65. Climate Memo Mondays, #65, March 7, 2022
Karen Shragg, Overpopulation
Romain Felli, Preventing Climate Catastrophe
Karen Shragg. “What Gives Overpopulation Its Legs”? Free Inquiry (Feb. March 2022), 12-15.
Why has the planet gained so many humans so rapidly, as our resources shrank? Why have we added 5.5 billion in the last 100 years? 4.5 billion people added in the past forty years? Why do we continue to grow by over 80 million a year, over 200,000 people per day, even despite the pandemic?
In 2021 the US had 332 million and was growing. The US population continues to grow by 1,700,000 per year, or 200 per hour. Competition for open space, fresh water, and energy is increasing, as is traffic congestion, pollution, and species extinctions.
Let’s put aside the complicating reality of massive disparity in consumption between developed and undeveloped nations. The former consume more per capita than the latter, and they consume more resources per capita (much of it stolen from poorer countries). But all creatures on the planet are victims of the increasing human billions of apex predators.
“Sheer numbers matter.” Yet that menace is often omitted from climate discussions.
Romain Felli. Tr. David Broder. The Great Adaptation: Climate, Capitalism, and Catastrophe. 2021. 192.
How capitalists want us to adapt to climate change rather than stop it. The Great Adaptation tells the story of how scientists, governments and corporations have tried to deal with the challenge that climate change poses to capitalism by promoting adaptation to its consequences, rather than combating its causes. Since the 1970s, neoliberal economists and ideologues have used climate change as an argument for creating more “flexibility” in society, for promoting more market-based solutions to environmental and social questions. This book unveils the political economy of this potent movement, showing how some powerful actors are thriving in the face of dangerous climate change and even making a profit out of it.