Copenhagen: An Opportunity for Climate AND Population
Vicky Markham
by Vicky Markham
Director, The Center for Environment and Population (CEP),
an independent non-profit science-based research and policy organization
There’s great pressure in Copenhagen on the US to take a lead role in curbing the CO2 “greenhouse gas” emissions that cause climate change. This is in part because we are the world’s biggest energy consumer, using 25% of the world’s energy, and generating five times the world’s average per-capita emissions of CO2.
As high energy and resource consumers, in a country with a large, rapidly growing population base, Americans have a much bigger “per-person” link to global climate change than any other nation. And looking forward, with 8,000 people added daily and 3 million people added each year in the US, there’s real potential to reach 1 billion high-energy-consuming Americans by 2100.
The US population’s disproportionate role in causing climate change has not gone unnoticed by nations now meeting in Copenhagen. Many leaders have said the US must do more to curb its emissions if it expects other countries to do likewise.
Copenhagen: Population’s Role
In light of this, Copenhagen not only provides an opportunity for the US to step up to the plate and lead by example, significantly reducing its energy use and CO2 emissions – but also to take critical steps relating to population in the context of the climate talks because it is associated with both the “causes” and “effects” of climate change.
The world’s population is on track to reach 7 billion people in two years, just twelve years after reaching 6 billion. In the meantime, global climate change, as a result of human activities, is having unprecedented effects on the planet’s sea level rise, weather patterns, species habitat and freshwater resources.
The US uniquely demonstrates how these two issues – population and climate change – are inextricably linked. America’s role within the global context is especially significant: it is the third largest country in the world in terms of population, the largest and fastest growing developed nation worldwide and the biggest CO2 emitter of all the industrialized nations, and second only to China in overall global emissions.
This unique combination – of America’s high population numbers and rapid growth and high per-capita energy consumption and CO2 emissions – makes the US pivotal in the global climate change debate.
Meeting these energy demands while at the same time reducing the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change – is part of the challenge before us now.
But how do US “population” factors (such as growth, density, movement, age/income, or per-capita resource use) relate to climate change? To answer this question, the Center for Environment and Population (CEP), with Clean Air-Cool Planet, has just produced a new Interactive Map on “Population and Climate Change,” a companion to the “U.S. Population, Energy & Climate Change” report from CEP. This new map shows US national, regional and state-by-state ranking on energy consumption, CO2 emissions, per-capita vehicle miles traveled, population numbers and growth rates, and housing units (more houses = more appliances = more energy use), making clear several key linkages, relating both to the “causes” and “effects” of climate change:
- Population is associated with the causes of climate change mainly through high per-capita energy use and the associated greenhouse gas emissions.
- Population is linked to climate change’s effects when there is high population density and rapid population growth in the areas most vulnerable to climate change-related impacts.
When you look at these issues from a developing country’s perspective, it is most often in terms of “effects” rather than “causes”. Large aggregates of people there (many of them poor, with little means to alter their situation and respond to climate change’s impacts) live in the coastal or arid areas most susceptible to climate change-induced sea level rise, increased incidence of severe weather, and droughts. In addition, especially vulnerable populations living in small island states, and those who depend most heavily on the natural climate to survive (such as Native populations in Alaska and the Arctic) will disproportionately feel climate change’s impacts.
Addressing Population and Climate Change in Copenhagen
At the climate talks population will most likely surface in the nations’ efforts to “mitigate and adapt” to climate change, especially where large numbers of people live in coastal and arid sites most prone to climate change impacts.
In the context of the Copenhagen climate negotiations, the US can take several steps associated with population:
–First, US leaders should include population/demographic specialists among the experts at the climate change table, to inform the US stance and overall negotiations with the best, balanced scientific data on how population factors are linked to climate change’s causes and effects, and how they can be part of addressing the challenge;
–Second, the US should take a leadership role and support voluntary universal access to good quality reproductive healthcare that, together with reducing high per-capita energy and resource use, is a viable means to balance pressure on the earth’s natural systems. In this case, however, it is extremely important to recognize that we are not speaking of “blaming” high population numbers for climate change – the science demonstrates that it is a combination of high, unsustainable per-capita energy use and rapid population growth as a multiplier of the high energy use, that is the issue here;
–Third, for the world’s nations at Copenhagen to acknowledge the links between population factors and climate change, and the central role population plays in various ways relating to its “causes” and “effects” worldwide, and as part of effectively addressing the climate change.
The Center for Environment and Population (CEP) is an independent non-profit science-based research and policy organization. A CEP team is reporting back daily from Copenhagen on how population is being addressed at the global climate meeting. For more information go to www.cepnet.org.
Tags: climate change, climate negotiations, CO2, COP-15, copenhagen, curb emissions, environment and population, population, US energy use, US population
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