I am not sure this is true either. In India I observed that the poor chop branches off the trees for firewood. They don’t chop down the tree. It is when the rich move in that the trees are chopped down. I saw that in the holy town of Amarkantak. People I met who had been going there for a long time commented on how much the forest had receded in 20 years. The population of the town had grown considerably and much of the impact was from visitors to the town, of which there are many every day through the cooler months of the year. Whereas the population of the poorer people is unlikely to have risen anywhere near as much.

But it is true that in India villagers pollute the waterways. They do everything in the rivers and streams. They get their drinking water from wells. However, the degree of the pollution pales in insignificance compared to what the industrialists are doing in coal mining towns. I visited one and almost suffocated. Less well off indians get work there but they die an early death of diseases related to their occupation. You see the coal is free for locals so they use it for their cooking fires. Whereas cleaner forms of fuel cost money. The town is poisoning itself. I was glad to see that the government “said” it was going to address this problem of pollution in the town. Can’t happen fast enough as far as I am concerned.

My point is that the solution of sharing is not sosialism or sosial democracy, as we like to call it. The solution for the world is Permaculture, and this have to grow out from peoples minds.

It’s not an either/or debate. It’s BOTH the 1st world and the developing world.

And it’s polyanna to think that raising the 3rd world out of poverty will create the desired demographic shift. It’s also not thermodynamically possible to raise the 3rd world far enough out of population to enable that demographic shift, even with some powerdown from the 1st world.

This was the “happy ending” part of 11th Hour, Earth 2100, ad nauseum and it’s just too deus ex machina. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.

So it’s not like they put blame on the poorer regions, as your article might imply if misunderstood.

While your assertion that the wealtiest nations are the highest carbon emitters is something that few would argue with, population is indeed the chief cause of every environmental problem the world experiences today. Name one problem that would exist today if there was one quarter of today’s population. You can try and simply your argument by breaking the human population into two groups (rich and poor), but in fact there exists a wide spectrum of classes in this world. You think that all carbon emission created by the so-called “rich” is only for themselves? Nope. They may not see African bush tribes as customers, but a great many in the “lower economic classes ARE in fact consumers of these goods, and with less consumers there would hence be less products created, hence less polution. And what about they effects globalization has had into forcing poor nations into environmentally destructive agricultural practices. Even with so-called “sustainable” living practices, the fact remains, the more people, the more consumption and the more resources needed to maintain that population. Anyone who has ever taken an ecology 101 class knows that population of any species (when it grows beyond its means) will eventually crash. Unfortunately, human arrogance and the belief that it can overcome anything it screws up with “human ingenuity” is really taking it’s toll on the environment and it’s myriad species that are powerless to stop it. Bottom line, the world is a finite place with finite resources and human overpopulation will continue to worsen our known environmental problems as it (if it) continues to grow. You can argue who is most responsible for carbon emissions all you want, yet the population issue still remains. Not a very well thought out discussion in my opinion, and it’s not just the rich that are concerned with overpopulation.

No, Mr. Villager made his house out of mud and coppiced wood. He grows is food around his house. He is sustainable. Mr. Rich fells more trees to build his stick built house with imported lumber harvested by clear cutting and transported with petroleum.

Mr. Rich may burn more petroleum in a year, but Mr. Villager fells more trees.

Poor people are still directly interacting with their environment, so their pollution of waterways and felling of trees is much easier to see. More of them, more deforestation.

Harder to see, and no doubt greater impact, is the complicated chain of events leading from the purchase of a car to the manufacture of the engine control chips, to the pollution of waterways with silicon industry waste. Repeat for steel, plastic, “rubber” tyres, wiring, etc. of example car.

Seems to me we might have too many of both types of earth citizens.