Seven billion is already facing us with horrendous problems, including almost 1 billion people hungry and contributing greatly to the chances of catastrophic climate disruption. But the next 2 billion people the demographers expect by 2050 will cause much more environmental damage than did the last 2 billion added to our population — a classic nonlinearity. That is because human beings are smart, and picked the low-hanging fruit first. Thus each added individual, on average, must now be fed from more marginal land, supplied with water from more distant or more polluted sources, obtain the metals required to make the products he or she consumes from poorer ores, etc. Many past human societies have collapsed, with overpopulation playing a significant role. But today, for the first time, a global civilization is in peril, and nothing significant is being done about it in societies insane enough to believe that growth can be perpetual.I made the argument a while ago that the best non-profit contribution we can make to help us avoid environmental calamity is to provide birth control to the estimated 200 million women, mostly in Africa, who desperately want it, but can't afford it, and instead end up having to drop out of school, have large families, and exacerbate the cycle of poverty. Planned Parenthood International is perhaps best capable of helping in this regard. Proactive family planning and use of effective contraception can not only reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions, but help women in the developing world to finish their education, earn more money, and break the cycle of poverty that they were born into. And...perhaps slow the blistering pace of global population growth. What do you all think? Does sustainability even matter when we can't control the one factor that underlies all of our global problems? Can a one-child policy like China's ever take hold in nations like India, or the United States, for that matter? When will population growth become something that can be discussed in political circles without being politically toxic to those that bring it up? Photo courtesy HarlanH on Flickr Creative Commons
Scott Cooney, Principal of GreenBusinessOwner.com and author of Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill, November 2008), is also a serial ecopreneur who has started and grown several green businesses and consulted several other green startups. He co-founded the ReDirect Guide, a green business directory, in Salt Lake City, UT. He greened his home in Salt Lake City, including xeriscaping, an organic orchard, extra natural fiber insulation, a 1.8kW solar PV array, on-demand hot water, energy star appliances, and natural paints. He is a vegetarian, an avid cyclist, ultimate frisbee player, and surfer, and currently lives in the sunny Mission district of San Francisco. Scott is working on his second book, a look at microeconomics in the green sector. In June 2010, Scott launched GreenBusinessOwner.com, a sustainability consulting firm dedicated to providing solutions to common business problems by leveraging the power of the triple bottom line. Focused exclusively on small business, GBO's mission is to facilitate the creation and success of small, green businesses.