Demo-economic growth in the Anthropocene and demographic denialism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18617/liinc.v18i1.5942Keywords:
Population, Global warming, Ecological footprint, Biocapacity, Demo-economic degrowthAbstract
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
References
ALVES, J. E. D.; MARTINE, G. Population, development and environmental degradation in Brazil. In: ISSBERNER, L. R.; LÉNA, P (Eds). Brazil in the Anthropocene: Conflicts between predatory development and environmental policies. New York: Routledge, 2017.
DALY, H. Ecologies of Scale, Interview by Benjamin Kunkel. New Left Review 109, Jan-Fev 2018. Disponível em: <https://newleftreview.org/II/109/herman-daly-benjamin-kunkel-ecologies-of-scale>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
DASGUPTA, P. The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. London: HM Treasury, 2021. Disponível em: <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review> , acesso em 10/03/2022
GEORGESCU-ROEGEN, N. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Harvard University Press, 1971.
GLOBAL Footprint Network. Disponível em: <https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/exploreData>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
HICKEL, J. Less is more: how degrowth will save the world, Penguin Random House, London, 2021.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 28/02/2022. Disponível em: <https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FinalDraft_FullReport.pdf>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change and Land. An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, 08/08/2019. Disponível em: <https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/08/4.-SPM_Approved_Microsite_FINAL.pdf>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Global Warming of 1.5 °C, 2018. Disponível em: <http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
LÉNA, P.; ISSBERNER, L. R. Anthropocene in Brazil: an inquiry into development obsession and policy limits. In: ISSBERNER, L.R.; LÉNA, P. (Eds). Brazil in the Anthropocene: Conflicts between predatory development and environmental policies. New York: Routledge, 2017.
MARTINE, G; ALVES, J. E. D. Economia, sociedade e meio ambiente no século 21: tripé ou trilema da sustentabilidade? R. Bras. Est. Pop. Rebep, n. 32, v. 3, 2015.
MADDISON, A. Maddison Project Database 2020, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, 2020.
MEADOWS, D. et. al. Limites do Crescimento. Um relatório para o Projeto do Clube de Roma sobre o Dilema da Humanidade, Editora Perspectiva, 2ª ed., São Paulo, 1978.
NOAA National Centers for Environmental information, Climate at a Glance: Global Time Series, abril de 2022. Disponível em: <https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/>, acesso em 10/03/ 2022.
O'SULLIVAN, J. The social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics, Ecological Economics, v. 172, 2020.
RIPPLE, W. et. al. World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, 05/11/2019. Disponível em: <https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806> , acesso em 10/03/2022.
SMIL, V. Energy and Civilization – A History, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.
SPENCE, Michael. The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Disponível em: <https://www.amazon.com/Next-Convergence-Future-Economic-Multispeed/dp/1250007704>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
STEFFEN et. al. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v. 115, n. 33, p. 8252-8259, 2018.
SYVITSKI, J., et al. Extraordinary human energy consumption and resultant geological impacts beginning around 1950 CE initiated the proposed Anthropocene Epoch. Commun Earth Environ, n. 32 v. 1, 2020. Disponível em: <https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-020-00029-y>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
THE GLOBAL Carbon Project (GCP), 2001-2021. Disponível em: <https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
UNITED NATIONS, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects 2019, Online Edition, 2019,. Disponível em: <https://population.un.org/wpp/>, acesso em 10/03/2022.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 José Eustáquio Diniz Alves
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant Liinc em Revista the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors have permission and are encouraged to deposit their manuscripts and versios of record (VoR) in their personal web pages or institutional repositories, generic repositories etc., before (pre-print) or after (post-print) the publication in Liinc em Revista, according to its open access depositing policy registered in the Directory of Editorial Policies of Brazilian Journals (DIADORIM), kindly providing a link to the article published on Liinc's website.
Liinc em Revista, published by Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License – CC BY 4.0