§ 8. Conclusion § 8. Conclusion

• Jurisdiction: United States

§ 8. Conclusion

Environmental degradation usually results from combined effects of population, per capita consumption and the amount of pollution per unit of consumption.²⁶⁷ However, there is little, if any, wide spread support for controlling either population or consumption. Because CO₂ emissions are produced even during ideal combustion, there is little hope of controlling carbon emissions through traditional pollution control efforts. Increasing the efficiency of production, substituting nuclear or renewable energy sources for fossil-fueled facilities, and CO₂ sequestration are some of the techniques that could be utilized. But, utilizing these approaches will be costly and/or will require technological advances.

Almost everyone wants to avoid the effects of significant climate change. Almost no one wants population control or restrictions on the use of fossil fuels. The public also is unlikely to want to pay the costs of climate change mitigation. Internationally, the climate change debate pits the developed world, which is responsible for most of the GHG emissions, against the developing world that is expected to contribute to most of the increase in GHGs in the future. Moreover, much of the increase in consumption is driven by the demands of an expanding population. World carbon dioxide emissions have increased 500 percent and the population increased 243 percent since 1950. This would indicate that the growth in population is responsible for about half the increase in carbon dioxide emissions and the other half of the increase is due to an increased standard of living, assuming a rough correlation between energy consumption and the standard of living. However, restrictions on energy use could have devastating effects on efforts to improve the standard of living in poor nations because the increase in population and the increase in energy consumption in the past half century have not necessarily occurred in the same countries. If humans are the cause of global warming the most effective approach would be to focus on the increases in population and consumption, but addressing these factors of environmental degradation is usually not done because of the lack of any political consensus in the United States or with most of the international community. It may be fair to say that the probability of successful efforts to control population growth is slim, and the odds of nations abandoning efforts to improve their standard of living are lower.

The United States is the world's third largest nation, after China and India, with a population of over 303 million people.²⁶⁸ The primary contributor to GHG emissions from U.S. sources is carbon dioxide created by our large population directly and indirectly utilizing fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide emissions have increased annually since 1990 by an average of 1.2 percent; more recently the rate of increase has been less--0.7 percent in 2004. The nation's increase in

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CO₂ is about the same as the increase in population of about 0.88 percent annually, which is the highest of any developed nation. In the U.S. there are about 4 million births each year and about 2.4 million deaths. About 750,000 of the births are to immigrant women. In addition about 1.7 million immigrants were added to the population in 2003, including an estimated 525,000 illegal immigrants.²⁶⁹ Currently there are about 35 million immigrants in the United States, including about 11.6 million, or more, illegal migrants.²⁷⁰ In the span of thirty-nine years, from 1967 to 2006, the U.S. population rose by 100 million. If present trends in birthrate and immigration continue, the country is projected to have another 100 million people by 2043.²⁷¹

To stabilize carbon dioxide emissions each American will have to reduce their fossil-fuel energy consumption by about one percent annually to overcome the emissions attributable to the U.S. population increase of about 3 million people a year To reach the 1990 emission levels, which is the target of the Kyoto Protocol, would require additional reductions to offset the effects of more than 53 million people added to the population since 1990, including emissions related to the production necessary to sustain them.²⁷² The required reduction creates problems not shared by most developed nations because they do not have the same generous acceptance of legal and illegal immigration. Stabilizing our population would make the control of GHG emissions easier for the United States to achieve, but there is no political support for any program to discourage natural population growth, and a significant portion of our population supports increasing the number of immigrants.²⁷³ It is interesting to note that in EPA's publication, U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2005 (Apr. 2007), when the Agency discusses the factors contributing to climate change in its executive summary, there is no mention of population as a factor in the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

If population stabilization is an issue that is "off-the-table", then use of fossil fuels needs to be reduced at a rate that exceeds the effect of an expanding population. The most important stationary source of CO₂ emissions is the electric power industry. Cleaner and more efficient coal burning plants could be built if we are willing to pay for them, but for thirty-six years the CAA and the political process has protected the electric utility from being required to upgrade many of

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its facilities. The new source review controversy continues and is unresolved.²⁷⁴ However, while new facilities can be designed to produce significantly less conventional pollution, they can reduce carbon emissions by only about fifteen percent because carbon dioxide emissions are a function of...