Press release 29 September 2002

With the initial results of the April 2001 Census due for publication on 30 September 2002, the Optimum Population Trust calls on the government to set targets for stabilising UK population and allowing it to reduce to an environmentally sustainable level of no more than 30 million people.

"Action should have been taken decades ago," says OPT Co-Chair Professor John Guillebaud. "The case for lower populations both worldwide and in the UK is now irrefutable. Biodiversity is suffering as if there were no tomorrow, and potentially catastrophic climate change caused by carbon emissions suggests that a long-term sustainable population for this country might be even as low as 20 million."

The Optimum Population Trust believes action must be taken immediately. OPT Population Projection A * shows that simply by welcoming the continuation of the present total fertility rate of 1.64 children per woman, by assuming current life expectancy, and by reducing the immigration effect to zero, a UK population of 30 million could be achieved by 2121.

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

CLIMATE CHANGE AND POPULATION SIZE: EARTH

Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and thus cause global warming. The main offender is carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 60 per cent of the potential global warming effect of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already risen by about a third since 1850 and average global surface temperature is forecast to rise by up to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.

In its summary for policymakers in its Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (2001), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated: ‘Furthermore, government policies can, to varying degrees, influence the greenhouse gas emission drivers such as demographic change [our emphasis], social and economic development, technological change, resource use and pollution management.’ OPT has no evidence that governments are setting appropriate population stabilisation and reduction targets.

In 1992 the IPCC suggested that in order to stabilise carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at the 1990 level of 353 parts per million, emissions needed to be cut by at least 60 per cent from their 1990 level to 9 billion tonnes a year. In 1990 global carbon dioxide emissions were 21.8 billion tonnes, rising to 23.1 billion tonnes in 1999. With a current world population of 6.2 billion, projected to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050 (and higher still before eventual stabilisation), a worldwide desire to raise living standards will be impossible to achieve without catastrophic global warming. OPT believes that low birth rates should be strongly encouraged so that world population stabilises and reduces over time from its current 6.2 billion to 2 billion, allowing genuinely ‘sustainable development’.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND POPULATION SIZE: UK

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in its report Energy - The Changing Climate, June 2000, called for a 60 per cent reduction in fossil-fuel produced CO2 by 2050. Under the Kyoto Protocol (which falls far short of IPCC or RCEP recommendations), the UK is committed to reducing a basket of greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels over the period 2008-2012. Under separate domestic targets (UK Climate Change Programme) it is committed to reducing CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. Carbon emissions of 164.5 million tonnes in 1990 were reduced to 152.1 Mt in 2000 (-7.5 per cent), but climbed 1.5 per cent in 2001 to an estimated 154.4Mt . These figures multiplied by 3.664 express carbon as CO2, giving a UK per capita C02 emissions of 9.43 tonnes a year for a population of 59 million, compared with a world average of under 4 tonnes a year. “CO2 emissions from the domestic sector increased by 11 per cent between 1990 and 2001. Overall, energy consumption for the domestic sector increased by 16.5 per cent over the same period. This is largely a result of the increase in the number of households – energy use per household is currently at a similar level to 1990.” [DTI Energy Trends March 2002].

To meet IPCC emissions targets on a basis that allows all countries access to a ‘modest European standard of living’, OPT believes that the long-term environmentally sustainable population for the UK population is less than 30 million. The October 2002 issue of the OPT Journal (out now) highlights the temporary nature of carbon sequestration as a solution to global warming and demonstrates that Earth’s population is overshooting a sustainable carbon emissions level.

Notes for Editors

The TFR is projected to rise to 1.74 per woman in official projections because of the current trend of deferral of marriage and childbearing. Official projections also assume continued large-scale immigration. The life expectancy assumption is taken from the GAD Principal Projection 2000. The zero net migration assumption does not apply a complete ban on immigration, but achieving a demographic balance of immigrants and emigrants, loosely expressed as zero net migration. OPT Population Projection B, using a TFR of 1.3, achieves 30 million by 2087, but would result in an increase of more than 10 years in the average age of the population within a century.

Ecological footprinting, the 'carbon absorption paradigm' and population size will be fully discussed in the next issue of the OPT Journal, to be published on 1 October.

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