KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segments: Robert Engelman

this is diane whine your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matter is i'm katie xt seattle many point to the fm and online k e x t dad archie my guests this morning as robert engelman vice president for programs and world watch institute and author of the book more population nature and what women want formerly a newspaper reporter covering politics health science in the environment rather has served on the faculty of yale university and his work has appeared in a variety of publications including nature the washington post and the wall street journal robert england is here today to tell us about population climate change and women's lives the topic of a recent world watch report welcome robert what is the goal of your report population climate change and women's lives what i can do is bring population enter the climate debate and a respectable a way that could make a positive contribution to addressing climate change in order to do that i think one needs to present population as an issue of public concern that need not be seen as something dreadful or too sensitive to talk about or

requiring population vulture fund the nominee and people are excited about but actually relate more directly to the company didn't factor upon namely improving women's lives than giving women more capacity to manage their online and control reproduction and productive what the current trends in population worldwide where do we currently stand in two thousand well that's a good question after going to the relevant because we're about to celebrate a big number celebration of the word for themselves on that it seems very likely that before the year is out and this year twenty eleven we will have seven billion people on the planet for the first time in our history that's a remarkable number when you consider that it took until about eighteen hundred or so after eighteen hundred to get to the very first billion in human population all the species history from two hundred thousand years or so ago we first separate it off from other human like species to some time

after economic reach one billion by nineteen hundred we were about one point six billion and then about the middle of the century especially after world war two when public health interventions although the world made much likely that the babies would survive to their own adulthood the numbers started going up rather dramatically to literally in an attic billion almost every twelve to fifteen years or so that we had to the half billion by loved in the world war two we have three billion by the early sixties for going sometime in the seventies five billion i remember because i covered the data five billion as a reporter in the late eighties going at the end of the nineties and the seven billion this year going to have the numbers are going up and the way the world the earth itself have no experience with a species we live within or our companions are only known companions of the universe no not really there's another way

to look at it though which is a little bit more positive which at the growth itself is actually slowing down globally with that if after five an annual basis in the late fifties and early seventies almost two percent a year doesn't sound like a whole lot of economic growth but from the standpoint of having additional forty fifty fifty seven the amount of ad million people your new people every year they have a major impact on the planet the growth rate has been cut in about half men and the average human family is about half thought that was in the late sixties and early seventies this is happening very unevenly some places so dramatically that governments are worried about population declining that happening in japan and germany and several other countries not many but several but the dominant phenomena still population growth income countries quite rapidly in subsaharan africa parts of western asia south asia some extent the philippines are still pretty rapid population growth and the bottom line what i think can be fed of it every day

there's about two hundred and fifteen thousand more people who are affectively as my friend and mentor mr brown i said at the dinner table waiting for their food photo of predominantly a message of quote and that record every day for the impression on the planet the current projections for a world population in twenty fifteen well they generally center on nine billion people their projections are well understood that a lot of think even among experts or demographers know exactly what's happening and human population and there will be nine billion people a day almost seven are twenty fifty that demographers don't know they don't really know if fertility will be vetted how many children women will be having on average over the next twenty or thirty or forty years they don't really know were death rates will go or they assume it'll continue improving because they've been improving for quite some time so they can make their best guess based on current trends and they

usually are several scenarios and generally only the medium scenario the one in the middle if any attention but arranges scenarios and a doctor the united nations the ones i use in my own research work and i think the ones who are most commonly referred to around the world it's called the un population division demographers there have remained projections a low medium and high end of a project anywhere from around a point on the low side two nine billion cost about nine point one to two billion in the medium side and closer to ten billion on the high side in twenty fifty of course twenty fifty in the end of time slowly changing and twenty fifty and increasingly as we get close to twenty fifteen people and climate change and others wonder what can happen in twenty one hundred and twenty two or twenty three hundred and they're things get very very hard to know that you go into the future the harder it is to predict what's likely to happen but it's important to note that when doctors say whoa of about nine billion people in the middle of the century i mean if the opposite nine billion if like carbon

dioxide when it's going to double it might do more than double triple quadruple and the case of population keeping we really do not know yet when it stops growing and would have a peak and then you it will subside at some point that nobody really knows when that will be in the medium projection is that we have about nine point one billion people in twenty fifty but it's still growing by twenty six or twenty seven million people every year so they're really haven't expanded protection the work world population growth actually and even the predictions that are made are conditional predictions on women having access to good contraceptive services served almost already the average woman in the world can have about two children per woman by twenty fifty well it turns out that there's no certainty that that will happen or not actually on a trend right now to provide good contraceptive family planning services for women all around the world by twenty fifty voters are actually just really a lot of uncertainty and if you have a private passion of

