ISSUES
: Our Changing Population
Chapter 2: Global population issues
27
There’s a population crisis all right. But
probably not the one you think
While all eyes are on human numbers, it’s the rise in farm animals that is laying the
planet waste.
By George Monbiot
T
his article is about the
population crisis. About the
breeding that’s laying waste
the world’s living systems. But it’s
probably not the population crisis
you’re thinking of. This is about
another one, that we seem to find
almost impossible to discuss.
You’ll hear a lot about population
in the next three weeks, as the
Paris climate summit approaches.
Across the airwaves and on the
comment threads it will invariably
be described as “the elephant in
the room”. When people are not
using their own words, it means
that they are not thinking their own
thoughts. 10,000 voices each ask
why no one is talking about it. The
growth in human numbers, they
say, is our foremost environmental
threat.
At
their
best,
population
campaigners seek to extend
women’s reproductive choices.
Some 225 million women have
an unmet need for contraception.
If this need were answered, the
impact on population growth would
be significant, though not decisive:
the annual growth rate of 83 million
would be reduced to 62 million.
But contraception is rarely limited
only by the physical availability of
contraceptives. In most cases it’s
about power: women are denied
control of their wombs. The social
transformations that they need are
wider and deeper than donations
from the other side of the world are
likely to achieve.
At
their
worst,
population
campaigners
seek
to
shift
the blame from their own
environmental impacts. Perhaps
it’s no coincidence that so many
post-reproductive white men are
obsessed with human population
growth, as it’s about the only
environmental problem of which
they can wash their hands. Nor,
I believe, is it a coincidence that
of all such topics this is the least
tractable. When there is almost
nothing to be done, there is no
requirement to act.
Such is the momentum behind
population growth, an analysis in
the
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences
discovered,
that were every government to
adopt the one-child policy China
has just abandoned, there would
still be as many people on Earth at
the end of this century as there are
today. If two billion people were
wiped out by a catastrophe mid-
century, the planet would still hold
a billion more by 2100 than it does
now.
If we want to reduce our impacts
this century, the paper concludes,
it is consumption we must address.
Population growth is outpaced
by the growth in our consumption
of almost all resources. There is
enough to meet everyone’s need,
even in a world of ten billion
people. There is not enough to
meet everyone’s greed, even in a
world of two billion people.
So let’s turn to a population crisis
over which we do have some
influence. I’m talking about the
growth in livestock numbers.
Human numbers are rising at
roughly 1.2% a year, while livestock
numbers are rising at around 2.4%
a year. By 2050 the world’s living
systems will have to support about
120 million tonnes of extra humans,
and 400 million tonnes of extra
farm animals.
Raising these animals already
uses three-quarters of the world’s
agricultural land. A third of our
cereal crops are used to feed
livestock: this may rise to roughly
half by 2050. More people will
starve as a result, because the
poor rely mainly on grain for their
subsistence, and diverting it to
livestock raises the price. And
now the grain that farm animals
consume is being supplemented
by oil crops, particularly soya, for
which the forests and savannahs of
South America are being cleared at
shocking rates.
This might seem counter-intuitive,
but were we to eat soya rather
than meat, the clearance of natural
vegetation required to supply us
with the same amount of protein
would decline by 94%. Producing
protein from chickens requires
three times as much land as
protein from soybeans. Pork needs
nine times, beef 32 times.
A recent paper in the journal
Science
of the Total Environment
suggests
that our consumption of meat is
likely to be “the leading cause of
modern species extinctions”. Not
only is livestock farming the major
reason for habitat destruction and
the killing of predators, but its
waste products are overwhelming
the world’s capacity to absorb
them. Factory farms in the US
generate 13 times as much sewage
as the human population does.
The dairy farms in Tulare County,
California, produce five times as
much as New York City.
Freshwater life is being wiped out
across the world by farm manure.
In England, the system designed
to protect us from the tide of slurry
has comprehensively broken down.
Dead zones now extend from many
coasts, as farm sewage erases
ocean life across thousands of
square kilometres.
Livestock farming creates around
14% of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions: slightly more than the
output of the world’s cars, lorries,
buses, trains, ships and planes. If
you eat soya, your emissions per
