A nationalist approach to demographic imbalances

With a change of leadership in the White House, population control advocates are in the news again with calls for more population control programmes in the burgeoning third world.

Overpopulation seems to be one of those orphan issues which both liberals and religious conservatives prefer to ignore, but which stubbornly refuses to go away.

It may be easy to dismiss overpopulation as dire sensationalism if you live in lightly-populated Western Australia or Wyoming, but it's harder to ignore if you're working in the Italian coastguard having to collect dead African refugees floating about the Mediterranean.

One of the big reasons why overpopulation isn't taken seriously is that most population control advocates are culturally naive environmentalists who see the overpopulation issue as a global problem requiring global solutions. And as the example of global warming demonstrates, once something is labeled a "global problem" it becomes a unsolvable abstraction that nobody's willing to deal with.

Overpopulation may have been a global problem in the past, but it's now largely a national that's much worse in some countries than others.

For example, in Somalia and Niger, fertility rates are about 7 births per woman, while in Italy and Eastern Europe fertility rates are around 1.3 births per woman - well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

Population control advocates who go around telling everyone to have fewer children won't win much support from conservatives who see no reason why western countries which are struggling to pay the welfare and medical costs of an aging population should also have to pay for the overpopulation problems of the developing world.

Nevertheless, the world's burgeoning population has already had a big impact on the environment, and is causing massive social and economic disruption in both rich and poor countries alike.

How then to draw attention to this pressing issue without alienating potential support?

Well perhaps instead of talking of global overpopulation, population control advocates should define the problem as one of population imbalance, which would highlights the fact that some countries have too many children and some countries too few.

This would certainly be more palatable to conservatives and nationalists, but it would draw a lot of criticism from the globalist left.

If the overpopulation issue is defined as a problem of population imbalance between countries, then it would become clear that countries, rather than NGOs, should be taking more responsibility for dealing with it, and for the globalist organisations charged with distributing aid to the third world, such an idea is anathema.

Even most conservatives who oppose expanding welfare in first world countries, run for cover at the idea of telling third world countries that development aid should be tied to population control measures.

Eventually though, unconditional aid to the third world will become just too expensive for the West and what aid it does provide will have to be conditioned on preferential trade agreements or other conditions which are beneficial to the donor.

Already China is leading the way in this regard, with an infrastructure for resources policy that it's pursuing in parts of African, The South Pacific and Latin America.

However, for the populations of third world countries that continue to grow at a rapid rate, the changing situation in the West will put them in a very precarious position. Instead of being able to pacify their growing populations with western aid money, developing countries with growing populations will suddenly be forced to live off their own rapidly shrinking resource bases.

Hence, from this perspective, the sooner the West starts making government aid to poor countries conditional on reduced population growth the better.

Private aid agencies are of course free to pursue their own approaches, but hard-pressed western taxpayers shouldn't have put up with money being wasted on short-sighted band-aid policies that amount to fighting the fire by feeding the flames.

This should also apply to the Palestinians, whose unreasonably high birthrates only aggravate the already volatile situation in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Palestinians may believe having as many children as possible is a good strategy for national survival, but I don't see why the West should have to pay for it.

Lack of realism from the Greens

Recently I came across this post on NZ Green Party policy, which comes some way towards explaining why the party isn't opposed to relatively high immigration levels.

Apparently the Ministry of Environment has estimated the human carrying capacity of New Zealand to be around 5.5 million, that's the point after which the environment will be unable to sustainably accommodate increased population growth. Subsequently, the Green Party believes it's OK to continue to expand the population (currently at just over 4 million) to just under the 5.5 million mark.

One problem with this reasoning is that it doesn't take into account how the country is supposed to provide a high standard of living for this larger population.

At present New Zealand relies heavily on primary exports such as meat, timber, aluminium, wine and diary products, which require large amounts of land, water and electricity to produce.

However, if the population continues to expand, more arable land, water and electricity will be needed to cater for the larger population and less resources will be available for producing these income generating exports.

Also with traditionally strong industrial economies like Germany and Japan unable to compete in manufacturing with China, and with the service sector now struggling to compete with India, it may be wishful thinking to assume NZ can compensate for a shrinking resource base by developing alternative industries.

