Is population growth to blame for our woes?

A lot of people are quick to blame population growth for the problems with energy, resource depletion and all the other societal issues that we discuss here on EndOfSuburbia. Truth is that population growth alone isn’t the issue. Issue is a combination of population growth and an ever increasing per capita consumption index.

Population growth alone isn’t the problem

When looking at the population growth graph it’s hard not to think to yourself that population growth is an important if not the sole driving force behind all the problems that humanity currently faces.

Even though the human population growth is truly staggering, it wouldn’t be half as bad if the energy/resource usage of the western world wouldn’t be as high as it currently is.

Per capita energy use in the United States and in India for example are complete opposites of each other. What this means that even though we have substantially lower population numbers, overall energy demand of the 300 or so million pf souls in the US is higher than that of the 1.2 billion folks that reside in India. Indian people is slowly catching up to us however. In other words their quality of life is increasing. High per capita energy consumption is a must with the increases in quality of life.

So to sum up, no, population growth alone can’t entirely be blamed for the predicament that we’re currently in. Population of 7 billion that has per capita consumption rates of for example Brazil would be a lot more feasible than population of 7 billion that consumes resources and energy like we do in the United States,