With the population of the Earth reaching the predicted eight billionit is easy to conclude that climate change is the result of too many people consuming energy. But scientists say it’s not that simple. Climate change, they say, is more about overconsumption than overpopulation. And there is no clear correlation between the two. “As a climate scientist, I know it’s not the number of people that matters. It’s how we live,” Katharine Hayhoe told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. Hayhoe, chief scientist at the international environmental group Nature United, says there is much we can do to combat climate change. But the decline in world population is not a key element. “We know this planet can carry eight billion people, but not if they all live like Canadians. We need to be more efficient with our energy,” he said. “We need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. We need to engage in climate-smart agriculture. And we need to remember that we are not just citizens of this country, we are citizens of the world and everyone shares this home.”
Population and emissions do not go hand in hand
Hayhoe’s arguments are echoed by many of her peers—some of whom have changed their tune over the years. The Sierra Club, for example, is an environmental nonprofit that promotes global population control efforts. But they shifted gears when they looked more closely at the science, the group’s president, Ramon Cruz, told The Associated Press. He said that when they dove deeper, they found that the problems of overconsumption and fossil fuel use would be the same “across six billion, seven billion or eight billion” people. Climate Interactive, a group of scientists who run complex computer simulations, reached a similar conclusion. The team compared scenarios of United Nations population projections of 8.8 billion people and 10.4 billion people and found a difference of only 0.2 degrees Celsius. But the difference between having no price or tax on carbon, versus taxing it at US$100, was 0.7C. Pakistan contributes about 0.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Population Review. But in 2022, the country faced violent and unprecedented floods. (Fayaz AzizAziz/Reuters) “The question is not about population, it’s about consumption patterns,” said climatologist Bill Hare. The key to understanding climate change, scientists say, is to look at who is consuming the most – and who is suffering because of it. For example, many of the countries with the fastest growing populations are in Africa. However, these countries themselves bear the brunt of the climate crisis. According to the Associated Press, Africa has 16.7 percent of the world’s population but has historically emitted only 3 percent of the world’s carbon pollution. The United States, on the other hand, has 4.5 percent of the planet’s people, but since 1959, it has extinguished 21.5 percent of its heat-trapping carbon dioxide. The average Canadian, Saudi and Australian, meanwhile, emit more than 10 times more carbon dioxide into the air through their daily lives than the average Pakistani, who has experienced massive and deadly floods linked to climate change. “It’s the rich, industrialized countries with high emissions that are largely responsible for this problem,” Hayhoe said. “Not just countries, but companies [and] cities too.”
Losses and damages
Hayhoe spoke to CBC as she left Egypt, where she attended COP27, the UN’s global climate change conference. He says not enough has been done to fight climate change since last year’s conference. “Since the Glasgow COP a year ago, the value is over $6 trillion [in] US dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industry,” Hayhoe said. “We know something has to change.” Indian climate activist Disha Ravi holds a placard as she takes part in the Fridays for Future strike during the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. (Emilie Madi/Reuters) The issue of inequality was at the heart of COP27, he said. Many of the climate activists present are calling for an international agreement based on the concept of “losses and damages”. This means that the world’s biggest polluters – both countries and companies – will have to fund climate change mitigation efforts in the nations most affected by it. “It’s simple… If you’re the one hurting something, it’s your responsibility to fix it.” Indian climate activist Disha Ravi told As It Happens from COP27 on Friday. “So here, when we’re asking them to give us climate finance, we’re asking them to give it to us in the form of damage and loss finance — adaptation funds, mitigation funds. It’s to make sure we’re in a place where we can actually, not just to survive, but to have a sustainable present and future.” But figuring out who should pay what could be a complicated — and tense — process, CBC News’ Chris Brown reports. For example, China is currently the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the word. But historically, no country has emitted more carbon than the US Canada has indicated it is open to discussing loss and damage financing. Hayhoe says it’s a concept that reflects the fact that “climate change is profoundly unfair” and she hopes it will be reflected in any new international agreements. “I’ve talked to so many people and I’ve heard so many stories of people coming from Caribbean islands where they’re dealing with drought, warming seas and depleting fisheries. Or Bangladesh, where they’re dealing with repeated floods and then droughts,” he said. “If that [a loss and damages agreement] not coming, what does that say to these countries? He says we don’t care. We don’t even think you share the same planet. We don’t care what happens to you.” But despite the uneven impacts of climate change, Hayhoe warns that no one will emerge unscathed from this crisis. “There is no way we can build walls at the top of the atmosphere around our country or any other country to protect ourselves from climate change while the rest of the world suffers,” he said. “We all share this house together, and we know the science is clear. The sooner we reduce our emissions, the better off we’ll all be.”
