Climate change and population growth: an alternative manifesto for Extinction Rebellion
However laudable their ends, the leaders of Extinction Rebellion have hitherto been remarkably silent about what is arguably the single most important driving force behind the alarming, even terrifying, rise in global emissions of greenhouse gases: the dramatic rise in the world’s population. What could and should the Rebels now be doing to address this pressing issue?
They certainly cannot afford to underestimate the vital importance of curbing demographic growth. The UN reckons that the world’s population currently stands at around 7.6 billion – more than double the figure of 1970 – and is likely to reach more than 11 billion by the end of the century. Although much of this growth will be concentrated in just a handful of countries, that is still a staggering increase.
This can only have dire consequences for greenhouse gases. Growing populations clearly use more fuel – oil, gas and coal – and create a demand for more food and other resources that strips the land bare. It is no coincidence that in the course of the 20th century the world’s population increased in exponential step with the emission of greenhouse gases: the UN’s Population Fund estimates that the world’s population grew six-fold in this time, while at the same time global emissions of CO2 grew twelve-fold.
Extinction Rebellion commendably point to the symptoms of these demographic pressures, highlighting on its website that ‘soil erosion and degradation has been increased dramatically by the human activities of deforestation for agriculture, overgrazing and use of agrochemicals’. But unfortunately it barely touches on the underlying condition: the only reference on its website to population growth is a mention of how ‘the world (is getting) hotter and more crowded’, causing ‘more pollution’.
If they do acknowledge the relationship between climate change and demographic growth, what could the Rebels now do? Instead of disrupting the working lives of Londoners who are relatively powerless to change the fate of the planet, here are some alternatives.
A starting point would be to protest in the capitals, or outside the embassies, of those countries that are experiencing the highest rates of population growth – India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, USA, Uganda and Indonesia. Such protests would at the very least draw attention to the issue, even if some of those countries (notably the DRC) lack the infrastructure to do much about it.
Washington, and American embassies across the world, would need to be particularly important focal points for protest. This is not just because of the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, but also because it has withdrawn its funding for the UN’s Population Fund, which has played an important part in helping to curb the soaring population of parts of the developing world.
In London, Extinction Rebels should arrange a series of meetings with DFID ministers in order to press for more action on population control in the developing world. In particular, they should insist on a link between the UK’s massive £14 billion foreign aid budget and curbs on the population growth of the recipient countries: those countries need to show that they are taking effective action to tackle the problem to be eligible for such grants.
Finally, the Rebels need to draw up and publish a detailed manifesto of what that ‘action’ might be. Empowering more education for women and subsidising family planning are the most obvious examples. But they could also explore more drastic options, such as paying families in particular countries not to have children – a move that would challenge the association, prevalent in many developing countries, between affluence and larger family sizes. More contentious, and difficult to judge, would be a move to challenge the religious driving forces behind population growth: it is no coincidence that some of the highest birth rates in the world – Pakistan is a good example – are in Muslim countries.
Whether the Rebels will start to address the challenge of population control remains to be seen: it may be that they will instead stick to more superficial issues that drastically increase the costs on business (‘redesign entire industries’) while ignoring the underlying condition. Equally, curbing the population growth in the developing world may not chime with the politically correct mindset of some of the protesters in the same way as condemnation of Western businesses that are motivated by a search for profits.
