Japan’s nuclear disaster got me thinking about energy demand. Nuclear power advocates justify the decision to power plants with uranium as the best way to meet energy demands that are increasing because world population is growing. I couldn’t help but wonder: why aren’t we talking about reducing population as part of our global strategy to minimize dependence on power sources that pollute the environment and threaten people’s health?

  I asked Bob Engelman, a Vice President at the Worldwatch Institute and one of the country’s most respected experts on the link between population and the environment, to weigh in. Read his post, then let us know how you think population should figure into the calculations we’re making about our energy future.

Always sensitive to talk about, the topic of population is hard to keep under wraps when news keeps reminding us that we live in a finite world. The costs of food and energy are rising despite a global economy in low gear. The likelihood of stemming the rise of the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas concentrations seems farther away than ever. And as Japan’s nuclear nightmare has reminded us yet again, there is no truly safe way to provide the energy that 6.9 billion people need to live decently. We’re pressing hard against limits set by the laws of physics and biology. The idea that we can easily trim our individual consumption to come into balance with nature—worthy as that effort is—looks increasingly naïve.

If people in the developed world slash their per capita greenhouse emissions by half, their effort could be counterbalanced by people in developing countries boosting theirs by just 11 percent. Global per capita emissions would still be inequitable—and unsustainably globe-warming.

Are there too many of us?

When I ponder how hard it will be to save the global climate, the oceans, forests, fisheries and non-human species, the answer seems obvious. But that answer is dangerous. To say we are too many is to imply some of us should go away fast, or at least that people should be made to have fewer children than they’d like.

The conversation looks easier if we start with some core values:

One: see the global environmental dilemma not as a problem to be solved but as a predicament to be responded to. We can’t control our future, but we can act with integrity as we aspire to build just societies in an environmentally-sound world. Addressing our numbers can become part of that.

Two, embrace human rights as a foundation for our actions.

All people—even if too many or consuming too much—have dignity and a right to be here. As it happens, population policies based on the right of all women to choose whether and when to bear a child actually slow the growth of population.

Every country that offers easy access to contraceptive and safe abortion services also has a fertility rate of two children per woman or fewer, consistent with a declining population. More than two out of five pregnancies worldwide are unintended, suggesting that a world in which women everywhere were fully in control of their childbearing would soon reverse population growth. “Soon” would come even sooner if, at the same time, women’s standing relative to men surged—in education, health, economic well-being, legal protection and political participation.

Three, acknowledge that no one can claim a greater right than anyone else to use energy and natural resources. This is called equity. We cannot object if the poorest people living today and yet to be born succeed in gaining the means to consume as much as Americans do. In a finite world whose limits we are now meeting, we need to learn how to share—and plan for a world in which there is enough safe energy, clean water and nutritious food for all.

 None of this makes for an immediate silver bullet for our energy and environment problems. Nothing else does either. We need to make positive moves in every direction simultaneously, right now. But whenever we get serious about making the world livable for our children and grandchildren, population has an obvious place at the table.

Robert Engelman is vice president of the Worldwatch Institute and author of the book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want (Island Press). His most recent Worldwatch report discusses the connections between women’s lives, population and climate change. (Email rengelman@worldwatch.org for free PDF.)

photo credit 

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The nuclear meltdown in Japan and the recent oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may seem unrelated, but they’re not. Both catastrophes occurred because we’ve made three fundamental mistakes in the way we generate energy.

1) We have relied on centralized power plants that use dangerous fuels to meet energy demand. Most countries that can afford it build large power plants so they can centralize energy production. Big centralized power plants are easier to regulate than a bunch of smaller, dispersed facilities. And because they generate a lot of energy at once, big plants appear to streamline power production. But in addition to being outrageously expensive, centralized generating facilities require massive amounts of dangerous fuels to operate consistently. If that fuel is oil or coal, recovering it usually wrecks the physical environment (we saw that in spades during last year’s Gulf Oil disaster); burning it causes global warming and sickening air pollution. If the fuel is uranium, using it generates radioactive nuclear waste that must be stored for thousands of years.

Ironically, a significant percent of the energy these kinds of plants generate is lost because it’s distributed over old, inefficient powerlines that transport the energy far from the original generator, which means that the plants actually need to consume more fuel to meet demand. Centralized power stations are also highly susceptible to terrorism, human error, and natural disasters, like the Japanese tsunami that overwhelmed that country’s nuclear reactors. As long as we continue to rely on large centralized power generation stoked by fossil fuels or uranium, we should expect disasters like the current meltdown in Japan.

2) We depend on fuels whose devastating environmental and health impacts are overlooked because they generate so much money for the industries that control them.

Right now, oil costs almost $100 a barrel. Solar energy is free. And there’s the rub. Industries based on selling coal, oil, and uranium, the fuel that powers nuclear power plants, earn billions of dollars every year just selling the fuel, let alone the power it generates. They use the profits from those sales to lobby legislators and make huge campaign contributions that keep law makers beholden to the status quo rather than emboldened to support safer alternatives.

I’m not suggesting we figure out a way to charge for the sun’s rays. I’m suggesting we realize that, every time we use oil or coal or energy from a nuclear power plant, some portion of our dollars is being used to insure that we KEEP using oil and coal and nuclear energy, instead of cleaner, healthier options.

3) We have refused to embrace energy efficiency and renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Many people give “alternative energy” positive lip service. Most people think sun power sounds like a good idea. Just as many will acknowledge that they want to do more to save energy. Yet the majority who talk the talk don’t walk the walk. Municipal codes still allow homes and buildings to be built that leak energy like a sieve. Consumers are still buying far more gas-guzzling vehicles and appliances than their energy-efficient counterparts. As a nation, we subsidize the fossil fuel and nuclear industries by giving them substantial tax breaks, yet scrimp on providing essential research and development money to renewable alternatives. Each of us could probably reduce the amount of energy we consume by half while taking advantage of any programs our utilties offer to let us buy power that’s safely generated. Until we do, and governments and businesses follow suit, the situation won’t change.

There aren’t enough words to describe what’s happened in Japan. Horrible. Catastrophic. Terrible. Unimaginable.

But there are also words we shouldn’t use to describe what’s transpired: Unique. Isolated. Rare. Freak accident.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Disasters like the Japanese nuclear meltdown and the Gulf oil spill are going to become increasingly common unless we make a concerted global effort to change the way we all get and use energy.

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