Opinion: It’s time to start planning for fewer people

I’ve suspected for a long time that climate change is making our world population level unsustainable. Reading “Recipe for disaster” in the Nov. 16 issue of New Scientist, a respected British science publication, confirmed that view and lays out the long-term future we face. Our food situation is dire: Climate change has had devastating consequences for farmers around the globe. And efforts to compensate, such as clearing forests to grow more crops, have led to increasing carbon dioxide levels, as well as biodiversity loss. 

Pests and pathogens are expected to increase. Glacial melting is reducing water supply in some areas. The Dec. 9 New York Times reported that three-quarters of the Earth’s surface has become “persistently drier” in recent decades. And, although increased CO2 levels have slightly improved plant growth rates, once the global temperature rises to exceed 3 degrees C, that effect will reverse.

Our local water supply is at risk. The Denver Post last week reported that the ongoing negotiations over the future of the Colorado River have stalled, with the teams from the Upper Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico) and the Lower Basin (California, Nevada, Arizona) meeting separately. 

This separation is a de facto acknowledgment that the 1922 Colorado River Compact will likely determine the outcome. Article III(c) requires that the Upper Basin deliver a 10-year average of 7.5 million acre-feet per year of water to the Lower Basin.

The river has far less water now, and it’s drying more as the climate warms. The negotiators assert that litigating a resolution will take years and be very expensive. This seems another tacit acknowledgment that, over 100 years ago, these states agreed to this legally enforceable deal. So, the likely outcome is that the Lower Basin states will have to cut back to their Compact allocation after Mexico and the Lower Basin Tribes get theirs. Then the Upper Basin will get what’s left, after their Tribes’ and pre-Compact rights are met.

Front Range cities’ supplies won’t necessarily completely dry up. (Trans-mountain diversions serve cities all along the Front Range and provide about one-third of Boulder’s supply.) But, given the competition, it will be very expensive to buy pre-Compact or Tribal water rights, and much irrigated agriculture (and resulting food) will then disappear. Unfortunately, the ability to conserve more and more without significant sacrifice is limited. And there’s the big question of whether the growth that’s pushing demand will pay its share of these costs.

This “who pays” question extends to other areas, especially transportation. The standard political response to traffic congestion is to argue for more and more transit. But transit is not cheap. Right now, RTD riders’ fares only pay 4% of its costs; the rest is paid mostly by sales tax, with a small fraction paid by grants. 

Based on RTD’s trip numbers, it appears that daily users constitute something like 5% of the total population. (RTD apparently does not count actual riders, who presumably take multiple trips per day to commute, etc.) That percentage will need to be way higher to prevent gridlock if our population increases significantly, which will require more money. So, either growth will have to pay its way, or we, the public, will face a major tax increase. Finally, not everyone will ride RTD, so if the population increases significantly, traffic congestion will continue to get worse anyway.

To me, the intelligent move would be to aim to reduce, not increase, our global and local populations, and at the same time, to do all we can to reduce our GHG emissions, both immediately and long term. Unfortunately, some minerals essential to renewable energy, like lithium, are scarce. So the more people we have, the harder it is to adequately cut emissions.

We can certainly live with fewer people than the current 8-plus billion. Less than 50 years ago, in 1975, the global population was around 4 billion, half what it is now. And in 1950, it was around 2.5 billion. So, way fewer works fine.

Many countries already have declining populations, including Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, Japan, and in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, the Colorado State Demographer’s office (Denver Post 11/28) concluded that Colorado has grown half as fast as in the last decade, and deaths will outpace births by 2050.

A shrinking population will require older folks to work longer, since they will be a larger fraction of the whole. But, to me anyway, that’s a worthwhile sacrifice to make to restore our environment, including glaciers, permafrost, tropical forests, croplands and rivers, so we have a livable planet for the long term.


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