

By Robert Socolow | November 18, 2011 11:03 am






Each wedge is an immense amount of activity in lots of countries. A wedge of wind power, for example, requires installing a million large (two-megawatt) windmills by mid-century and not producing an equivalent amount of coal-based power. We worked out that a world that implements seven wedges over the next 50 years, and then lowers emissions further over the following fifty years, would substantially reduce the damage from climate change. Our paper carried a message of hope: each wedge we considered involves scaling up and improving an activity or a technology that is already familiar. Humanity doesn’t need to wait for some miracle technology.

There are far more than seven ways to get a wedge. We listed 15 ways in our paper, and we indicated that there were others. As David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council put it, our paper was the iPod of climate change: each person fills it with his favorite things. And since every person fills his or her iPod differently, our paper implicitly requires negotiation across countries and interest groups so that societies can pursue a specific set of wedges coherently.

The wedge model was influential beyond Steve’s and my wildest dreams. The message that societies could build on what they already understood and that many strategies could be pursued in parallel was widely welcomed. The paper helped build the case for early action and ambitious goals—in the relevant United Nations organizations, in national governments, in many environmental organizations, and in a wide variety of businesses.

Building a case and winning a case aren’t the same, of course. The world is emitting greenhouse gases today about 25 percent faster than seven years ago. If we were writing the wedges paper today, it would call for nine wedges to keep emissions constant for the next fifty years, and more carbon dioxide would be in the atmosphere in spite of these efforts. To have no more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at midcentury than our 2004 paper allowed, about twelve wedges would be required. Procrastination is costly.

In our 2004 paper we didn’t include a “population wedge,” but we have done so in later papers. A wedge reduces baseline emissions by about 7 percent. Therefore, to the extent that emissions are proportional to population, a set of policies and actions driven by environmental concerns that results in about seven percent fewer people at midcentury than assumed in some baseline projection, would produce a wedge. For example, if the mid-century world population would be nine billion people if no one cares about the sustainability agenda, then a mid-century population of eight and a half billion people, resulting from environment-inspired policies, is a “population wedge.”

In detail, of course, it depends on where the kids would have been born. A person born into a family living in poverty will emit far fewer greenhouse gases over his or her lifetime than someone born into a prosperous family. An average American emits at least ten times more greenhouse gases per year than an average Indian. So, reduction of population growth, from the perspective of climate change, is especially important in wealthy countries. Right now, women in some wealthy countries—including Japan, Italy, and Russia—are on average having fewer than two children, which over time will lead to falling populations. Some of these countries’ governments are paying couples to have more children: so-called “pro-natalist” policies. The environment would be better served if there were no such bribes.

Not bribing women in prosperous countries to have more babies than they would choose on their own is especially important, because the next two or so generations of babies will count the most from the perspective of climate change. On average, a child born at mid-century, if the world has taken climate change seriously, will emit fewer greenhouse gases than a child born today. To be sure, the reverse is true for a baby born into poverty: assuming that global poverty is substantially alleviated over the next few decades, a child born at midcentury in one of today’s developing countries may well emit more greenhouse gases over his or her lifetime than a child born in that same country today. Thus, assuring that every woman living in poverty today has only the children she wishes is the complementary task. A global population smaller by the end of the century than today is plausible—and a desirable objective if it can be achieved without coercion, pestilence, or war.

In the 1960s, when I was deciding to have two children, my friends and I actually did make the connection between the environment and the number of children we would try to have. Since then, there have been deliberate efforts to delink population and the environment; I am glad to see the recent efforts to restore the linkage in public discussion. But it is critical to link the environment to parents’ choices in both rich and poor families, not just in poor families.


Robert Socolow is a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, where he focuses on global carbon management. He is the co-principal investigator of Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI). Under CMI, Princeton has launched new, coordinated research in environmental science, energy technology, geological engineering, and public policy.

Image courtesy of CMI

CATEGORIZED UNDER: Environment, Technology, Top Posts
  • Monkey

    The most pressing problem……

  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15830844 Messier Tidy Upper

    Overpopulation and climate change. Not a good nor sustainable combo for the future. :-(

  • Catherine

    my boyfriend & I would like a tax credit for deciding not have kids! Anyway, I have an issue of Discover magazine from Oct. 2000, 20th anniversary edition, it’s scary how much predicted is coming true! The population swelling & “you are going to have to somehow live while you watch a billion people starve” well not having kids(or just 1 or 2) is kinder then watching them all starve.

