Demo-economic growth in the Anthropocene and demographic denialism

Abstract

In the last 250 years, the world has experienced such economic and demographic growth that it has degraded most of the planet's ecosystems, causing the loss of biodiversity and destabilizing the climate that had experienced impressive stability during the Holocene. Consequently, a new geological era was created, the Anthropocene, a period when anthropic activities constitute such a powerful force that it has been able to surpass the Earth's carrying capacity. The objective of this paper is to discuss how the impact of economic and demographic growth influenced the environmental overshot and the increase in CO2 emissions, which are unequivocal vectors of the worsening of the climate and environmental crisis. For this purpose, on the one hand, the methodology that relates the Ecological Footprint and the Earth's Biocapacity will be used to measure both the global ecological deficit and the deficit by income categories. On the other hand, the correlations between CO2 emissions, global temperature and economic and population growth will be evaluated. Contrary to the sceptics and denialists beliefs, the article reinforces the understanding that the increase in human activities on the environment, especially in the last 70 years, has broken the limits of planetary boundaries. And, although the increase in the global volume of production of goods and services must be considered the main destabilizing factor of the Earth System, the contribution of demographic growth to the expansion of the global ecological deficit cannot be disregarded