COMIC STYLE PRESENTATIONS
Slide 1 Conservation through having Smaller Families by Nola Stewart
Good morning everyone. I’d like to start this talk with a joke. Jokes are not my specialty or strength but I think this one has relevance.
There was an old lady who lived with her two sons and a cat. One son loved the cat; the other son had no interest in it. It so happened that the son that loved the cat went overseas for an extended stay and after two weeks he phoned home. His brother picked up the phone so he asked, “How’s the cat?” “The cat died,” said his brother. “How insensitive!” said the first brother. “At least you could have broken it to me gently. You could have said, ‘The cat’s playing on the roof,’ and next time when I rang in a couple of weeks, you could have told me the cat had an accident and you had to take it to the vet, then when I rang in another couple of weeks, you could have said, ‘The vet did all he could for the cat but, very gently, it had to be put down.’ Don’t be so insensitive! Anyway,” he went on, “How’s Mother?” There was a pause, then the other brother replied, “Mother’s playing on the roof.”
I tell you this joke because some subjects are so difficult to deal with, that almost any angle we take on them may come across as insensitive, and ‘population’ is one such subject. However, this does not excuse us from dealing with it; nor does it excuse us from being as sensitive as possible in doing so.
This booklet, which I wrote for my high school science students in comicbook form, but which useful for all ages, is the basis for my talk today
Slide 2 in particular Part A “Money”.
Slide 3 Are there more people on Earth than is helpful for the planet? Most probably ‘Yes.’
Slide 4 World population is increasing. Currently the figure is 10,000 extra people every hour (i.e. births minus deaths)
Slide 5 Better medical care means that people now live longer. There is a graveyard off the Warringah Expressway near Cammeray, where 4000 people lie buried, most of whom died in the1800s, or certainly before antibiotics came along. 2000, or half of these deaths were of children under 10 years of age, who consequently never added to the world’s population by having their own children. But nowadays,
Slide 6 Babies who once might have died as infants …
Slide 7 live to produce families of their own, so population is escalating exponentially.
Slide 8 This poses a problem for nature because each living person has needs, which the Earth must supply
Slide 9 Food, clothing, shelter and energy supplies are our basic needs
Slide 10 Money is usually the key to obtaining these things
Slide 11 But where does the money come from?
Slide 12 Trade existed before there was money
Slide 13 Money was developed as a convenient way of selling and buying things
Slide 14 But money by itself is useless …
Slide 15 without things to spend it on
Slide 16 And money cannot be circulated unless it is backed by …
Slide 17 production from the ground, e.g. mining
Slide 18 or from the soil, e.g. agriculture
Slide 19 or from the sea, e.g. fishing
Slide 20 or from the bush, e.g. forestry
Slide 21 So, money has to be backed by production.
Slide 22 If a government prints money for nothing, it will cause inflation
Slide 23 because there is more money but not more goods to buy with it.
Slide 24 Think about where your own money comes from.
Slide 25 Some people have jobs in Primary Industry,directly related to Earth’s provision
Slide 26 The jobs of some others are in Secondary Industry, depending on raw materials which the Earth supplies.
Slide 27 All other jobs belong in the Tertiary sector; some in the service industries related to goods produced from the Earth;
Slide 28 Some people’s salaries come from the taxes paid by others
Slide 29 and some people depend fully on the work of others for their financial support.
Slide 30 When we trace our money back to where it came from originally, we will find it is from the productivity of the Earth.
Slide 31 And what will we exchange it for?
Slide 32 We will spend it on goods and services
Slide 33 all of which flow from the productivity of the Earth.
Slide 34 So we find that the money that supports each of us comes from forestry, agriculture, mining and fisheries – all at a cost to the Earth’s natural ecosystems, which have been converted in part or wholly for human use.
Side 35 And we spend that money on our basic needs; Food, Clothing, Shelter and Energy supplies, which again come at a cost to the Earth’s ecosystems. When we go shopping and look at goods on the supermarket shelves or in shopping trolleys, probably we seldom think of the ecosystems that have been degraded to supply either the items we need to buy or their packaging. Yet they have to come from somewhere.
Slide 36 Since Primary Industry depends directly on Earth’s resources, and Secondary Industry depends on the raw materials of Primary Industry and the Tertiary Sector depends on both Primary and Secondary, all economic activities come at a cost to Earth’s natural ecosystems and can be traced back to Primary Industry.
The fact that we ourselves don’t cut down trees for a living does not mean we are free of responsibility for the loss of forests, because we are the market for timber products, paper and cardboard packaging. Without that market, no one would go to the trouble of harvesting this resource.
Slide 37 Each child needs the support of Earth for all its life
Slide 38 It needs some land under production to give it food and clothes
Slide 39 Trees will be cut down to provide housing, furniture, books, food packaging
Slide 40 Each child also needs a source of energy for cooking, lighting and to produce manufactured things
Slide 41 The parents’ income and later the child’s income will provide its needs and wants
Slide 42 But if we trace that income back to its origin, it is the Earth that supports the child
Slide 43 and every child
Slide 44 365 days a year for every year of its life.
