Population growth offsets green technology gains and is a taboo topic for ecology

Evidence

These additional billions of consumers will take a heavy toll on the earth’s finite resources and ecological systems. The development of clean, green technologies and renewable sources of energy and the adoption of sustainable consumer lifestyles are essential. Even so, billions more consumers will offset a good share of the benefits of any green remedies. Lifestyle changes must, therefore, be coupled with stabilization of the human population at a level the earth can sustain in the long term. On the consumption side, for the most part, we are making token gestures rather than the needed fundamental lifestyle changes. On the population side, population growth has been excluded from the equation for ecological degradation. For reasons to be presented shortly, it is a taboo subject that no one dares touch. Stabilizing the soaring global population is critical for an environmentally sustainable future. To reduce continued destruction of the planet both problems of overpopulation and unsustainable consumption must be addressed. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2554 (#expands, via linked claim)

Some of Ehrlich’s harsh remedies for population control drew heavy fire from both the ideological Right and Left. They pitted overconsumption against overpopulation as though they were antagonistic factors in the calculus of ecological degradation. The population taboo remains in full force despite exponential population growth and its mounting consequences. At the time that Ehrlich sounded the humanitarian alarm, the population was 3.8 billion, and natural resources still were abundant. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2557 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Rates of population growth and ecological transformation are themselves exponential. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 81; Humanist technological progress assumed an environment crowded with humans at nature’s expense — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 714; Population growth is a taboo subject excluded from ecological discourse — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2554 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Population growth is a taboo subject excluded from ecological discourse #expands (0.95) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2554
• Debating overconsumption versus overpopulation obscures compounding ecological damage #complicates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2557