Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation

Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist. University of Georgia Press, 2012.

Life on the Brink is an unusual volume in that it allows non-academic, activist voices as well as politicians, environmental studies scholars, and social scientists to participate in the argument that concerns us all, the argument about the future of our planet and of humanity. The common thread running through the essays of two dozen nature writers and activists hailing from a range of disciplines and offering varied perspectives is their shared concern about population growth. All contributors see population growth as a major force behind our most serious ecological problems, including global climate change, habitat loss and species extinctions, air and water pollution, and food and water scarcity. Despite the differences in perspectives, all contributors argue that ending population growth worldwide is a moral imperative that deserves renewed commitment.

Of course population debates are not new, and recent publications address the environmental costs of human population growth, for example, the new report addressed to the Club of Rome, Bankrupting Nature: Denying Our Planetary Boundaries, by Wijkman and Rockström. The authors state: "The biggest gains from significantly lower birth rates would be the combination of a better quality of life for both women and children and a greater potential for stabilizing the climate" (Wijkman and Rockström, 2012: 84). However, different from other publications, this volume engages with bolder or even more radical ideas, criticizing much conventional wisdom.

One of them is the myth of "demographic transition" paradigm, based on the belief that the "population problem will solve itself" (e.g. Campbell, p. 48-49). According to this paradigm, "modern developments like urbanization, rising incomes, and women's empowerment are reliably accompanied by falling fertility rates" (Crist and Cafaro, p. 11). Many contributors to the volume agree that this view is flawed as it assumes that current downward fertility trends will continue without continuous great efforts, such as providing wide-spread contraception and convincing individuals in societies where large families are desired that smaller families are preferable (Ryerson, p. 256). Also, the "demographic transition" position ignores the immensity of population in absolute terms and assumes that population is generally not a problem, as long as we can find ways to "feed the world"...