We Have Signed Up For a Culling of Humanity

It’s just a matter of what that final number is.

There are just too many of us … at current levels of energy use.

Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash

The reason we have climate change is people.

Before people came along, the carbon cycle was pretty much in balance. Sure, every few million years the carbon cycle would peak or trough, even before humans were here. After all, about 3 million years ago the earth saw CO2 parts per million (ppm) levels that we are seeing now, and the earth was about 2.5 – 4.0 degrees Celsius (4.5 – 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than during pre-industrial levels.

Had we not dug up all those fossil fuels and burned them, we would have had a few more million years of the relatively moderate climate we have enjoyed throughout human history. I understand we have enjoyed wonderful progress and technology thanks to the energy from fossil fuels. But these wonders have come at a fairly steep environmental cost.

Humanity produces about 38 billion tons of CO2 each year. Our oceans, our forests, our soil, and other natural carbon sequestration processes combined can absorb about half of that. So, if we can cut about 19 billion tons per year of CO2, we will bring the planet back to equilibrium.

I understand that we will have to go below that number to suck out excess CO2 from the atmosphere, but we are going to walk before we run here. Our goal for this thought experiment is to get to equilibrium.

So, what is the quickest way to eliminate that 19 billion tons per year?

Get rid of a whole lot of people.

We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

Of all the ways to cut carbon emissions, not adding another person to the planet is the most effective.

Source: Our Climate Crisis and Family Planning - Finite Earth Economy

Plenty of people know this, but it isn’t polite to say. Saying we are doing our part by not driving, not flying, getting solar panels, or not eating beef is a more socially acceptable way to fight climate change. Each of these actions will make a difference, but nowhere near the difference that just not producing another human being will make.

This isn’t a call to genocide or an indirect way of saying “Those people over there are the problem!”, as some people do when discussing climate change. I’m not saying Thanos was right. I’m saying we are the problem, and we have to own that and deal with that first and foremost.

Two of the top ten solutions to climate change from Project Drawdown (educating girls, family planning) are top ten solutions because they lower the birth rate. Fewer people equals less demand for burning fossil fuels. This is because the way we live now is far too carbon-intensive.

The solution is not killing hundreds of millions of people to lower human carbon emissions.

The solution is changing the way we live, so that huge circle in the middle of that graphic shrinks, and shrinks a lot.

Our energy-intensive and consumption-intensive lifestyles are what lead to that huge circle. Change those things and you change the size of the circle.

No use crying over spilled milk. Let’s blame someone.

A change in culture is what is needed. A change in consumption. A change in how we use energy. But before we get to that, let’s see what eliminating a whole bunch of people would look like.

The gold medal for climate blame goes to the USA, with about 25% of global cumulative emissions.

The silver goes to the EU with about 22% of global cumulative emissions.

The bronze goes to China, with about 13% of global cumulative emissions.

Now that we have someone to blame, what do we do?

To solve the problem, we could just wipe out the USA, EU, and China. Let’s say we just wipe out all of the USA, EU, and China as punishment for dooming the world. That wipes out about 2.4 billion people, lowering the population of Earth to about 5.6 billion. That is much more manageable than the current 8.0 billion we have currently on planet Earth, right?

Getting rid of those 2.4 billion people would eliminate about 88 percent of the Earth’s yearly CO2 output, well below what we need to eliminate to get down to half of the emissions we see today. But, we only need to eliminate half of the emissions, so let’s try to find a method where we kill fewer people.  

The table below shows the countries we are getting rid of, due to their per capita CO2 equivalent. Those with the highest per-capita emissions are the worst offenders so let’s start there.

Look at a country’s carbon emissions per capita (per person) to get the real story. As of 2022, the CO2 emissions per capita of the United States was about 14.44 tons, while the per capita CO2 emissions for India was 1.91 tons. This means a family of twelve in India has a much lower carbon footprint than a family of just two in the United States. India, you are safe. United States (this includes me) you have to go.

 EDGAR - Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research

We hit the goal of halving CO2 emissions when we cut about 70 percent of China’s population. The rest of China is spared.

By targeting countries with the highest emissions per capita, we only have to kill about 1.7 billion people, saving about 700 million people if we just got rid of the US, EU, and China as we did from our original example.

The above example is coming, just not in the way that I describe.

A 2019 report from the United Nations predicted that the population of Earth would be about 10.9 billion by the end of the century. The report predicted population growth would slow down, but not decline by the end of the century. A report by The Lancet just a year later challenged these findings, predicting that the global population will peak at about 9.7 billion by 2064 and decline to about 8.8 billion by the end of the century. The Lancet report noted that up to 23 countries could see their populations decrease by 50 percent by the end of the century.

The Lancet study is all about fertility, and they don’t factor climate change itself into their findings, stating:

Importantly, because of the challenges in incorporating climate change models, we did not include climate change in our modeling framework.

Turns out a hothouse world makes it more difficult to not die.

It is likely no surprise to learn that deaths due to climate change are likely to rise along with temperatures. Increased heat stress, increased extreme weather, drought, flooding, crop failures, and water shortages tend to lessen the odds of staying alive. A 2021 study entitled: The mortality cost of carbon, estimates that by 2100 we can expect about 83 million excess deaths from climate change under a business-as-usual scenario. That many people are about the current size of Germany.

That knocks the Lancet prediction of population down from about 8.8 to 8.7. Not a huge number but a trend that by that time may be accelerating.

I think that the Lancet number is too high. Way too high. And the number of deaths from climate change at 83 million is too low. Way too low. The study that gave us the 83 million number looked at the years 2020 to 2100, estimating that on average only about 1 million people per year will die due to climate change. As climate change gets worse each year that number will go up. Today we would be shocked if we heard that 10 million people a year will die by 2050 due to climate change.

In 2050, that won’t shock us anymore.

What these studies miss is not the deaths from climate change, although those will likely be higher than these studies claim. What they miss are the people that will never be due to climate change.

Having children is an act of optimism. Where will this optimism be in 2030, 2040, and 2050 on a warming planet where it is harder to find water, food, shelter, and safety?

We will be less optimistic as a planet, and we will have fewer children because of it.

We have signed up, or more correctly, we have been signed up for a culling of humanity. Some of it will be because more people will die, but much of it will be because more of us will decide that we don’t want to bring more lives into the world.

We can change that by addressing the reasons behind that big fat orange circle in the middle of the chart at the beginning of this story. But we haven’t done that yet.