A new study, conducted by Brian C. O’Neill and his team of researchers, suggests that populations can have a significant effect on the environment, specifically on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers say that throughout this century there will be significant changes in population sizes, ageing and in urbanization, and this is the key focus of the study in determining “the implications of demographic change for global emissions of carbon dioxide” (O’Neill et al).
This new demographic study has shown that an increase in population and the development of more urban regions (urbanization) will increase emissions by at least 25% or more. The researchers developed their own model to provide these results; called the PET, Population-Environment-Technology model, which they say is used to “assess the global implications of demographic change by using scenarios based on economic growth, energy use, and emissions” (O’Neill et al). Their developed model took into account many different and unique aspects that had to do with population, environmental and technological factors, such as: i) the impact of population growth on economic growth rates, ii) the ageing of populations and how it affects labour supply, iii) urbanisation, and the anticipated demographic changes.This makes their research unique and therefore it can aid in shedding more light on this important issue that so affects the world by providing new and innovative information.
The scientists explain that until this new model, most research had only contained population projections but none of the research considered the "demographic influences" on emissions. As the researchers wrote, it is important to include this information because other projects had not taken into consideration the fact “that, thought there are exceptions, such as the US, population growth tends to be highest where per capita emissions are lowest” (O’Neill et al).
The results of the research show that there are many long term effects that will be the outcome of certain precautions and measures taken; population ageing, for example, can reduce emissions by 20% as a long term effect. This can be explained by the fact that as populations age, meaning the number of elderly increases and overcome the number of youths, the labour supply will decrease thereby causing a decline in the economy. Also older populations tend to have smaller homes and therefore have lower emissions.
The scientists believe that more research should be conducted in this area and better modelling be done to “improve our understanding of the potential range of future energy demand and emissions” (O’Neill et al). That information could be used to form strategies for dealing with any complications that arise in the future. One such strategy could be family planning policies that limit the number of births per family thereby reducing population growth and thus benefitting the environment over time.
The scientists would like to make clear that this information is relative to the interpretation of certain key words and aspects. For example the term urbanization for them means that it is not limited only the geographic term to represent where people live and at which density, but also includes the rate at which urban regions grow, with the appropriate economic changes related to it. In their model they show the affects that labour supply will have on the growth of the economy, while other analysis of the data ignore these things and instead focus only on the “differences in lifestyles and consumption patterns”. Therefore it is entirely possible to glean entirely different conclusions about the effect of urbanization on emissions simply by the different interpretation of one word’s definition. And so this is important to keep in mind when reading so that there are no misconceptions or misinterpretations of the information.
It would seem therefore that every day more and more technologies and strategies are being thought of and executed or are at least in the process of being executed, with the purpose of sustaining our environment, and therefore our own lives on this planet. Hopefully all this will bring about a good outcome and we can look forward to the future of our collective home.
References
O'Neill. Brian, Dalton. Micheal, Fuchs. Regina, Jiang. Leiwen, Pachauri. Shonali, Zigova. Katarina
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1004581107
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