mine but their projections get a little bit more attention than they deserved people think that democracies what happened there for this will happen says we don't know what will happen in the future as it happened yet i'm diane warren and my guest is robert in command vice president for programs are world watch institute and author of the world watch report population climate change and women's lives and you are attuned to the sustainability segment of mind over matter is i'm katie eckstein it point three of them and on the web at x p dot org he would extend its population driving climate change well over the long term you know historically it is a major major driver and prefer a simple revenge and i think it's evident in the numbers probably a woman but when you take it for four thousand years from basically the time of jesus to about the time of the norman conquest of england basically from you know maybe one at one thousand the world had

about three hundred million people have left the population of the united states right now at now as six point nine billion going to vote increased by eighteen or twenty times there's not much doubt that had we managed to keep that population stability that we had and nobody's quite sure how we were able to be so stable thousand years up until the year one thousand by my own theories but if for whatever reason when sundown never grown beyond that there's not much doubt that nobody would be talking about or thinking about human induced climate change right now even a fair bit of desperation just because the numbers would be much more to be so much more you could divide every point maybe climate change would happen but it would happen on a very slow almost the same sort of scale that that happened naturally on selling and that fancy cafe population have multiplied the human impact on the atmosphere by twenty times or more on hand the reality is that you can take something

similar back industrial revolution before the industrial revolution we weren't being cool oil and natural gas out of the crust of the earth with little carbon that was basically stored in iraq by living plants over hundreds of millions of years hundreds of millions of years ago and if a few centuries were mining it effectively cannon going out and bringing it up across our cars our homes and outbuildings that and affect almost independent a population really what the combined population growth but scientists and the wicked horvath through just as affecting the raid of the emissions of greenhouse gases and population is usually the first woman mentioned that sort of the main foundation which everything else was happening in egypt grows you have more people wanting to go economic growth and both of

those really multiplied challenge for you a population that's been growing by a couple percent a year for most beloved couple centuries and when you have an economy a world economy that's been growing so if tomorrow or in recent years even faster rate and so to the multiple each other emissions by forty five percent and the two are active what happened recently as two other factors that are frankly much smaller but they're beginning to make self help our intern in the picture one of them is how much economic growth relief the energy we have a service economy know more than we used to so energy isn't quite as important everything that we're doing economically to make yourself comfortable and the other issue that's helpful as more energy in recent years has been derived from sources other than carbon in fossil fuels nuclear energy audit tiger power of giving your part of the country and then a lot of it is increasingly wind and solar powered geothermal things of this kind so those two factors enter into the picture of that energy intensive economy and a less carbon intensive energies

then the multiplying effect of economic growth in population growth is diminished but i have to say that when you look at the figures population really looms as the single most important factor in my view and the reason i say that is that when you look at the voter approved the mission over decades it's extremely close to their population growth there are some exceptions china's emissions have grown way out of proportion to their population growth because they had explosive economic growth over twenty years but by enlarge it tracks surprisingly closely and it's not a surprise to every new person as the person who's going to be driving a walk in to dr shelley traveling using fossil fuels need to cook meat in the heat they may want air conditioning and they may be able to get it although thin because climate change really promotes teacher and it draws the population could hardly the one for visitors if reducing climate change is the ball what level of population would be an ideal target for twenty fifty in your view

the great great been said on the awarding of the population an entire leap into associated with the phrase by the way population control we can't control population because we can't control people nor should we want to control people we don't want to control that we don't want to tell women and men you know you should only have these many children we can work to prevent unintended pregnancy would have a positive impact on populations but this is a matter of personal preference but it also a very common one in the population feel they'll question really need to based on human rights human capacity and not on some kind of optimum population that we determine our wisdom of the white population that and i make this more complicated india lot easier for me to tell you and you try to educate policymakers today you listeners journalists and others by phone you know we have to stabilize the atmosphere therefore we have to get to this particular population level by this particular day and not

be able to do that makes that whole argument more nuanced than a little bit more challenging to get across the message i try to put across is we don't want anybody here on earth right now it's before the natural time it's not what you're on the earth you're human being with human rights and you've got a right to be here and you got a right to live at least a comparably if anybody else has the right the lips that you have a white make her more missions whether you're in subsaharan africa or in new york city or sampras just thirsty are anywhere libya's you really becomes what approach do we take the climate given that it is a human issue a human problem and about human beings and their lives actually optimize human well being an optimized human capacity to make choices for themselves responsibly but with as much freedom as possible for themselves to live the way they want to have any f talf solve this really difficult question and the way i like to look at it as basically that population growth couldn't diminish

