Most folks instinctively believe growth and environmental protection are mutually exclusive. Increased economic activity and growing populations stress the Earth\'s \"carrying capacity.\" In this view, we must choose between protecting the planet or promoting economic progress. Fortunately this is not the real choice.

Population Growth
In 1798, Thomas Malthus published \"An Essay on the Principle of Population\". He argued that, left unchecked by \"moral restraint,\" population growth would outstrip the increase in food supply. Mass starvation, disease, and wars would result, bringing population back into balance with available resources.

Today, these views remain relevant to the current debate surrounding population growth and the environment. Folks like Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome began predicting the world\'s imminent collapse from overpopulation and resource depletion almost 40 years ago. Nevertheless, humanity continues to flourish.

In fact, we are not experiencing unlimited population growth. The rate of world population increase has declined since 1963, with the greatest slowdown happening since 1990. The UN projects world population will peak at around 9 billion in 2075, declining then leveling off thereafter.

Practically all current (and future) population growth occurs in the poorest countries, yet even those growth rates are falling. In the 1950s, according to UN data, the average woman in the less developed world had 6.2 children. Today that\'s down to 2.9 children per woman. The rate of natural increase (births minus deaths, per hundred people) averages less than 2 percent in the developing world. While this is acting on a very large population base, the important fact is that growth is slowing. Fertility rates in all European countries are below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Without immigration, they will soon lose population -- Italy and most of Eastern Europe already are. The U.S. is hovering right around the replacement rate.

Practically all current population growth occurs in the poorest countries, yet even those growth rates are falling.

What Malthus didn\'t understand, and many environmentalists seem to ignore, is that as people become wealthier they tend to have fewer children (Mormons being a notable exception). As economic opportunities increase and more people live in cities than on farms, the \"cost\" of having children rises. The fact that fertility rates are declining before many poorer nations have significantly modernized bodes well for future population decreases. The surest way to continue reducing population growth in the developing world is to educate women and improve employment opportunities. Educated women have smaller, healthier, better-educated families.

Natural Resource Exhaustion
The idea that there are not enough resources to go around, and thus the poor become wealthier only if the rich become poorer, is intuitively appealing. Fortunately, it\'s also wrong.

First, natural resources are not fixed. Rather, they are determined through science, technology, and entrepreneurship. There must be the necessary technology to extract the resource and the necessary technology to fully employ the resource, for example. Petroleum wasn\'t considered a valuable natural resource until the mid-19th century and now it is a vital commodity.

As a resource grows more scarce, the resulting rise in price induces consumers to economize (or buy less of a good) and seek substitutes. When hundreds of millions of Chinese drive cars, for example, the price of gas will rise significantly. That increase, as opposed to concerns about global warming, will make hydrogen an attractive fuel source. We won\'t run out of oil, but rather the price of oil will make other alternative increasingly attractive.

Human ingenuity and technological progress are constantly accelerating. Electronics and telecommunications foster economic activities that rely more on human resources than natural resources. Barring a sudden, massive disruption, we will continue to find ways to use current resources more efficiently and discover new ones.

Second, the belief that wealthy countries must reduce their standard of living in order to improve that of everyone else is based on the false belief that economic progress is a zero-sum game. That is, I get richer only by making you worse off. This is a common fallacy.

By their nature, free market exchanges make everyone better off. (Read about Gains from Trade, an aWC Core Concept.) A survey of the research finds that multinational companies tend to pay higher wages than domestic firms and that foreign firms prefer to operate in \"a stable political and social environment in which civil liberties are well established and enforced.\"

Of course, there will always be problems to solve. But increased wealth and economic freedom provide the resources and foster the creativity to tackle difficult environmental problems and reduce our impact on the planet.






Contributed by John Downen, Publications and Program Coordinator of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. Reprinted with permission from A World Connected.

To read another Global Envision article about globalization and the environment, see Globalization and the Environment.

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