real-world economics review, issue no. 91 subscribe for free
World population: the elephant in the living room Theodore P. Lianos [Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece] Copyright: Theodore P. Lianos, 2020
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Introduction There is no doubt that the climate change and the unequal distribution of income (and wealth) are the two major problems of our time with tragic consequences if we fail to deal with them in time and in the right way. However, the general public is either not interested or not informed or feels powerless and therefore indifferent and inactive. In recent worldwide demonstrations it is estimated that four million people participated which is only one in two thousand and, among the young generation, two in a thousand. Scientists, and among them economists and ecologists, predict that in the next decades, if we remain inactive, dramatic changes with tragic consequences, such as natural catastrophes, famines, wars, local conflicts, social unrest and even extinction of the human race within the next one hundred years (Fenner, reported by Firth, 2010) will take place. The ideas suggested by economists and ecologists to cope with the two problems mentioned above have usually been grouped in four action plans, namely New Economics, Green Growth, Degrowth and Steady State Economy. Sometimes they are referred to as theories or hypotheses but these are misnomers because they refer to the future and they cannot be tested empirically. The purpose of this paper is to comment on the above policy plans, to defend the steady state economy (SSE) proposal and suggest a variation of it that will make the implied policy plan more viable. It is intended as a constructive contribution to Herman Daly’s perspective by introducing in the steady state economy the condition of population stability at the optimal size.
Causes and cures of the environmental problem The obvious cause of environmental degradation and of climate change, specifically, is the growth of GDP. The root cause behind GDP growth is, according to some writers, a fixation with economic growth and a generalized culture of greed for higher profits and higher consumption levels. Other writers repeat the Marxian thesis that growth is the essence of the capitalist system and growth is simply unavoidable as long as the capitalist organization of society remains dominant. Another “cause” of the problem is, by implication, the inability of technological innovations or of their application to production to proceed fast enough and to make possible a relative or absolute decoupling of production and resource use. A summary index of the environmental condition of our planet is the difference between biocapacity (BC) and the ecological footprint (EF). Table 1 presents these differences for every fifth year for the 1961-2015 period. The last year of ecological equilibrium, i.e. BC=EF, was 1969 (not shown). From 1970 on the difference is increasing and in 2015 the ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity by 68%. Also presented on Table 1 are the world population (Pop), the gross world product (GWP) and gross world product per capita. Population and
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