TITLE:
Fair Plan 9: Engineering Human Population to Help Safeguard Earth’s Climate
AUTHORS:
Michael E. Schlesinger
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change, Fair Plan, Population Engineering, Total Fertility Rate
JOURNAL NAME:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences,
Vol.6 No.2,
April
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: Our Fair
Plan to Safeguard Earth’s Climate reduces the emission of greenhouse gases to zero
over the 80-year time period 2020 to 2100. To accomplish this, humanity must
reduce its carbon intensity—the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of
energy—and its energy intensity—the amount of energy needed to generate a unit
of Gross World Product. As shown in our Fair Plan 8 paper, reducing the future
growth of the human population can also contribute to the reduction in greenhouse-gas
emissions. Here, we explore this further. We project the historical decrease in
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) across the 21st century toward its
logistical asymptotic Reference value of 2.04 Births Per Woman (BPW). We then
engineer the asymptotic TFR beginning in 2020 to 1.95, 1.85, 1.75, 1.65 &
1.55 BPW. We project the population across the 21st century for the
Reference and engineered TFRs. We do so using the results of Basten, Lutz and
Scherbov (2013) for the population evolution across the 21st century
for 8 constant TFR values (=2.50, 2.25, 2.00, 1.75, 1.50, 1.25, 1.00 & 0.75
BPW). We find that purposefully engineering the asymptotic TFR can
significantly contribute to achieving the reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions
needed to transition to our Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth’s Climate.