the level of the western industrialized countries is not possible without a major change (reduction in standard?) in the consumption standards of the developed world.
Where we don't agree is whether we are going to have to cut petroleum usage because a) we are running out of readily available sources and the price is destined to rise to unaffordable levels or b) because global warming will make continued usage of petroleum a doomsday senario. Further, we don't agree on whether the existing population of the earth is sustainable at any reasonable standard of living or even at the existing standard of living in the various regions of the world.
Here, I think the combination of population, technology/social organization and capitalist institutions -- including 'free trade' -- makes the present situation unsustainable.
First, the world is overpopulated in an ecological sense. I have argued for years that Canada is already overpopulated. But people argue, look at the north and all that area there for people. Let's open the north. But the problem is, the amount of energy necessary to maintain population in the north (with months of complete darkness and enormous costs of heating) means that life is not sustainable except for a small minority, such as the original Inuit, who were prepared to live a precarious existence using only whale, seal or fish oil for heat and light. If I remember the figures correctly, we are talking about around 10,000 population in total in the far northern climes. Hardly a drop in the bucket when we are talking about a world population of 6+ billion!
Second, to raise the standard of living/consumption of the, what is it, 2 billion people who live on less than 1 or 2 dollars a day to even half the poverty level of North America would involve more pollution and resource use than the ecosphere could handle.
Third, the attempt to generate more income in poor countries by exports ('free trade') is counterproductive since the more trade there is the more energy use in transportation. Has anybody ever done an energy audit on the cost of increased trade? I remember when the McKenzie Valley Pipeline was first proposed, some economists estimated that the energy used to produce the steel for the pipeline exceeded the energy to be piped out in the form of oil. Whether these estimates were in fact accurate or not, the fact is that the net energy produced was but a fraction of the gross oil output -- something that never entered the market calculations. Furthermore, because of the subsidization of the oil industry, train, transit and boat transportation has either been discontinued or priced out of competition with the automobile or the jet plane. The way our cities are designed, it is virtually impossible for most North Americans or other 'moderns' to live without their cars. Take a look at Brazilia or post-earthquake Skopia -- designed so that cars are essential given that development has taken a 'ribbon' dimension.
Fourth, all this talk about having a revolution and allowing changes in property relations to solve the overpopulation/overconsumption/pollition-global warming is hopeless dreaming. Not only were the 'acutally existing' socialist countries some of the worst polluters and inefficient energy users, does anyone really think that the working class is going to rise up and support a revolution that promises no beef or other meat, no cars and no airconditioning? I know beef production is inefficient, but so are great works of art -- paintings, ballet and opera -- much cheaper to just produce more survival series and paint by numbers prints. But we can only afford to be 'inefficient' in producing the 'better things of life' if the world has a smaller population. That ain't rocket science.
So what is to be done? Obviously, we should try to reduce our consumption of non-essentials and inefficiently produced goods. For one thing, I eat almost no beef but do eat bison (buffalo). It's organic, lower in fat and cholesterol, and is native to this country and region and requires much less water and grain. (It also tastes better). Unfortunately, because of population pressures, we have overfished our natural fisheries to the point that the east coast fishery is in collapse and the west coast fishery is endangered -- except of course for the somewhat toxic farmed fish, an ecological disaster. As much as I periodically eat soy-based meat substitutes, they are no substitute for a non-vegetarian.
The problem of global warming and climate change has been brought dramatically to us here due to the wild-fires last summer that cost hundreds of homes. This summer is forcast to be similarly hot and dry. We are on water rationing year round in an area of irrigation-dependent agriculture. We can water lawns once a week which means that they dry up and turn brown. We have decided to replace all of our lawn with a Japanese type garden with all plants that do not need watering. I.e. drought resistant xeroscaping. But in the midst of this, our development-based city council is approving a new golf course and 1,200 houses in an area that already can't supply itself with adequate water. Why, because we want to have development to support population growth to reduce taxes and ....
So what I am saying is that in order to improve the lives of most of the people on this planet, we have to reverse the population trend. This can not be done obviously by killing off two-thirds of the population as some on this list suggest, but rather by doing the things that promote smaller families -- educating women in developing countries and supplying birth control information (something the Bush administration has cut UN and international funding for), providing pension schemes so that people aren't required to have large families to support them in the old age, providing paying jobs so that child labour is not required to maintain family income, etc. (These are all things that the IMF and the American Treasury have opposed.) We know what causes birthrates to fall. We just have to do those things and overcome the fundamentalist ideologies that pervade the US administration, and the patriarchal regimes in some of the developing world.
This does not mean, however, that we can ignore policies to reduce profligate resource use and, in particular, reduce oil consumption. The most obvious first necessary step is some form of carbon tax to raise North American prices, at least to European levels. Somehow, we must get the US to tie into Kyoto. We must look both to conservation and alternative, renewable, energy sources. We must look at regulations that reduce factory farming in favour of more organic and natural agricultural (with BSE, Avian Flu-Virus, pig and cattle induced water poisoning , that ain't rocket science either). Such policies may give us enough time to bring down the population to sustainable levels without the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. But be assured, if we don't, drought, plague, starvation and war will do it for us.
Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba