Title: Climate change | Population Matters
Headings: Climate change
Climate change
The climate change threat
Climate change action
Individual actions
Global policy
Population action
Population growth must be addressed in all countries to tackle climate change.
If we are to succeed in preventing the worst effects of climate change, we must take action to address population size.
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More Feet, More Heat: Climate Change Conference 2018
Population Matters conference 2018: Robin Maynard, director, Population Matters
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Content: Climate change action
“Globally, economic and population growth continued to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014
There are multiple drivers of climate change, amongst which population is only one. Overwhelmingly, emissions are produced by people in the richest countries, and industrial development and consumption patterns in the Global North are primarily responsible for the crisis we are in today. Technological solutions, personal lifestyle changes, policies to end fossil fuel use and develop alternative energy and potentially fundamental changes to our economic sytems are all vital, especially as the timescale for preventing catastrophic climate change is so short - now less than a decade, according to the IPCC. Whatever other changes we make, however, their positive impacts will be reduced and may even be completely cancelled out by adding emissions from hundreds of millions of new people as our population increases. According to 2020 research evaluating 44 countries, emissions arising as a result of population growth wiped out two-thirds of the reduction in emissions arising from greater energy efficiency between 1990 and 2019. Meanwhile, solutions such as reforestation may be more difficult to implement with more people needing food and land. Reducing the number of people being born is not a panacea for climate change, but it cuts future carbon emissions, effectively, simply and permanently, and it boosts the effectiveness of other solutions. Most importantly, it can be achieved through positive actions which empower people and improve lives. Individual actions
A study published in 2017 by the Universities of Lund and British Columbia suggested that the single most effective measure an individual in the developed world could take to cut their carbon emissions over the long term could be to have one fewer child.