An even

more

“Inconvenient Truth”

What Al Gore didn’t tell you

What “Friends of the Earth” doesn’t want

to tell you

On the birth of Christ there were 200 million people in the world

By 1750 there were 700 million

By 1950 there were 2,550 million

Now there are 6,770 million

By 2050 there will be

9,200 million

World Population (billions)

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By 2050 we can expect an

increase close to the combined populations of

China and India today

The last hundred years has seen a FOUR-FOLD growth in population !

What does all this mean ?Within our grand-children’s life-time we can

expect:• Spiralling food and energy prices, as fossil

fuels and water become scarce

• Final destruction of rain forests• Final collapse of ocean fish stocks • Near extinction of higher animal wild-life

• Rising sea-levels: 0.5m in fifty years• 150+ million “climate-change refugees”

What does “Friends of the Earth”

have to say about the pressures of population ?

“Population growth puts pressure on the world’s natural resources. However, Friends of the Earth does not believe that it is the main cause of the environmental degradation. The world’s richer nations, including the UK, are putting by far the greater pressure on the world’s atmosphere, oceans and forests. The richest 20 per cent of people consume 86 per cent of the Earth resources and tend to have the lowest birth rates”.

In other words,

“Friends of the Earth”

does not see population growth as a primary or

even major environmental issue.

Restricting the growth of greenhouse gases is seen by FoE

as a primary objective.But greenhouse gases are not the cause of:• Depletion of fossil fuel reserves• Deforestation• Exhaustion of fish stocks• Extinction of animal species• Environmental contamination

So, what

is

the common underlying cause of

environmental destruction ?

Answer: Over-population

The exploding growth of humanity and its demand for natural resources over

the past 250 years is now beyond the ability of our only planet to cope.

Most projected population growth will be in the developing world. These people will fairly demand increases in their standards of living.

By 2050, therefore, the combined, insatiable material demands of the world's population could only be met by two or three planets equivalent to earth.

Since additional planets are not available to us, we face the total collapse of the world's ecological system by this point in time.

Do carbon emissions, and consequent climate change, have any relationship to global population ?

Historic CO2 levels

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CO2 levels have risen

sharply since 1800

Do carbon emissions, and consequent climate change, have any relationship to global population ?

World Population vs Historic CO2 levels

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Carbon-Dioxide p.p.m World population (billions)

CO2 levels are rising in parallel with

global population

Key messages:

• Buying low-energy light bulbs and smaller cars will not alter the fate of our planet; these actions are simply too trivial.

• Any serious attempt to avoid global collapse must tackle population growth, no matter how controversial.

But we CAN save the planet:• By stabilising populations in the developing

world we can help people there deal with food, water and energy shortages.

• Reducing the population in the developed world, where consumption is much higher, will help conserve resources.

• Both can be achieved humanely through education, equalization of women’s rights, and provision of family planning and contraception.

But we CAN save the planet:Within the UK:• Highlight the problem and its threats• Ensure zero net migration – “no more in than

out” • Campaign for a “Stop at Two” family policy• Educate the young to the benefits of small

families• More help to prevent unwanted pregnancies• Pay the present child benefits for four

children to ALL families, but payable on only the first two children.

But we CAN save the planet:Internationally: press for a “Kyoto

protocol on population”:• Ban coercive measures to restrict population

growth

• Equal civil, legal and educational rights for women

• Family planning help to avoid the 40% of pregnancies that are unwanted

• Food-aid programmes to be accompanied by family planning aid

“There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes only a mere 56 years ago.

It is frightening. We can’t go on as we have been. We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, atmospheric pollution and in terms of the space and food production”.

~ Sir David Attenborough, Patron of The Optimum Population Trust

If you care about this planet and its creatures

If you want your children and your children’s children to inherit a decent world

If you wish to help prevent this planet becoming a living “hell on earth”

Then join The Optimum Population Trust at:

http://www.optimumpopulation.org

And please pass this slide pack onto your friends.

“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children”.

~ Native American Proverb

http://www.optimumpopulation.org

Supporting Notes To “An Even More Inconvenient Truth” - 1 Slide 2: • Al Gore’s presentation, whilst brave and highly public-spirited, fails to demonstrate

the evident correlation of the growth of global population to ecological damage. • FoE, along with Greenpeace, CPRE, RSPB, National Trust and Wildlife Trusts, are

unwilling to acknowledge that control of the expanding global population is fundamental to any serious attempt at averting global catastrophe.

