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Prof Colin Butler, ARC Future Fellow

Department of Public Health and Environment W.H.O. August 27, 2013

Health, environment, population

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“Efforts to prevent noncommunicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators... one of the biggest challenges facing health promotion.

.. it is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.”

Dr Margaret ChanDirector-General

Opening address, 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion, Helsinki, Finland, 10 June 2013

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also – Big CARBON

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Hung Liang-chi (1744-1809)

Honda Toschiaki (1744-1821)

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

Population/resources: an old debate

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0-2012

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Borlaug’s warning Nobel prize speech

President Reagan: population problem “vastly exaggerated”

Le Bras: “The problem has become a bit passé” (US Pop Mtg)

1st “check”

2nd “check”

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Shtulman and Valcarcel, (2012) Scientific knowledge suppresses but does not supplant earlier intuitions Cognition

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1. Population growth rate

2. Population impact

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Global population growth rate: 1950-2010

raw data: http://esa.un.org/unpp7

peak = 2.1%

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Global annual population increments 1950-2010

8raw data: http://esa.un.org/unpp

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Orthodoxy: 1950s-early 1980s

High pop’n growth impedes economic takeoff

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Lyndon Johnson

“… less than five dollars invested in population control is worth a hundred dollars invested in economic growth”

1968: shipped 1/5 US wheat harvest to India, on condition that India step up family planning programme

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Richard Nixon

“… countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, .. need to maintain real economic growth rates of 3% just to keep their per capita incomes from dropping. Unchecked population growth will put them on an ever-accelerating treadmill that will outpace any potential economic performance"

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“Revisionism”: early 1980s-1990s – now?

High population growth irrelevant – leave it to “market forces”

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The Cornucopian Enchantment

Simon: “the notion of something being infinite is very much a matter of how we look

at it..” (The Ultimate Resource)

“From a high point some 10-15 years ago, intellectual concern about population has steadily waned to a position where it falls

now somewhere between ocean mining and acid rain” (McNicoll and Nag, 1982)

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Ronald Reagan

When questioned about population growth the New York Times reported that he considered the problem to have been

“vastly exaggerated”

(Finkle and Crane, 1985)

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US policy at the Mexico City population conference, 1984

American Population Association:

‘authors of draft report “either unaware of 50

years of demographic research, or

deliberately ignored it”’

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US Nat. Acad. Sciences 2nd enquiry into pop/envt: 1986

• Mostly economists

• Strong “Cornucopian” influence (especially Simon)

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Demography and the Limits to Growth, Paul Demeny, Pop’n Development Review 1988

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Larry Summers: Limits & Human Carrying Capacity

“The idea that we should put limits on growth, because of some natural limit, is a profound error”

(cited in George and Sabelli, 1994 p109)

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The Human Titanic

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Consequences for Family Planning• Budget falls

US, Australia, globally

• 1994 Cairo conference: ignores economic argument

• 2004 pop’n conference: abandoned

• Environmental groups: largely ignore pop’n (including IPCC, Millennium Assessment, Greenpeace,

Up in Smoke)

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“Revisionism”: revisited 2000s – now?

KelleyUK ParliamentRoyal Society

Gates FoundationW.H.O.?

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The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) pointed out that almost 1.5 billion young men and women will enter the 20-to-24-years age cohort between 2000 and 2015, and if they don't find jobs "they will fuel political instability."

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The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission (1963-66)

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“With 11 million people .. Rwanda is hoping to lower its high fertility rate so that it can benefit from future economic growth” Ruxin, J. & Habinshuti, A. 2011. Crowd control in Rwanda. Nature, 474, 572-573.

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1. Population growth rate

2. Population impact

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Donella Meadows

“Our Final Century”

Where On Earth Are We

Going?

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What about consumption?I = P.A.TImpact = Population*Affluence*Technology

(Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971)

1994

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(nominal prices)

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Conclusions: High pop’n growth: cause and effect of

1. Poverty2. Global inequality (“claste” system)3. We who care about global health need to challenge the

“cornucopian enchantment” fostered by big Capital, the woolly Left, some in the Church, and collusive academia

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Cumulative carboncombustion

1848 1960 1987 – 1994 2008 2012

JS Mill – steady state economy

Our Common Future, Rio conference

Rio+20now?

CD Butler ANU

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K Boulding Limits to GrowthStockholm,Bucharest confs,N Borlaug’s warning

Cairo pop’n conference

“Cornucopian enchantment”

Adapted from Meinshausen et al (2011)

Global sense of

risk

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“Social vaccine”

“Demand will create a parachute”

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Toxicity

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Placebo

Vaccine spectrum

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Panic, despair, or indifference

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“Polyanna”

“Social vaccine” spectrum

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“The dangerous impacts of climate change can only be

discussed in terms of nonlinear behavior.’’

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

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He Had a dream

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ÉdouardLe Roy

Paul Crutzen

noösphere(planetary thinking, sharing)

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Near Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, 2009

Rights-based approaches to accelerate the demographic transition

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Not just “natural” capital –But interaction of natural, human, social, built, financial

And some would say moral

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The good news is

you’re too big to let fail

PopeCanberra Times 29 Oct 08

The good news is you’re

too big to let fail The bad

news is it’s hard to get

a government bailout until your stocks completely

crash

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