A safer, more sustainable approach would be to limit immigration and cash in on the rising demand for food and industrial materials generated by Asian industrialisation. The Green's may believe in protecting local manufacturing in principle but they certainly aren't realistic producerists.

Mind you, I probably shouldn't overstate the influence of carrying capacity arguments in Green thinking in general.

They certainly don't explain the pro-immigration policy of the Australian Green Party, which continues to ignore calls for immigration restrictionism even though Australia is already approaching the upper estimate for its carrying capacity (estimated at 17-23 million).

So it's likely that old-fashioned socialism still plays a powerful part in Green ideology.

Foolish anti-producerism from Labour as per usual

Rio Tinto Alcan, the primary owners of Southland's Tiwai Point aluminium smelter claim the Government's emission trading scheme could mean the end of the smelter and the loss of 3500 jobs.

The company's regional president, Xiaoling Liu, warns that such a move could force the operation overseas, threatening the jobs of 900 smelter workers and 2600 indirectly employed workers.

Perhaps the most galling thing about the government's enthusiasm for imposing heavy financial and administrative costs on manufacturing, in the name of reducing harmful emissions, is that manufacturing is the only sector of the economy or society to significantly reduce its carbon emissions over the last couple of decades. The Tiwai smelter has reduced emissions by over 40 percent since 1990, and operates one of the most efficient aluminium smelters in the world using a clean and renewable energy source.

Furthermore, if the smelter were to close, Rio Tinto would merely move production to a poorer country with much weaker pollution regulations, resulting in a probable increase in global emissions, and the loss of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of vital export revenue (in the last 15 years for example, China has opened 15 new aluminium smelters).

It's very easy for urban liberals to impose heavy financial regulations on industry as so few of them are employed in this sector, and it deflects attention away from the real sources of rising emissions - things like population growth and their own profligate lifestyles. Since it highly unlikely wealthy urbanites are going to stop driving around in gas guzzling "soft roaders," or give up buying power boats, emissions trading is going to have little positive impact.

There's certainly no point in sabotaging the economy on the alter of lower emissions, particularly since New Zealand's contribution to global carbon emissions is so pathetically small that there's little point doing anything drastic until China, Russia and the US start taking the lead. And since even the most environmentally conscious European countries seem unable to meet their Kyoto obligations, that could be a long time coming.

A few thoughts on overpopulation and increasing food prices

With cries of food shortages now being heard in many third world countries, the West is likely to be expected to once again step in with food aid to ameliorate the crisis. But this could well result in making the situation worse.

While the recent surge in commodity prices may spell trouble for the millions of third world poor living in overcrowded cities, it's actually good news for many third world farmers, who form the backbone of the economy in most developing countries. Subsequently, if the West responds by aiding third world countries with food aid, as it has done in the past, it may well drive down the price of locally produced grain and impoverish local farmers.

This is why population control is so essential in many developing countries. Most poor countries have a large non-production population which serves as both a break on development, and a major headache for cash-strapped third world governments trying to establish basic infrastructure.

In the past, nature had a rather brutal, but effective means of getting rid of surplus humans and making room for new development - famine. In a particularly dramatic example, a recent international genetics project claims modern humans almost became extinct 70,000 years ago ("When humans came closest to extinction," The Press, Saturday, April 26).

According to the Genographic Project, the human population crashed from around 10,000 - 100,000 people to just 2000, following ice age related climate change which made Africa cooler and drier. However, the Project's director, Spencer Wells, says this population crisis ultimately became a major stimulus for human development:

"A shift in culture began. People began making better hunting tools they needed to survive the drought. Art makes its appearance. There is abstract thought."

Another such stimulus, occurred in Europe during the 14th Century, following massive depopulation caused by the Black Death. With a sudden and profound labour shortage, workers wages increased, feudalism began to breakdown and the development and uptake of labour saving technology, such as horse-drawn ploughs and water mills began in earnest. This labour-shortage-fueled technology stimulus went on to became a major factor in the technological supremacy of Europe and its colonies from 1500 through to the present day.

It's seems that population control plays a vital role in human development, but how then can human numbers be controlled without massive human suffering?

Many liberals argue that people will naturally have fewer children as they become more educated and affluent. But that is putting the cart before the horse. People can't become more affluent if they are too numerous to be able to command increasing wages for their labour, or authorities are unwilling or unable to educate them.