too much from the standpoint of having a better more stable climate it's not a bad thing a population stops growing and actually start declining when we look at the positive impact that likely to have not just on climate change that in any number of environmental areas so we need to think about if that's the case whether the circumstances and the conditions under which we were like iffy population stop growing and eventually start a kind and to me that's a fairly easy question to answer in a tree based entirely on the birthrate that result from wanted pregnancy it get weaker we don't want breaks to be going up we don't want government to be telling women how many children they can have what we want is that the collective outcome of women and their partners being able to make decisions for themselves about how many children they will have results in healthy children being born and surviving and yet going out your birth rate that we have now and the good news about that and this is actually the early autumn push my own research right as we

speak in and that there's good day that that is beginning to really document a demographic power the unintended pregnancy have there is so much unintended pregnancy in the world literally in the neighborhood of forty to forty five maybe even closer fifty percent almost half or what i like to call what i didn't even for the va previously and i'm not a woman but none quite a few of them and i think most women no difference although there may be some gray areas in the middle but generally you know you either really actively want to become apparent and take a pregnancy where you're a woman or a man or it can of the outcome of something else are seeking which might be fractured by the work in the outcome you were hoping would happen and as we optimize the intentionality of childbearing what we find is that the number of births are actually goes down from ethically we already have a much more forty or fifty years ago as an intentional as

burt's resulting from unintended pregnancies are reduced that number goes down then the average family size becomes even smaller so to me that's really what optimum population five years were like the favourite population is the population that result from keeping tax rates low life expectancy high and even maybe improve in both of those and yet having the births that result from intentional parent income couples active decisions to take care of a child and to nurture her or him and told she or he makes it to their own adulthood and make the same decisions for themselves on the numbers side i think we could easily have population peaking not much more than a billion under good circumstances of it my fear is to write about this we're going to nine billion and still growing and the middle of central think we could have eight billion and beginning to shrink totally on voluntary on the idea of this is based on women's on decision making with their partners and that would be a very positive benefit for the conference you are tuned to the

sustainability second of mind over matters and katie eckstein it point three of them and on the web at x p dowd orgy i'm diane horn and my guest is robert engelman vice president for programs that world watch institute and author of the world watch report population climate change and women's lives to what extent is population being considered in discussions of climate change the answer of that is very little it's just really too sensitive to bring into the high level discussions that this country governments get involved in the united nations that your listeners will turn up in copenhagen and it's going back in december again going hard enough to figure out what you can do in terms of making commitments to reduce your emissions or at least slow the growth in emissions which they bought the mission's whatever without going into question that while many people you're going to have the n g o syrian non governmental organization the naughty activist around climate change do sometimes have discussions around this there's great interest in the public eye find a lot of interest in the public when i speak on this and journalists are getting very

interested a lot of articles to run in newspapers and on the radio television even about how population with the climate change but you know attempted of another topic that the few attempts have been made to bring it to hold discussions of nations negotiating long felt that that would have not gone report all you've been alluding to test but what would be your recommendation for a program to slow population growth worldwide what is most likely to work well that's the part that i would like to bring into the conversation about content because i think it would not be nearly as tentative a difficult and controversial of a lot of people believe because that just isn't well known but back in nineteen ninety four and all the governments of the world almost none met in cairo in egypt this is much in the news lately for other reason than there are un sponsored conference on population and development and they came to a historic understanding that have to still not really been noticed but much of the rest of the world in a cup of gotham news coverage when it

occurred a production essentially to address human population through development and human rights and this is basically the strategy that i have been promoting ever since that time and writing about and is really in many ways the focus of my book more population nature of what women want what women want by imam but adherence and what women want and this is what the conference really understood well was what men don't have to ask for or which is the capacity to be sexual beings without necessarily becoming pregnant and giving birth when it isn't the right time to do that kind of person involved so this means that we need population policies around the world that are oriented toward women's empowerment over their productive lives and their reproductive lives than in many many other reasons that had actually nothing to do i was just that was a population that we should be making sure that women and

men and every aspect of economic political civic social impersonal life and i always want to curb what are about the fan to not sound as though the whole reason to give women equal rights or so that we were babies but it happens to be a positive outcome i love women achieving the coronary course that is of course because we can make it with man in society extended particular aspect of it that i tend to focus on because it sometimes does get overlooked is the absolute urgency of making sure that women can protect themselves from mom wanted pregnancy as well as socially transmitted disease in other aspects of reproductive ill health but if women cant get access and i stress women because they're the ones who give birth of one percent of the last time i checked their data and they are the ones that undergo all the risks of pregnancy and childbirth that isn't to say that men aren't involved and men don't have a responsibility when it's critical that men have access to these services and men have access to sexuality education as well particularly

