muso wrote on Aug 2
nd, 2010 at 4:42pm:
The clearing of tropical rainforests is the only underlying cause of the climate crisis that stems directly from population growth.
China's population is falling but its emissions are increasing.
There are always rules & exceptions!
Land clearing is certainly one aspect of what has been/is happening that can be sourced back to Population increase, but it is not the only one and land clearing also interacts with other issues, such as the usage of Energy (Oil & other fossil fuels), both in Growth & decline, which in turn interacts with Human Population Growth & Decline.
Whilst China's Population is not in decline, just yet, the rate of Growth has slowed considerably and is continuing to do so. It may start to actually decline sometime in the next 20 years or so?
However, they (the Chinese) had other issues influencing the Economic situation for many years, namely the Communist Party & doctrine, which they started to peel away from, about the time that the Russian Wall came crashing down.
Whether we like, agree or disagree with the Communist doctrine, it may have inadvertently saved us & our system, from an earlier collapse, purely by "virtue" of the fact that they were there and in power for some 90 years in the case of Russia & 60 years in the case of China.
If both of these powers had gone to "Capitalism" (the Dark Side ?) instead of Communism, then we may well have hit the Economic, Population & Energy Wall, 20 years earlier.
Can you imagine what effects that their combined Population of over 1.5 Billion, would already have had, after having been striving for the American dream of Consuming everything in sight & out of sight, for say the last fifty years, instead of just the last 20 years.
Oil & in fact, all forms of Energy would already have been in terminal decline for some years, reversing the Food & Population Growth rates, the Greatest Depression would already be in full swing, but the GHG emission rates would also be in a long term decline, as the Global Economy trends downward.
Everything, really is inter-connected, the Gaia principle is alive & well, stitting next to the Butterfly Effect, but where it will all lead, in the longer term particularly, is far from certain!