POPULATION

It is not racism to talk about population growth disparities. The determinants of population growth rates have been shown to be poverty, female emancipation, education (especially girls), health (especially as measured by child mortality).

So any climate proposals coming from COP26 that ignore this issue will be missing one of the key drivers of increased CO2 and methane.

On a positive note, world population growth rate has halved from 2.2% pa to 1.1% since the 1960’s. And before anyone suggests that Covid will have an impact, the number of deaths worldwide per year is about 58 million, Covid has claimed about 4 million (of whom most were old and infirm) – so maybe a 5% increase in deaths this year, but a one off hopefully. Whether the virus will blossom due to the lack of vaccine in many parts is a wait and see.

So the growth rate is going down, but the total number is still growing, and due to the lack of foreign aid and economic recession caused by Covid I will guess is going to increase again this year.

So COP26 needs to be inclusive of pollution caused by economic activity and the likes of China, USA, and western economies, but also population growth caused by the poverty created by the aforementioned countries. Equalibility would seem to be a key word.

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