Does the relationship between population and the environment vary by region?
Yes. When most people link population growth and environmental degradation, they are usually referring to less developed countries, where most of the world’s people live and population growth is high. But environmental problems exist in all countries regardless of the level of development. Most of the environmental degradation in industrialized countries, where only 20 percent of the world’s people live, is attributable to high consumption patterns; each individual in an industrialized country exerts more pressure on the environment than perhaps 20 to 30 people in the less developed world. For example, consumption patterns in the United States are indicative of the industrialized world’s disproportionate use of global resources. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but uses an estimated 24 percent of the world’s resources. According to Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb, the average American uses as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 3