because women so often are the victims of male ignorance and male il will in regard to be serious but it is essential that both men and women have access to the services that enable them to be calm intentional parents when they want to give birth to a child and if we really could have a condition that no that high standard around the world that it wouldn't be terribly expensive and terribly difficult to do it really is an issue of political will and public will more than anything else i think that would be all the real population policy we need now some people can bring up immigration and well they should just get complicated when you talk about borders and people moving across borders and i confess my aspect of this work doesn't get as intimately involved in that quest know i think it's a very legitimate one please fill up questions about whose movie where but frankly if you achieve the population a world population that peak and actually began to decline

the pressures for immigration itself for immigration migration generally would the reduced considerably as people found that their labor was needed in their own countries and housing was less expensive and congestion was less bad and pollack conflict for that matter for other issue but one that enters into this picture it would be easier not to have to move so to me at the population policy that is based on wright spent on health and education and wellbeing of tripoli women's well being and they're empowered and it makes elephants in the world that while it doesn't solve our problems if you're a victim of you know your whole world and it is the perfect for long term environmental sustainability and social sustainability injustice to me it makes all the sense in the world and i'm just hoping that other people can be brought to see that with them how close to the end of our efforts to reduce population growth likely to be compared to other climate litigation strategies another question that are volatile have had together in part because the numbers are so

powerful that the danger of overstatement but they've been accurately but founded by year david you know we don't have to build wind mills are we don't have to do anything else because there've been thirtieth that look at what would it cost to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions through provision though for example girls' education would have a powerful effect on reducing fertility and making families are small around the world and basically through reducing unplanned pregnancies during desire and of course daily pine oak grove education and provisional good family planning services are not terrifically expensive when you calculate them out over several generations of smaller families they reduced emissions are frankly much higher then when you think about replacing coal it was part of the original two whatever you want to do and i'm not playing and this

is a sensitive and nothing you do those things you got to do things and they operate on from a different time scale of a population a long term but very large effect with solar panels and windmills it's sort of less effect over the longer term but it have an immediate hit and recently both at this point climate change is a long term problem that is extremely urgent in the short term and the reaction on right now so what i've always recommended he do all of the above is the reason that different solutions against each other and that division not bad but it doesn't cost much more than twenty to fifty bucks for an individual person around the world to protect them from unintended pregnancy or you know every year maybe twenty to fifty dollars you know that sounds like well as a lot of women in the world or of reproductive age of probably hundreds of millions maybe a few billion dollars but then you compare that to a half a billion dollars that we spend and you know it is in the united states is fighting two wars for example that their evil a comparable dollars are

just not all that significant it's really the lack of political will a lot of money and it's multiplied in so many ways because not only this slow population growth improve the pitcher climate change and improve the picture for food insecurity for energy high energy prices are high housing prices so low labor price of one of the reasons the wheel wages you and i and others get are not higher that there's so many people trying to find jobs there's so many benefits for population growth that you almost can't compare the numbers that it would cost to do table women to really have the children that they actually did have compared to the problems that are exacerbated by rapidly growing populations but her win win situation and attack lee share your kids or talk about win win situations but nothing that i'm projecting that could be done to improve the world population picture that position us for

environmental sustainability and social justice around the world are the things that we should be doing anyway because it's wrong when an unintended pregnancy is imposed on women it's wrong when women died in childbirth it's wrong when babies don't survive their birth of the first year these things tend to be seen as soft issues rather than hard issues but they're very hard they're very very critical urgent issues for all the things that we were about to spend money on whether it's conflict words public health were feeding people which is becoming a really big issue these days and if we focused on creating a world of health and the choices for women and men as they enter their years of reproduction and facing the possibility of being parents and we focus on that we don't even really need to focus on population will need to have the discussion that much it's always a part of the population will benefit from me the commitments we make to invest in the health and the well being of women to make choices about their lives if you're an environmentalist if you're a social activist if youre for justice

you oughta be making this issue you're on will thanks so much for being here robert you have just been listening to robert and woman vice president for research at world watch institute another of the world watch report population climate change and women's lives published in two thousand and ten for more information check on the web at daddy daddy daddy about world watched dot org forward slash population climate women again that's world watched out orgy forward slash population climate women the sustainability segment of mind over matters program you've just heard will be on the streaming archives section of katie at these web site of k x p dowd a largely for the next fourteen days in addition sustainability segment interviews are available as podcasts go to pay x feat out our g click on podcasting and got down to mind over matter sustainability segment i'm diane warren thanks for listening and be sure to tune into the sustainability segment again next week on any point the fm

andy it's the analogy