‘Why are the Climate-change COPs Failing?’

  COP30 has recently concluded in Belém, Brazil (to which many of those attending travelled by air, including some from the other side of the world). What has been achieved in the last three decades? Greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions are still occurring at about the same rate as in 1995, when COP1 was held in Berlin – hardly a sign of success. By 2024 atmospheric CO₂ concentration was 427ppm (parts per million), 50% above the level at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps the problem is that the root causes of climate change, of rising atmospheric CO₂, are being ignored, amazingly. There is no need for annual COPs devoted to sea-level rise (SLR), because all rational people understand & accept that the cause is climate warming due to GHG emissions, whether the SLR is due to melting of glaciers & sea ice, or to thermal expansion of the oceans. So addressing GHG emissions is the obvious rational response. But, to go one step further along the causal chain, if addressing the causes is the obvious rational response to SLR, why is this approach being studiously avoided (so it seems) in the case of GHG emissions? How irrational & irresponsible can one be? Talk about ‘heads in the sand’.

The principal causes of environmental deterioration have been long recognized. William Vogt & Fairfield Osborn, writing in the 1940s, were “the first to bring to a wide public a belief that would become a foundation of environmental thought: consumption driven by capitalism and rising human numbers is the ultimate cause of most of the world’s ecological problems, and only dramatic reductions in human fertility & economic activity will prevent a worldwide calamity” (quoting Charles Mann The Wizard & the Prophet, p.87). In 1971 Paul Ehrlich & John Holdren expressed the idea in mathematical form: I = P x A x T, where I is the impact on the environment, P is population size, A is per capita consumption or affluence, and T is the technology used in per capita production, with some technologies having greater impact  (e.g coal-fired power stations) than others (e.g wind turbines). Concern about the impact of too many people was of course being expressed by others much earlier, so we have no excuse not to understand the problem.

Like GHGs in the atmosphere, the global human population continues to increase at a fairly steady rate: once 3bn was reached in 1960, another billion was added in 14 years, the next after 13 years, the next two after 12 years in each case, and 8bn was reached in yet another 12 years. Global population has tripled in my lifetime; it might have been sustainable, with everyone enjoying a reasonable quality of life, in 1944, but now the world is grossly overpopulated, and a reasonable quality of life for all, without serious degradation of the environment, is now impossible. (In contrast with the climate-change COPs, the UN has not held a conference on population since 1994.)

So, what to do about it? Animal populations are generally regulated by migration, disease, predation & conflict; but does any other animal kill its own kind on such a large scale as we do, for instance by intensive bombing of urban areas such as Dresden, London, Hiroshima & Gaza? Humans could easily regulate population, bringing mortality & fertility into line, without war & migration. The target for action should be fertility, and it’s hardly an act of cruelty to limit each woman to just one or possibly two children. There are several ways of achieving this using benign methods, including education, propaganda, contraception, financial incentives & disincentives, and in the case of persistent offenders sterilization, which does not threaten life or health. In extreme cases, where for instance a failed state or state ruled by an irresponsible or incompetent government is bursting at the seams, with its population rapidly expanding but lacking the means to support itself, and so exerting unacceptable pressure on neighbouring or even distant states through illegal migration, it might be justified for affected states to apply fertility-suppressants over the whole country through the atmosphere or water supply, in order to bring fertility down to an acceptable level. China, to its credit, showed us how fertility reduction can be achieved, and next time we can learn from their mistakes and perhaps apply some of the measures less harshly. The suffering that will be prevented through such an approach worldwide will be incalculable. One problem with all these policies is that it might take decades, or even centuries, for the population situation to be materially improved, and it is a major failing of the UN that global & regional overpopulation and rapid population growth have not been addressed with the attention that has been given in the last three decades to climate change & GHGs.

Paul Ehrlich, referring to some beetles which were unable to regulate their population adequately, remarked that “Man, as we all know & pontificate, has the intellectual talent & the technical skill to avoid such coleopterous hazards. In short he has the capacity to manage his own population and (of equal importance) to conserve those myriad other populations on which he depends. But one thing is certain: if man does not manage his biology, it will manage him.” (The Machinery of Nature, p.165-6)

Future generations will not thank us if we do nothing about population size & growth. For the sake of all living & future people (and future people do matter: after all, before we were born, we were all ‘future people’), I wonder whether it might be possible, just possible, for Homo to be benignus or beneficus rather than pretending to be sapiens. Kindness, not wisdom, is included in most if not all moral codes, and life without it does not bear thinking about.

[This 966-word article was written by G.H.Harper on 27.xi.25, and posted on this website 30.xii.25.]