The most humane option, and one which is in the best interests of rich and poor countries, seems to be managed population control through such measures as family planning, contraceptives, and economic incentives. Hopefully the end of the Bush presidency this year will signal a resurgence of interest in funding for population control programmes.

Counting the cost of population growth

With global food prices on the rise, we have yet another reminder to reconsider whether immigration-fueled population growth is really a good idea.

In an article on the News with Views website, American talk radio pundit Frosty Woolridge points out some of the numerous negative effects of large scale legal and illegal immigration into the United States:

"What does growth really bring to you and me? Yes, it creates a few ‘rich’ people. However, Bartlett said, “It brings more homeless, more unemployed, more people living in poverty, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more and higher taxes, more fiscal problems for the state, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, diminished democracy, crowded highways, growing costs of infrastructure maintenance, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.”

You will encounter a few more: overloaded campgrounds, beaches, ski resorts, more litter, higher gas costs, greater housing costs, water shortages and loss of choices and personal freedom. "

In my view this list constitutes a pretty powerful argument in favour of immigration restrictionism. Just about all of these trends can be applied to most other western countries including New Zealand.

About the only negative impact which doesn't really apply to New Zealand is immigration-based unemployment. Fortunately, this country, unlike the US, doesn't have a high level of unskilled immigration at present, so we don't have quite the same problem with immigrants taking jobs away from unskilled native workers. Hence the unemployment rate is only about 3-4 percent, which is one of the lowest in the OECD.

Other than actually bite the bullet and reduce immigration, there is little governments can do to shield citizens from the impact of expansive immigration. For example, the Labour government has attempted to reduce poverty by reintroducing family benefits, but any benefits from increased government spending has largely been canceled out by the increasing cost of housing, food and utilities.

Ducking demographic problems

Amid the recent criticisms of New Zealand First for questioning Asian immigration, liberal political pundits have overlooked the fact that Statistics New Zealand is predicting the population of NZ will grow to over five and half million by 2026 (that's about what you get if you add up their predictions for the country's major ethnic groups).

Such a population increase will mean that the country will have to take a whole new approach to power supply and infrastructure development.

New Zealand, with just over million citizens is one of the few countries in the world that obtains almost all its electricity needs from hydroelectric power stations. This has been a cornerstone in the country's "clean green" anti-nuclear image that's been promoted by the Labour Party.

However, the nation is now at a crossroads. Nearly all the best sites for hydroelectric power generation have already been developed and if the population increases by the amount predicted by Statistics NZ, then Nuclear or Coal power will become essential. Wind power, while a useful supplement to other forms of energy, just doesn't produce enough power on a consistent basis to provide for a population increase of this magnitude.

Similarly, big investments will have to be have to made in the countries transport infrastructure. The many roads and bridges built between the 1930s and 1960s, are now beginning to deteriorate under increased traffic, and further population growth will mean that many will have to be either rebuilt completely or expanded to accommodate greater traffic volumes.

At present, there are no motorways linking any of the country's main cities, and if the population increases by over a million it will become essential to put in dual carriageways on the busiest routes, such as the infamous road between Auckland and Hamilton. This will consume a huge amount of public spending and put an end the Greens' hopes of running down the roading budget and putting more money into public transport.

It's fast getting to stage where the country's so called environmentalists (which now apparently includes the National Party) will have to decide whether they should continue to follow a liberal approach, in favour of expansive immigration and a utopian faith in alternative energy and public transport, or a hard-headed conservative approach, which puts limits on immigration as well as economic excesses.

Common sense on climate change

It's refreshing to see Rodger Kerr of the business round table beginning to acknowledge there may be a down side to moving western manufacturing firms to China.

"There is a fundamental lack of logic in seeking to scale back internationally efficient industries such as agriculture, aluminium and steel when the production shortfall may be taken up by industries in other countries that generate greater emissions."

While it is probably unrealistic to try and protect labour intensive industries from Asian competition, energy intensive industries which depend on technology rather than cheap wages, should not be easily surrended.

Overseas readers may also be interested to know that while NZ's Labour government often criticises Australia and the US for not signing up to the Kyoto Protocol, it encourages New Zealand firms to export significant quantities of coal half way across the world to Japan - go figure.

