Over-population

I got an email from John a while ago with a link to a very good article by none other than Boris Johnson (MP):
Global over-population is the real issue

Reminds me of being back in Economics 1 class at university, I mentioned to my tutor that it seems like most of the economic problems we were talking about (crime, resource shortages, unemployment, etc.) all stem from 1 cause: over-population. Ok so it's obviously more complicated than that but I think I had a point worth talking about. His eyes glazed over and he looked a bit uncomfortable, then he got on with the rest of the tutorial. Why do people get offended when you talk about the problems of overpopulation. Should we really be free to consume and consume without any thought for our environment's ability to support us? Does even acknowledging the problem make you a monster? People will probably start making accusations of nazism or talk about human rights abuses at the very mention of it. The Chinese government gets no end of criticism from people because of the 1-child policy but when you have a serious problem like that you have to try to fix it. Nobody wants to be told that they can't have all the kids they want - that's the government interfering with their personal lives in a most personal way! But shit, we can't always have what we want.

Anyway at the time I hadn't given it much thought until all this peak oil stuff started rearing it's head recently. You can't talk about the problems of running out of oil without also talking about population. Warning - gross over-simplification incoming: The truth is that the sun only provides so much energy for our use. We can only use so many renewable resources (renewable the way I understand it = from the sun in one form or another) as there is energy available. Best current estimates put the global population that can be supported using renewable resources at around 2 billion, and that's the most generous estimate. Everything else has to come from old energy stored in things like fossil fuels (which also has its roots in solar energy, gathered over millions of years)

So what happens if you take the fossil fuels away? Where do you get the extra energy required to create fertiliser to grow food, work the tractors and harvesters, clean our water, light our homes, run our manufacturing plants? Doesn't bear thinking about really. When will fossil fuels run out? Probably never, but they'll become so hard to acquire that the trouble involved in extracting them is too great.

Well, this article looks at it from the point of view of global warming which for me is a non-issue with resource problems we'll soon be facing. Assuming that human activities are to blame for global warming (and I think the contribution by CO2 from human activities has been over-hyped) then how can we put so much effort into limiting carbon dioxide emissions while the reasons for the emissions in the first place is exploding out of control. 9.2 billion people by 2050? That's so far past the ability of the planet to support us, the crash will just be that much harder.

Brave of Boris to come out and talk about this stuff the way he does. This politically correct, unrealistic world we live in will probably just ignore him and get on with the important business of shaving percentage points off our CO2 output.