Slide 45 As we know, some people have small financial support while others have a lot
Slide 46 This means that a small part of Earth supports some people, while a comparatively large part supports others
Slide 47 But 75% of Earth’s population is in underdeveloped areas and only 25% in the developed areas
Slide 48 So it can be calculated that 12 children in an underdeveloped country use about as much of Earth’s resources as 1 child in a developed country
Slide 49 Since a cutback of 1 child in a developed society is equivalent to a cutback of 12 in a developing country, in terms of saving Earth’s resources,
Slide 50 if we choose to have smaller families, this would help to save Earth’s natural resources and consequently its biodiversity
Slide 51 Statistics vary, but it has been said that an average of 2.2 children per family would keep the world’s population
Slide 52 at its present level, given themedical care available to us today. This figure is 2.1 for countries like Australia, making responsible choices to be 2, 1 or 0 children per couple
Slide 53 Each of us has a global footprint, which can be measured in global hectares.
GLOBAL HECTARE: An area of one hectare, (and a hectare is about the size of a football field plus the bit of land around it) containing the average amount of Earth’s productivity of biologically renewable resources such as forests, fish, food crops, fibre, firewood etc., plus an average uptake of carbon dioxide emissions in a given year.
Australians use around 7 gha each. The average globally is 2.7 gha per capita but there is only enough for each person to have 1.7 gha. This resource shortage leads to biodiversity losses, environmental degradation, increasing conflicts and mass migrations. Some people claim there will always be enough resources for everybody living on the planet. This is true but only because when people’s access to essential resources drops too much, they simply die and are no longer counted among the living. There’s enough for the living only because when there isn’t enough, people die.
Slide 54 In 1986 we began to overshoot Earth’s resources, just before we reached 5 billion people. We are now using forests, fish, topsoil etc., faster than they can be renewed by nature. We now need 1.5 ‘planet earths’ just to meet the needs of one species – that is ‘us’. Consequently we have been in overshoot as far as other species are concerned much longer than since 1986.
Slide 55 It’s important to reduce our population because of our consumption. If we each had the consumption of an ant, there would be no problem in having 7 billion people on the planet – we ourselves take up less than a cubic kilometre by volume in total. It’s our activities as we go about the business of supporting ourselves that’s the problem. Our consumption has increased in modern times due to the availability of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels enable us to take more resources and to take them more quickly, thus raising per capita consumption. However, it is also thanks to fossil fuels that we have a higher living standard, through the hard work and inventiveness of engineers, IT people, teachers and the like. We can reduce consumption and yet retain good living standards if we reduce significantly the number of consumers on the planet, by voluntary means.
Slide 56 Which is more effective to tackle? Population OR consumption?
Slide 57 In the 20th Century, consumption rose by a factor of 10. By 2000 we used ~ 2.7 gha on average so in 1900 it would have been approx. 0.27 gha.
In the 20th century population rose by a factor of 4, from around 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000. Which multiplier had the biggest effect; 4 times the 1900 AD population or 10 times the 1900 AD consumption?
Slide 58 Suppose we have to multiply 2 X 3 and thenmultiply the answer by 10. It’s very easy; 2 X 3 = 6 and 6 X 10 = 60. Here’s the main question: Which multiplier, 2,3 or 10, contributed most to the magnitude or size of our answer? Clearly it’s the 10 that resulted in such a large answer because it’s the biggest multiplier.
Slide 59 Now look at these figures:
Our ecological footprint in global hectares was:
In 1900 AD - 0.27 X 1,600,000,000 = 432,000,000 gha
In 2000 AD - 0.27 X 1,600,000,000 X 10 X 4 = 17,280,000,000 gha
Which multiplier has the biggest effect? Clearly it is the largest multiplier, which is population at 1.6 billion in 1900. The impact of consumption relates to the size of our footprint.
Slide 60 Another example of the usefulness of identifying the biggest multiplier is seen in the rate of world population increase, which is around 1.1% per annum. Sounds small but at that rate world population will double in less than 65 years. Again, doubling, i.e. multiplying by 2 does not sound much, except that we now have nearly 7.4 billion people, so the result would be2 X 7,400,000,000 = 14,800,000,000 in less than a person’s lifetime. It’s not the 2 that’s significant but the larger multiplier, 7.4 billion whichmatters.
Slide 61 What about recycling? Recycling is very important as it’s a way of not wasting resources; however, a study in the UK concluded that up to 80 lifetimes of conscientious recycling is cancelled out by the arrival of one more person via the airport or the maternity ward.
Slide 62 The world population graph has significant upward momentum as shown here. The saying, “You can’t take it with you,” refers to our material possessions; however, any descendants we leave behind continue the upward trajectory of the population graph and all the people we leave behind are consumers.
Slide 63 To counterbalance the effects of better medical care (i.e. the environmental impact of population increase) and the availability of fossil fuels, resulting in improved living standards but higher per capita consumption, we need to first stabilise, then reduce global population to save resources and tackle biodiversity loss. This needs to be done voluntarily as there is no lasting value in coercion.
So in conclusion, we may say that population is our greatest problem and choosing to reduce it without coercionand irrespective of environmental pressure would be our greatest achievement.
Slide 64 Thank you.
Slide 65 References for slide 57.