Slides 3 & 4: • Global population:

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopgraph.html Slide 5:

Rain forests: • http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/entire-rainforests-set-to-disappear-in-

next-decade-585840.html • http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,430401,00.html • http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/06/conservation.endangeredha

bitats Fish Stocks:

“The fish that once seemed an inexhaustible source of food are now almost everywhere in decline: 90% of large predatory fish (the big ones such as tuna, swordfish and sharks) have gone, according to some scientists. In estuaries and coastal waters, 85% of the large whales have disappeared, and nearly 60% of the small ones. Many of the smaller fish are also in decline. Indeed, most familiar sea creatures, from albatrosses to walruses, from seals to oysters, have suffered huge losses. It is clear, in any event, that man must change his ways. Humans could afford to treat the sea as an infinite resource when they were relatively few in number, capable of only rather inefficient exploitation of the vasty deep and without as yet a taste for fossil fuels. A world of 6.7 billion souls, set to become 9 billion by 2050, can no longer do so. The possibility of widespread catastrophe is simply too great.”

~ The Economist, December 30, 2008

• http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cod-stocks-down-more-than • http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/000825_fish.shtml • http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,835358,00.html

Supporting Notes To “An Even More Inconvenient Truth” - 2 Slide 5(Continued):

Animal species at risk: • “In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the

history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago. A rising human population of 6.5 billion is undermining the environment for animals and plants via pollution, expanding cities, deforestation, introduction of "alien species" and global warming. It is estimated that the current pace of extinctions is 1,000 times faster than historical rates…”

~ Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report, March 21, 2006

• http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red_list/index.cfm • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3352897/Red-List-of-endangered-

species---thousands-of-species-at-risk-of-disappearing.html Rising sea levels: • “Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves by the

end of this century – and we will be to blame… western profligacy and indifference have sealed the fate of 150 million people…” The Independent, Friday, 20 June 2008

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7197379.stm • http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=427 Climate change refugees: • http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6532323.stm • http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm

Supporting Notes To “An Even More Inconvenient Truth” - 3 Slides 6 & 7: • Formal FoE position on climate change, as stated in December 2006. • In 2008, three local FoE groups put forward a motion "to consider the promotion of

the stabilisation and ultimate reduction of human population": This was debated and the motion was lost, by 17 to 51.

Slides 8 & 9: • Deforestation results from land-clearance and excessive logging. • Depletion of fish stocks is as a result of increasingly intensive over-fishing • Endangered animal species are being forced to extinction due to expanding human

populations moving into their natural habitat. • Environmental contamination embraces household, industrial, biological and nuclear

waste. Slide 10: • http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jul/07/research.waste/print • “If GNP growth in China continues at 8 per cent a year, by 2031 China’s income per

head for its 1.45 billion people will be equal to that of the US today:- “China’s grain consumption will then be two thirds of the current grain consumption of the entire world. If it consumes oil at the same rate as the US today, the Chinese will be consuming 99 billion barrels a day – and the whole world is currently producing 84 billion barrels a day, and will probably not produce much more. If it consumes paper at the same rate that we do, it will consume twice as much paper as the world is now producing. There go the world’s forests. If the Chinese then have three cars for every four people – as the US does today – they would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars compared to the current world fleet of 800 million. They would have to pave over an area equivalent to the area they have planted with rice today, just to drive and park them.”

Slide 11 & 12:

Global population: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopgraph.html

Carbon Dioxide levels:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

• There is a clear correlation between rising CO2 levels and population growth.

A counter-argument is that this is purely co-incidental, as rising CO2 levels result from increasing industrialization.

This argument, whilst in part valid, does not contradict the correlation, but simply provides a logical linkage between the growth of CO2 and the growth of human population: The populations that have expanded in the last century have not been those in the Kalihari Desert or the Amazon Rain Forest, but rather in the developed and developing worlds; the populations of which are avid consumers of industrialized products, albeit to the degree their relative incomes allow, e.g. the demands of an expanding population in the Congo for bicycles will trigger rising CO2 emissions from manufacturing plants in China or elsewhere to meet the demand.

Slide 13:

• Marginal reductions of CO2 generation in advanced economies cannot be expected to counter-balance:

(a) the 40% growth of global population forecast to occur in the next forty years, combined with,

(b) the accelerating adoption of Western-levels of consumption of industrialized products in the developing world, where much of the population growth will occur.