My invited talk at W.H.O., Geneva August 2013, to joint audience from the environmental health and reproductive health divisions

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Prof Colin Butler, ARC Future Fellow
Department of Public Health and Environment WHO August 27, 2013
Health, environment, population

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“Efforts to prevent noncommunicable diseases go
against the business interests of powerful economic
operators... one of the biggest challenges facing
health promotion.
.. it is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health
must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big
Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and
protect themselves by using the same tactics.”
Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General
Opening address, 8th Global Conference on
Health Promotion, Helsinki, Finland, 10 June 2013
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also – Big CARBON

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Hung Liang-chi
(1744-1809)
Honda Toschiaki
(1744-1821)
Thomas Malthus
(1766-1834)
Population/resources: an old debate
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0-2012
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Borlaug’s
warning Nobel
prize speech
President Reagan: population
problem “vastly exaggerated”
Le Bras: “The problem has become
a bit passé” (US Pop Mtg)
1st
“check”
2nd
“check”

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Shtulman and Valcarcel, (2012) Scientific knowledge
suppresses but does not supplant earlier intuitions Cognition

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1. Population growth rate
2. Population impact
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Global population growth rate:
1950-2010
raw data: http://esa.un.org/unpp
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peak = 2.1%

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Global annual population
increments 1950-2010
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raw data: http://esa.un.org/unpp

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Orthodoxy: 1950s-early 1980s
High pop’n growth impedes economic
takeoff
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Lyndon Johnson
“… less than five dollars invested in population
control is worth a hundred dollars invested in
economic growth”
1968: shipped 1/5 US wheat harvest to India, on
condition that India step up family planning
programme
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Richard Nixon
“… countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, ..
need to maintain real economic growth rates of
3% just to keep their per capita incomes from
dropping. Unchecked population growth will
put them on an ever-accelerating treadmill
that will outpace any potential economic
performance"
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“Revisionism”: early
1980s-1990s – now?
High population growth irrelevant –
leave it to “market forces”
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The Cornucopian Enchantment
Simon: “the notion of something being
infinite is very much a matter of how we look
at it..” (The Ultimate Resource)
“From a high point some 10-15 years ago,
intellectual concern about population has
steadily waned to a position where it falls
now somewhere between ocean mining and
acid rain” (McNicoll and Nag, 1982)
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Ronald Reagan
When questioned about population growth
the New York Times reported that he
considered the problem to have been
“vastly exaggerated”
(Finkle and Crane, 1985)
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US policy at the Mexico City
population conference, 1984
American Population Association:
‘authors of draft report “either unaware of 50
years of demographic research, or
deliberately ignored it”’
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US Nat. Acad. Sciences 2nd
enquiry into pop/envt: 1986
• Mostly economists
• Strong “Cornucopian” influence
(especially Simon)
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Demography and the Limits to Growth,
Paul Demeny,
Pop’n Development Review 1988

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Larry Summers: Limits & Human
Carrying Capacity
“The idea that we should put limits
on growth, because of some
natural limit, is a profound error”
(cited in George and Sabelli, 1994 p109)
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The Human Titanic
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Consequences for Family Planning
• Budget falls
US, Australia, globally
• 1994 Cairo conference: ignores economic argument
• 2004 pop’n conference: abandoned
• Environmental groups: largely ignore pop’n
(including IPCC, Millennium Assessment, Greenpeace,
Up in Smoke)
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“Revisionism”: revisited
2000s – now?
Kelley
UK Parliament
Royal Society
Gates Foundation
WHO?
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The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) pointed out that almost 1.5
billion young men and women will enter the 20-to-24-years age
cohort between 2000 and 2015, and if they don't find jobs "they
will fuel political instability."
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The Inside Story of the Papal Birth
Control Commission (1963-66)
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“With 11 million people .. Rwanda is hoping to lower its high
fertility rate so that it can benefit from future economic
growth” Ruxin, J. & Habinshuti, A. 2011. Crowd control in Rwanda. Nature, 474, 572-573.

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1. Population growth rate
2. Population impact
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Donella
Meadows
“Our Final
Century”
Where On
Earth Are We
Going?

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What about consumption?I = P.A.T
Impact = Population*Affluence*Technology
(Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971)
1994

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(nominal prices)
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Butler, 2013

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Conclusions: High pop’n growth: cause and effect of
1. Poverty
2. Global inequality (“claste” system)
3. We who care about global health need to challenge the
“cornucopian enchantment” fostered by big Capital, the
woolly Left, some in the Church, and collusive academia
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Cumulative carbon
combustion
1848 1960 1987 – 1994 2008
2012
JS Mill –
steady state
economy
Our Common
Future, Rio
conference
Rio+20
now?
CD Butler
ANU
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K Boulding
Limits to Growth
Stockholm,
Bucharest confs,
N Borlaug’s
warning
Cairo pop’n
conference
“Cornucopian
enchantment”
Adapted from Meinshausen et al (2011)
Global
sense of
risk

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“Social vaccine”
“Demand will create a parachute”

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Toxicity
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Placebo
Vaccine spectrum

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Panic, despair,
or indifference
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“Polyanna”
“Social vaccine” spectrum

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“The dangerous impacts of climate change can only be
discussed in terms of nonlinear behavior.’’
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

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He Had a dream
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Édouard
Le Roy
Paul Crutzen
noösphere
(planetary thinking, sharing)
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Near Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, 2009
Rights-based approaches to accelerate the
demographic transition

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Not just “natural” capital –
But interaction of natural, human, social, built, financial
And some would say moral

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The good news
is you’re too
big to let fail
Pope
Canberra
Times
29 Oct 08
The good
news is
you’re too
big to let
fail
The bad news
is it’s hard to
get a
government
bailout until
your stocks
completely
crash
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