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.
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