Immigration and emissions

Environmental pollution essentially comes down to two basic variables - population growth and industrialisation. This is something anyone with a little common sense and imagination should be able to grasp.

So it comes as a continual surprise to me how concerned the New Zeland Green party is with defending the rights of prospective third world immigrants.

Third world countries have much lower CO2 emissions levels than developed nations, so from an environmental perspective, third world immigration is bad news for the planet.

New Zealand greens love to advertise the country's anti-nuclear credentials, but seem oblivious to the fact that our renewable power sources will be not be able to cater for a larger population at a first world standard of living.

US Blogger Brent Lane has crunched a few numbers and made a plausible estimation of the impact of illegal immigrants on US emissions levels.

Yet more evidence that pro-immigration Marxism is about as compatible with real environmentalism as bear-baiting is with buddhism.

Liberal environmentalism

Progressive liberal environmentalists argue that environmental legislation benefits local industry by encouraging firms to develop new technology and capture overseas markets in environmental technology.

In Growth Fetish Clive Hamilton argues that the introduction of aggressive environmental regulations by the German government have helped German firms to overtake their British competitors:

“Today, British officials publicly express regret they bowed to industry and allowed Germany to take the lead, because it is now to dislodge German pollution control firms from markets throughout the world”.

However, most developing countries do not have the same level of environmental standards as western countries. Subsequently, western countries, which impose heavy environmental regulations on their own firms, without demanding it of others, are effectively putting their own manufacturers at a disadvantage in the global market.

Unfortunately, right –liberals aren’t much help on this issue since they argue that developing countries shouldn’t have to abide by western environmental standards. With over 6 billion people in the world we can’t afford to have one set of rules for shrinking developed countries and one set for rapidly developing states like China.

This in another example how right liberalism mutates into left liberalism since liberal philosophy denies countries the right to put their own interests first.

Despite what liberal internationalists preach, we still live in a world of competing states where one country's success can come at another’s expense.

Climate Change and China

In a Southland community newspaper Invercargill MP Eric Roy highlights one of the crucial flaws in the Kyoto protocol - its failure to take account of industrial pollution in China.

Since 1990, Southland’s Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40 percent. As Mr Roy points out:

“For every ton of aluminium that is produced there is two tons of greenhouse gases, but in China it is eight and half tons of greenhouse gases per ton (of aluminium produced) ” .

He then states that: “In the last 15 years China has opened 15 new smelters”.

In New Zealand, many on the left believe that the Tiwai smelter should be closed so that emissions can be reduced to 1990 levels. It doesn’t seem to dawn on these softheaded do-gooders that closing the smelter would actually lead to increased CO2 emissions at the global level.

Population growth and easy credit that are the main factors behind New Zealand’s increasing CO2 emissions, not industrial activity. Either rapidly developing countries should be compelled to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, or it should be replaced with something else.

At present all it seems to be doing is accelerating western de-industrialisation.

Population and the Environment

Although New Zealand First has often pointed out the economic and social problems with the immigration-based economic policies of National and Labour, it hasn’t really highlighted the adverse environmental impact of rapid immigration.

When the population grows rapidly there is great stress on water, electricity and sewerage infrastructure and an inevitable rise in bio-security problems. With increasing urban sprawl the quantity of good arable land around Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland is rapidly decreasing and this is encouraging more intensive agricultural practices on the remaining land. Subsequently, pollution of drinking water supplies to these cities is an increasing concern.

The New Zealand Green Party is strangely silent on immigration matters and this casts doubt on its real commitment to the environment.

For information on the link between rapid immigration and the environment the Australian organisation “Sustainable Population Australia” is a good source. SPA also highlights some of the muddled, Marxist thinking in the policies of the Australian Green Party.

Immigration in New Zealand

In the early 1990s the National government embarked on a policy of wealth-based immigration without a popular mandate. This policy was continued by the subsequent Labour adminstration. During this time the population of the country rose from 3.3 million to 4 milion. Although this led to increased growth for a time it has also worsened labour shortages and has done little to reduce inequality or solve the nation's balance of payment problems.

Further rapid immigration is likely to present new problems. The country's neglected transport infrastructure is struggling to cope with increased levels of traffic while the energy infrastructure will have to be expanded - this means more dams and coal fired power stations, since wind power alone will not provide enough electricity. The larger New Zealand's population becomes, the bigger the environmental impact will be. Bio-security measures are already beginning to fall apart with environmental agencies failing to contain imported pests like sea squirts.

