As we reach 7 billion people, Climate Progress is featuring a variety of opinions on population.

– by Ian Angus and Simon Butler in a Grist repost

The approach of [7 billion] milestone produced a wave of articles and opinion pieces blaming the world’s environmental crises on overpopulation. In New York’s Times Square, a huge and expensive video declares that “human overpopulation is driving species extinct.” In London’s busiest Underground stations, electronic poster boards warn that 7 billion is ecologically unsustainable.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich’s bestseller The Population Bomb declared that as a result of overpopulation, “the battle to feed humanity is over,” and the 1970s would be a time of global famines and ever-rising death rates. His predictions were all wrong, but four decades later his successors still use Ehrlich’s phrase — too many people! — to explain environmental problems.

But most of the 7 billion are not endangering the earth. The majority of the world’s people don’t destroy forests, don’t wipe out endangered species, don’t pollute rivers and oceans, and emit essentially no greenhouse gases.

Even in the rich countries of the Global North, most environmental destruction is caused not by individuals or households, but by mines, factories, and power plants run by corporations that care more about profit than about humanity’s survival.

No reduction in U.S. population would have stopped BP from poisoning the Gulf of Mexico last year.

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JR:  In one District west of Fort Worth, “the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40% in the first half of 2011, up from 25% in 2010.”

– RL Miller has more on the collision between Texas’s record drought and its water-guzzling fossil-fuel dependence in this Daily Kos cross-post.

In case anyone missed it, Texas had a big drought last summer — the worst one year drought in the state’s history [see "Worst Texas Drought in Centuries].  Lakes dried, animals were slaughtered, cities imposed lawn watering restrictions, the governor prayed for rain. About the only part of the state unaffected were the wind turbines of West Texas, spinning merrily along and oblivious to near-apocalyptic conditions.

Droughts end, and places recover. Unless they don’t.

Talk has been circulating among the doom-and-gloom sector of the Left of Texas as a failed state. It’s easy to dismiss as a tit-for-tat, revenge for Texas’ talk of secession. Until one looks hard at the water.

The state’s water shortage is structural, warns the Texas Water Development Board. Currently the state needs 18 million acre-feet of water, and it has 17 million acre-feet available to it. Aquifers deplete. Population grows. By 2060, the state is expected to need 22 million acre-feet but only have 15.3 million acre-feet available to it. Because some dry places simply can’t have water piped, the total shortfall is projected to be 8.3 million acre-feet. Roughly, the state will have 2 gallons of water available to it for every 3 gallons it needs.

Houston, we have a problem.

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by Greg Rucks and Jesse Morris, Rocky Mountain Institute

In Reinventing Fire, Rocky Mountain Institute provides a blueprint for transforming transportation and freight services with uncompromised convenience, safety and performance using no oil by 2050.

But how do we get there? RMI lays out a five-step program for ending our oil addiction.

1. Shift to ultralight but ultrastrong autobodies

The virtues of a lightweight auto body with improved safety and performance are universally applicable to the many auto powertrain options now available or under development.  To cost-effectively electrify autos, automakers have begun to adopt lightweight bodies that enable a smaller powertrain and fewer, cheaper batteries or fuel cells to provide competitive range.

While incremental lightweighting, reductions in aerodynamic drag and tires with lower rolling resistance substantially improve fuel economy, the true potential of “Revolutionary+” autos that achieve 125-240 mpg equivalent is fully unlocked through the use of advanced materials—such as carbon fiber composites — paired with resulting savings in manufacturing.

2. Pursue innovative state or regional policies that boost the economics of Revolutionary+ vehicles

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And a twist on that cartoon, from the New Yorker:

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