  • yogi-one

    What’s frightening to me is that over the years we have had a number of studies that contrast futures in which we make progress vs futures in which everything stays the same (rate of emissions that is). The baseline in which we do nothing (everything stays the same) was called ‘worst case scenario’. In fact, we have been increasing emissions so that in the real world today what we have is actually “exceeds worst case scenario.” Yikes!

    And while I love your study, in the real world we have the denialist industry. While they have lost the argument that AGW is not happening at all, they did throw back progress most likely by two decades at least (admittedly just a guesstimate). But just because they lost that argument (as they knew they eventually would – they know the game they are playing), doesn’t mean they are going away. They have a big industry and Big Fossil Fuel still has deep pockets and is still interested in delaying the day when we convert to cleaner energy.

    So you are going to see arguments that coal is getting cleaner, that fracking doesn’t really harm the environment, that clean techs are still far in the future and therefore not realistic solutions (none of which are true of course), and using the economy as leverage, the claim that Big Fossil Fuel creates jobs (true – but at what cost to society overall?). This last claim will be used to justify continued deregulation and tax cuts/loopholes for their industry. Politicians in on the take will be too happy to oblige, I’m afraid.

    So if they can tack a couple of more decades of delay onto the damage they have already done, they will consider it a victory. Big Fossil Fuel will continue to reap obscene profits while the rest of our lives get dirtier, less profitable, and the quality of life on earth in general degrades while we weather a mass extinction as best we can day-to-day.

    Given their ethics, none of this is a problem for them – they still get their payday. We are talking about institutionalized corruption here – the same problem that plagues our banking industry and the economy in general.

    Our problem is still, as it has been since the 1960s – to wake people up and engage them in the process of learning about what the heck is really happening to them and how they can change things.

    If the general populace is ignorant (or as disinformed as the Deep-Pocketed wish) civilization will never get down to the business of implementing the wedge strategy.

  • Wiley

    I think the great bard Terence McKenna said it best… (10-15 years ago)


  • matt

    What is really scary is that people still think that human caused global warming is an issue when the earth hasn’t warmed for 15 years, during which CO2 levels have gone up. Hmm, unexplained.
    In this huge world, the issue is land use and localised over-population due to politics, not actual worldwide over-population
    In recent weeks we saw another release of emails from the university of East Anglia, once again showing a bias of the ‘scientists’, with which many peer-reviewed studies are based on and need to be revisited.
    Even if these were real issues, the only solutions offered are feudalistic, depopulation ideas, which will decrease growth by force. Industry will move to China (where there are less stringent emissions standards) and the people of the west will be homeless, with no way to heat their houses.
    I welcome any positive ideas.

  • Steve

    @matt says “the earth hasn’t warmed for 15 years” without providing a source of this supposition.

    The reality is exactly the opposite: The 13 hottest years in over a century have all been in the last 15 years:

  • Zach Singer

    I’m a big fan of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar in which he details the difficulties inherent in a eugenics program. I also think that a global birth control program will be necessary but I doubt it will be anything like his imagined eugenics board. I think that people should abort more and be content that someone is giving birth to and spending money on the next generation. It doesn’t have to be you and there is nothing to suggest that the children you would have would be any greater of a contribution to the population than the children anyone else would. Given that in the end we only have control of our own choices; make the right one and don’t procreate. Furthermore, it seems to me that parenthood is a thankless and unenviable occupation.

    PS: on the topic of sustainable energy Japan seems to be leading the way in regards to SSPS technology but the California based research group Artemis Innovation is also working on what could one day be an indispensable technology. Y’all should educate yourselves about its advantages over unconcentrated ground based solar power.

  • TigerArt

    Nothing really matters until zero population growth is achieved. Even with clean energy sources, this planet can sustain only a certain amount of biomass, including human beings. Eventually we will go the way of the dinosaurs but our asteroid will be the mass of humans. If nature does what it usually does, however, and makes adjustments to balance ecosystems, we will eventually see negative population growth through famine and global disease until everything is back in balance. Unless we pass the tipping point, and they we will reach the Hellstrom Chronicle by natural means.

  • Terry Halligan

    The argument is well thought out and expressed in this article that emissions are directly related to population growth, or is it? It is my observation that countries with rapidly growing “birth” populations, versus immigration growth, have the lowest per capita emissions rates well countries with stagnant or declining “birth rates” have the highest emissions per capita. Therefore I believe that activity is far more important then just a head count on emissions projections.


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