The New Zealand economy relies on five key sources of income; farming, fishing, tourism, education and metal refining. None of these sectors are particularly labour intensive and several are likely to be adversely affected by a substantial population increase. Tourists won't come to see suburban sprawl instead of scenery while aluminium refining (a vital foreign exchange earner) could get the chop if population growth leads to a big increase in power consumption. Valuable arable land is also disappearing under new housing subdivisions at a time when agricultural commodity prices are set to increase, perhaps drammatically. New Zealand's wild fisheries are already fully exploited with most species in decline. A bigger population will only see more commercial and recreational fishermen fighting over a rapidly shrinking resource.

To the extent that New Zealand does need economic immigration it should be limited to skill-based immigration. The country does need more technically savvy workers to make it more energy efficient, revitalise its depleted transport infrastructure, and increase the level of value-added exports. Wealth-based immigration has led to a drammatic rise in house prices without a corresponding increase in wages. This has forced many people under 40 out of the housing market altogether- this will lead to serious intergenerational inequalities in the future.

In the coming age of resoure scarcity and global over population New Zealand should try to preserve its status as a resource rich country by firmly limiting immigration. At the very least it should abandon the 19th Century policy of using immigration as the primary means to stimulate economic development.

The Rise of the Resource Rich Periphery

There is currently a lot of talk about about a looming global recession due to U.S indebtedness and rising oil prices. However, economic growth in China and India is also causing a rise in commodity prices that is boosting the economies of resource rich counties such as Russia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Australia and Saudi Arabia. In the 1980s and 1990s many resource rich countries including Russia, Argentian, New Zealand and Canada suffered serious economic decline as commodity prices plummeted due to overproduction and insufficient demand. However, the process of industrialisation and population growth has now taken up much of the slack in world commodity markets.


With most industrial production now shifting to China, India and South-East Asia, heavily populated industrial countries like Germany and Japan are stuck in ongoing recessions. Great Britain defied the odds in the 1990s by managing to run its economy primarily on financial services. However, now that North Sea oil and gas are running out the U.K also appears to be sliding into a prolonged recession- as Karl Mark once pointed out, all wealth ultimately comes from production. In contrast, countries like Canada, Argentina and Australia, with smaller populations and greater reserves of natural resources, are less affected by industrial decline.

In the 1990s Canada and New Zealand maintained economic growth through wealth based immigration- bringing in wealthy immigrants to encourage a spending boom in property. However, in the 21st Century such a short-term solution is likely to back-fire. Large numbers of immigrants will consume resources that the world needs to survive on and which resource rich countries need to trade for essential manufactured goods. Consumption patterns in developed resource rich countries like Canada and Australia are also more extravagant than in densely populated developed countries like Japan and Holland. Hence, large scale-immigration into Australia and Canada will have an adverse effect on such things as global co2 emissions.

From a military perspective the resource rich countries will become tempting targets for invasion and piracy. Australia and New Zealand are dangeroulsy isolated in the South Pacific and vulnerable to attack from resource hungry Asian neighbours- especially with the U.S unable to maintain current levels of defence spending. As a result it is likely that Australia, Canada and parts of South America will increase their defence spending and become more assertive in global politics in the coming decades. With German technology the Russian Federation will also become a much stronger military power as it tries to deter Chinese intervention in Central Asia.

The current dominance of the United States and Britain is now being challanged by an industrially powerful China and a countervailing assortment of resource-rich nations that are feeding off Asian economic growth.

The Carrot and The Stick

A conspicious feature of NZ governments in recent decades has been an emphasis on punitive measures over incentives, which can be clearly seen in environmental policy. However, the use of both methods together could greatly increase the effectiveness of legislation.

The Government is currently considering policies to reduce fuel consumption among the nation's motorists. So far all the proposals centre on taxing vehicles perceived to be fuel inefficient. The idea of taxing older cars will fall disporportionately on low- income drivers who have no choice but to drive older vehicles. Another proposal is to tax cars according to engine size. This proposal may seem fair, but cars aren't neccessarily less fuel efficient just becase they have larger engines. These policies don't take into account driver behaviour, how often people use their cars, whether they are petrol or diesel, or how well they maintain them. All these factors have a major impact on fuel consumption. If the fixed cost of motoring is increased for example, drivers may actually use their cars more often, to get better value for money, or get them tuned less frequently to save money.

