Author(s)

Michael E. Schlesinger^*

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.

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 21^st 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 21^st 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 21^st 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.

Climate Change, Fair Plan, Population Engineering, Total Fertility Rate

Schlesinger, M. (2016) Fair Plan 9: Engineering Human Population to Help Safeguard Earth’s Climate. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 6, 310-318. doi: 10.4236/acs.2016.62026.