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
