Population, Energy Consumption, and how to Limit Pollution

People act like humans managing our population is some new idea. People have been able to manage our population as long as we’ve been human.

When there’s more energy and resources, people have bigger families. America’s westward expansion followed by its extracting and burning fossil fuels created the material conditions for fast growth. In westward expansion, arable land was a proxy for energy since plants converted sunlight into energy people could use.

People talk about educating women and girls as a way to lower population growth. It works, but as long as people believe there is more energy in the future, I predict people with access to that energy will want more kids.

By contrast, make it clear there will be less energy in the future and people will want smaller families for intrinsic reasons. Since all sources of energy outside using plants that just grew (not turned into fossil fuels over millions of years) pollute and lower Earth’s ability to sustain life, using them mortgages our future. We net lose.

Here are some correlations between population and energy. My plan for the future improves quality of life by stopping polluting, meaning not using polluting energy. My upcoming book gives details, but these graphs show what happens if we keep extracting more energy. It makes people want to have more children, which leads to overpopulation, which lowers Earth’s ability to sustain life.