Overpopulation?

A Media Lens reader responded to our recent media alert, Burning the Planet For Profit (December 6, 2005; http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/051206_burning_the_planet.php ).

The reader had two main contentions:

1. That the human population today "is rising exponentially."

2. That "overpopulation" is"the main cause of environmental degradation."

In fact, according to the UN, the rate of increase of the world's population is slowing. Population will peak at around 9 billion sometime around 2050, and thereafter start falling. (See, e.g., Fred Pearce, 'Power to the People', Independent, October 8, 2003)

I agree with our reader that resources are being used unsustainably. But I believe he is wrong to write sweepingly that "overpopulation" is "the main cause of environmental degradation." I gave him a very brief summary as to why I think that view is wrong (essentially the global political-economic system ensures inequitable distribution, oppression, huge waste and profligate ecological 'footprints'). Rather than my expanding at length on the detailed reasons, I'd like to flag up an essay, 'Population?!', by Michael Albert. I think his analysis is careful and worth pondering:

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/albert3.htm

As Albert concludes:

"...there is no evidence that current poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation etc. owe their origins or tenacity in any significant degree to a population problem, but, instead, the evidence is abundant that these particular crimes against humanity are rooted in oppressive institutional structures and the abhorrent misallocations of labor and energy and maldistribution of product that they foster."