Why Do Academics Overlook Overpopulation?
by Ozzie Zehner
I’ve recently been studying how much research funding and attention goes into topics such as overpopulation and consumerism in comparison to energy production technologies.
As I describe in Green Illusions, there are reasons to critique the presumption that alternative energy technologies will lessen environmental impacts of humans on the planet. Meanwhile, research on consumption and population issues pales in comparison. At least by the numbers.
On one of the largest academic social networks, Academia.edu, 2,934 academics list “renewable energy” as a research interest. Just 221 list “consumerism.” A scant 4 list “overpopulation” as a focus of their research. Academia.edu represents just a subset of the academy. However, these raw publication and interest metrics bring up some important questions.
Has academia rolled over to become an outlet for energy firms to plug into? To what degree is academic research relevant to the big-picture problems that humanity is facing? Please let me know what you think below:
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Ozzie Zehner 
Population policy is a toxic topic that most people (not just scientists) are wary to touch, except to shudder at China’s one-child policy which has resulted in 300-750 million fewer births, depending on whom you ask.
Consumerism is less toxic emotionally but you would be incurring the wrath of both consumers and corporations, both operating on the insistence that growth must be pursued at all cost. Decades of careful and expensive indoctrination through advertising is not easy to undo.
As for technologies: isn’t it natural for academics to pin hope on their own endeavours? It’s still (largely) a boys’ world, and boys like new toys: In “What are you optimistic about?” the male thinkers, scientists and writers cite technology almost exclusively. The female ones have broader hopes about humanity.
Entire cities are lit by street lighting all night even though between the hours of 10 pm and dawn there are almost no people on the street. People that do venture out are usually in motor vehicles that have a large array of lighting, including headlights, clearance lights, tail-lights, etc., etc. Rather than lighting up the entire Northern Hemisphere while people sleep perhaps we could encourage people to keep a flashlight nearby if they must venture out on a moon-less night.(or motion sensing streetlights for pedestrians)
I sometimes eat at restaurants that have large arrays of windows that are covered with advertising banners or blinds that partially block out daylight and then the dining table is illuminated from above by an incandescent lamp, as if the diner could not convey food from plate to mouth without the extra illumination.
Popuation and consumption is an issue. One individual might well consume 10-12 motor vehicles in their lifetime with the associated need for fuel, tires, salvage, parking garages, etc. If a motorist uses 500 gallons of gasoline per year that is 500 gal. X 20lbs of carbon dioxide when a gallon is combusted so 10,000 lbs of CO2 per motorist per year X 50 years of driving.
The auto suburbs are a total energy and material sink that don’t produce food, fuel or fiber. Single use zoning means that residents must drive if they wish to shop, dine, go to school, recreate, etc.
Oh yeah, during the 1973 Oil Embargo a friend of mine commented the “Energy Crisis” was a Crisis of Consumption and I think that is stil true today.
I picked up an edition of Paolo Soleri’s, “Arcology; The City in the Image of Man” in ’74 and his approach to urbanism has made a lasting impression on me.
I believe that just as James Kunstler puts it : ”…we still could not create a coherent consensus about what reality is asking from us…”. That is the main issue in my opinion. People still do not understand where real wealth come form (accumulated energy – see Joseph Tainter’s Collapse) and therefore the mindset is still pursuing routes to maintain 5-6% global GDP growth in this century. The problem is, I believe, that once your work and others is fully comprehended and accepted by academia and mainstream media… despair will take place and the topics of the future, like deglobalization, relocalization, permaculture, horticulture, public transportation, natural fertilizers, stopping irrigation, ending suburbia and etc, will became just too damn hard to be researched. We were just hoping too much of the future (Jetsons…) to really accept what reality and physical law demands of the human condition…
Best regards
PS: If possible send me some feedback of what you think about this comment…
My guess is that there is little if any grant money on the issue of overpopulation. The entire academic world is financially dependent to some extent on industrial civilization, which itself is dependent on economic growth, which runs into resource limitation constraints.