Module B1 Study Book - the Graduate School of the Environment

20 Michael McCarthy, The Independent, UK (24 May 2004).
21 Julian Darley, High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis (Chelsea
Green Publishing Company, 2004).
22 It took until 1830 for the human population of the earth to reach 1 billion
people. The world’s population reached the two billion mark in 1930, three
billion in 1960, four billion in 1975, five billion in 1986, six billion in 1999,
and stands at 6.5 billion in 2006. During the next half century this number
is expected to increase by 2.5 billion ―approximately the size of the current
combined populations of China and India ― to 9.1 billion people. Almost
all of this growth will take place in the poorest countries of the world where
population growth already outpaces economic growth, environmental
protections and social services. (Statistics are drawn from the Population
Institute’s website, www.populationinstitute.org .)
23 http://www.overpopulation.org.
24 Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1990) passim; private communication from Anne Ehrlich, 1993.
25 Private communication, 1994. A variety of measures support these
estimates, including resource depletion, deforestation, desertification,
pollution, famine, and loss of biodiversity.
26 Newsletter of Negative Population Growth, 1993.
27 Heinberg, Richard. Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon
World (New Society Publishers, 2004).
28 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
(Viking Penguin, 2004).
29 Peter M. Hess, “A Conspiracy of Silence: Theologians, Ethicists, and
the Question of Human Overpopulation,” AAR Western Regional Conference
(March 1994); A. A. Bartlett, “Thoughts of Long-Term Energy Supplies:
Scientists and the Silent Lie,” Physics Today (July, 2004), 53-54.
30 Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern) (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1987), 42. His 1989 encyclical message
on The Ecological Crisis: a Common Responsibility was profoundly silent on
the question.
31 A fine example of the elaboration of this assumption may be found in James
A. Weber’s Grow or Die! (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970)
32 Richard J. Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Has
Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet
(Bideford, Devon: Green Books; Dublin, Ireland : Lilliput Press, 1992); Herman
E. Daly and John B. Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy
toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1989). See also other works by Daly, such as Steady-State
Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth
(San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977), and Economics, Ecology, Ethics:
Essays Toward a Steady State Economy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman,
1980); and of William Ophuls, Economics and the Politics of Scarcity: A
Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State (San Francisco: William
H. Freeman, 1977).
33 Jacqueline Kasun, The War against Population: the Economics and
Ideology of Population Control (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 34-
35.
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