Population and scarcity

Question 1

Who first raised the issue of overpoluation?

Answer 1

Erhlich 1968

Question 2

What does Erhlich’s (1968) IPAT mean?

Answer 2

I = P x A x T

Impact = Pop x Affluence (consumption) x Tech solutions

Question 3

What is often forgotten in purely economic approaches to population growth?

Answer 3

The ways in which policies can manifest - it is v. abstract

E.g. when it comes to encouraging people to change -consumption practices (WWF 2022)

Question 4

Why are fertility rates important?

Answer 4

They determine the future population size (and thus future potential increases)

See Roberts 2011

Question 5

In what ways are fertility rates misleading?

Answer 5

• Appears to be a biological matter, so appears to be choice
• Are actually connected to economic needs and gender autonomy

Question 6

What do neoclassical scholars attribute scarcity to?

Answer 6

Irrationality and self-interest causing conflicts (Collier and Hoeffer 1996)

Question 7

Who has theorised that scarcity further legitimises violence? How?

Answer 7

Aspinall 2007

- Grievance leads to scarcity being exploited to cover up inequalities which lead to conflicts internally

Question 8

When was literature on planetary boundaries first published?

Answer 8

2009 (Nordhaus et al 2012)

Question 9

What are two issues with the planetary boundaries hypothesis?

Answer 9

1. Boundaries are arbitrary in terms of thresholds and spatial scales
2. Humans don’t all cause deforestation

Nordhaus et al 2012

Question 10

Who discusses planetary boundaries vis-a-vis “human development”?

Answer 10

Steffen et al 2015

Planetary boundaries really a barrier to humans or to economies and capitalism?

Question 11

What is a major problem with Ehrilch’s work (1968) on population growth?

Answer 11

On the one hand argues population growth is the issue, yet elsewhere suggests that capital is the main driver and that inequalities exist

(see Ehrlich and Holdren 1971)

Question 12

When will the global population stabilise?

Answer 12

Will reach an estimated 9-10 billion by 2100 as fertility rates fall in the west

(Vira 2015)

Question 13

What is the connection between capitalist reinvestment and environmental destruction (quote)?

Answer 13

“The more fossil fuels and other resources capital has dissipated today, the more it will afford to dissipate tomorrow”

(Malm and Hornborg 2014)

Question 14

How many people do not use electricity?

Answer 14

Nearly 2 billion people (Satterthwaite, 2009)

Question 15

Who has connected marginal return to poverty in rural areas? Why is this problematic?

Answer 15

• Barbier 2010:
• Assumes that because rural there is a direct dependence
• But why are people poor to begin with?
• Attributes the environment to poverty

Question 16

What is an obvious moral issue with inequality and “scarcity”?

Answer 16

• Even though there is enough food to feed everyone, not everyone is fed
• Also still an environmental cost
• Good links to population overlooking inequality

DeFries et al 2012

Question 17

Why is the World Bank (2003) “fight AGAINST poverty” problematic?

Answer 17

It depoliticises poverty, making it appear that poor are causing environmental pressures etc

Question 18

What is an example of those in poverty being blamed for environmental issues in the south?

Answer 18

Thomas and Middleton 1994

Sahelian desertification

Question 19

What did Falkenmark (1997) overlook when it comes to population growth and water supply?

Answer 19

Climate change - more recent focus here

Also links to injustice of wealthy creating poor environmental conditions which put pressures on populations

Question 20

Was Marx 1885 right to say that “The more proletarians there are in a country, the richer it is”?

Answer 20

Not really

• Depends on what a proletarian is
• Lots of poor in the South but still poorer than the West
• Do we need to move beyond the nation state?

Question 21

What did Marx say about Malthus’ law of population?

Answer 21

“it is only in plants and animals that the law of population is abstract”

(Marx 1885 - discussing proletarianisation)

Question 22

How could an essay be structured if on population growth?

Answer 22

• Reflect on population role
• Suggest alternatives to population growth that put pressure on resources
• Mention how really other factors (Capitalism) are the cause of pressure, not population
• Then how population focus is problematic and a facade of much deeper issues

Question 23

What does Bookchin (1993) highlight about urbanisation and human potentialities?

Answer 23

• Wall street used to be occupied by the least wealthy residents of Manhattan
• Nowadays it has massive buildings which are beyond the “human scale”

Bookchin 1993

• Highlights how many of the things which exist today could not exist without technology
• And technology is useless without investment and wages for the humans to operate it

Question 24

What is a good way of explaining social (vs human) impact on the environment?

Answer 24

• Combustion of fossil fuels may be done by HUMAN HANDS (Malm & Hornborg, 2014)
• More the unequal capitalist mode of production that has resulted in the rapid and uneven industrialisation during the past 500 years, creating waste and destroying ecosystems (Moore, 2017)

See sentence on this in decentring essay

Question 25

What is ironic about the way in which “humans” are seen as the cause of environmental destruction during the “Anthropocene”?

Answer 25

Ironically uses the view of a sloth - it sees humans, as a species, as the cause of environmental degradation (deforestation)

Ignores the SOCIAL processes which drive the deforestation…

Question 26

What is often overlooked when it comes to population growth criticisms?

Answer 26

• Often focuses on unequal consumption patterns

- Overlooks the role of production patterns