If recent trends are any thing to go by, the easiest group to influence are drivers of new vehicles. In response to rising fuel prices sales of smaller cars have recently increased, as have hybrid cars that are still new to the market. Hybrid and diesel cars are much more fuel efficient than standard petrol powered vehicles- hence the Government should reduce or eliminate taxes on these cars and maintain the present diesel subsidy.

Low income drivers are much more restricted in the choices they can make in response to fuel price increases. Although many low-income drivers do have fuel inefficient cars they cannot afford to upgrade them. The best that low-income drivers can do is drive their cars less frequently and get them tuned and serviced more often. This means that fixed costs for low income drivers should be kept to a minimum. Low income drivers should also get subsidies or tax relief for getting their vehicles tuned, perhaps with community service cards as entitlement ID.

Admittedly incentives have a major down side- they cost money. In contrast, punitive taxes make money for the Government. An ironic effect of neo-liberal ideology in policy making has been an increase in some taxes because other forms of government intervention have been discredited. In neo-liberal thinking nothing is worse than intervening in the market to make some goods cheaper than others. Although government incentives are often effective , they do need to be balanced by disincentives. Taxes on certain vehicles may be necessary but they must be balanced by incentives to change driver behaviour and vehicle choice.

The cost of increasing fuel efficiency is a responsibility for all vehicle owners, not just low income people.

Why Over- Population Matters

Since the early 1980s the subject of over-population has largely disappeared from official discussions about third world poverty and environmental decline. As John Gray points out in Heresies, governments and environmental groups blame institutional failure these problems rather than demographics. However, much of the disinterest in over-population is due to political denial rather than rational inquiry.

Among U.S governments population control programmes have been promoted by the Democrats but rejected by the Republicans. Increases in spending on overseas family planning have been reversed by George Bush in line with his views on abortion. Liberal human rights advocates have also attacked population control programmes arguing that they infringe on individual rights. Although most of this criticism has been directed at the more extreme programmes like China's One Child Policy, it has helped undermine the legitimacy of population control programmes in general. The good work done by organisations like Sustainable Population International has also gone largely unnoticed in the Western media.

Another problem has been confusion over the extent of the over-population problem. In the 1980s the rate of population increase declined but the total world population will continue to increase untill at least 2040. Many media reports gave the impression that a slowing down of population growth would lead to rapid population stabilisation, but this hasn't occurred. Subsequently, the present world population of 6 billion will reach at least 7.5-8 billion. At present industrialisation in Southern China is having a big impact on world commodity prices. Soon this industrialisation may spread to the rest of China and India creating absolute scarcity of many essential resources. Subsequently, if the world's population grows beyond 7.5 billion, mass starvation could well occur in many poorer parts of the world.

Marxists and libertarians argue that the world can accomodate a continual increase in population through technological innovation and up to a point this is true. However, it is clearly apparent, even among developed countries, that a higher population leads to a poorer quality of life- compare Britain and Australia for example. Unless you want to live like a battery chicken, technology can't help you without population control. In poor politically unstable countries like Rwanda over-population can lead to genocide.

Similarly, just because some countries can accommodate large numbers of poeple successfully doesn't mean the whole planet can. The world is increasingly an economically integrated whole with the more sparsely populated countries supplying natural resources and farm products for the densely populated regions- under-populated countries don't really exist.

Although some developed countries have stable populations , the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand still have rapidly growing populations due to immigration. The population of the U.S will apparently reach 300 million in 2006. This immigration has been used to provide temporary economic growth and disguise poor levels of productivity. The winners have been the wealthy elites- particularly those engaged in property speculation. The U.S, Canada and Australasia have the highest rates of resource use per capita in the world. Adding to their populations will only accelerate consumption of finite resources and make it all the more difficult for their governments to agree to limits on emmissions.

Environmental decline is essentially caused by two factors- population growth and industrialisation. Unless over-population is addressed efforts to make industry more environmentally friendly will have little impact. It is also politically easier to get people to accept population control than it is to get them to accept a lower standard of living.