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Global Population Implosion?
J-bar writes "The Mathusian nightmare of an ever increasing planetary population has suddenly gone into reverse. UN-sponsored demographers are now predicting that the world's population will
shrink in our lifetime. But what the boffins can't explain is WHY rich countries have stopped having babies. Post your own opinion in the only netpoll that addresses this weird demographic trend." (Commentary by J : this is based on the UN's "low variant projection," which assumes everyone stops having so many babies. The UN's "most likely" projection is nine billion by 2050 and continued growth into the 22nd century.)
1) It assumes that eventually the population demographics of the whole world will follow that of "more developed regions" as the less developed regions become more developed ... and it assumes that the whole world will become "more developed".
2) If, indeed, the whole world becomes "more developed", then the rate of resource consumption and environmental impact will rise dramatically, unless said development follows very different patterns. (That's possible with new technologies and intelligent "leap-frogging", but it's not a given, especially if we in the "more developed" regions don't make a major emphasis of setting a much better example than we do now.)
3) Even if this population forcast is correct, world population will peek at roughly 9 billion. That's 3 people for ever 2 we have now. Combine this with #2, and it's pretty clear that human population trends still have disasterous potential even without the related age-related demographic trends.
There are a number of problems in the Malthusian prediction of overpopulation that were not evident to Malthus or even to later commentators like Ehrlich. Julian Simon's work, however should be disregarded as the piece of crap that it is - technology can no more make something out of nothing than religion can. Population crashes have occured in the past - the Easter Island case is a good example - and Simon's reasons why it can't happen to us are no more than wishful thinking and abuse of statistics.
Most animal populations, even those without predators, manage to limit their population before they reach the starvation and disease point. The reason for this is easy to see from a neodarwinist perspective: the odds of having any surviving offspring drop dramatically if the population is at the limit of its resources. For millenia primitive human societies were stable without predators, famine or disease as major problems. This was not entirely clear until fairly recently, and some of the reasons are still a little mysterious.
Nonetheless, human populations have crashed in the past. The reason in most cases is that resources appear to be plentiful until they are completely spent. That is what happened on Easter Island and it has happened repeatedly in China. It doesn't seem that unlikely that it's true for us too. Petroleum will seem plentiful until it's gone. The oil fields in Pennsylvania seemed plentiful until they dissappeared. New fields were found, but one by one they are emptying too. There can not be an infinte amount of oil in the world. Technology may bring us new energy sources in the mean time, and it may not - but do you want to bet your life on it? There are fairly important reasons to think the end of oil isn't too far off.
These days in industrialised countries, the best chance you can give your children is to have fairly few and not strech your resources too much in raising them. The odds of survival of a single upper or middle class child are far greater than that of a child from a large, lower class family. Neodarwinism simply favours the smaller family. Birth control and abortion makes this possible.
Another major trend in population is the social empowerment of women. Women, having invested generally far more in a child than men, tend logically to raising fewer of them and devoting more of their resources to each child. The correlation between the education and empowerment of women and low population growth is very, very strong.
So, the decline in the birth rate is good news, but not necessarily a cure-all for population problems. A continuing decline in the birth rate depends on continuing industrialisation of the underdeveloped world - by no means a sure thing these days - and a growth in the education and empowerment of women. The general catastrophy of global overpopulation may be avoided by lower birth rates in some countries, but Malthusian collapses are already going on in some parts of the world, and that seems likely to get worse before it gets better.
Also, it's worth noting that not everyone gains in a low or zero growth population. By the time population stabilises, median age in many countries will be very high, and most of those societies will only be able to function if they allow a lot of immigration. The future is not very rosy for culturally isolating ethnic nation states. How will the Japanese or the Germans feel about the possibility of a nation where they are not a majority? How will Americans feel when most of the young come from another culture? There is already one country that looks like this: the USA's northern neighbour.
Not everyone will be very happy about it, but the future looks more and more like Canada.
My father grew up on a farm. By age six he was contributing to the economic wealth of his family (doing chores- feeding chickens, etc.). By age 14 he was contributing a signfigiant amount. And this was on an American farm- in the very poor countries children contribute a much greater amount to the economic wealth of the family. It made _economic_ sense for my grand parents to have a lot of kids (which explains why I have eight aunts and uncles). My Dad then went off to college, got a PhD in Math, and started programming computers. His children weren't capable of working in the same office as he until their early twenties, by which time they had moved away and started their own families, or at least stopped contributing to their parent's economic wealth. While he was an economic asset, we were an economic burden- it made sense for him to have fewer children (which explains why I only have 2 siblings). Now, I'm not stating that this is the _only_ factor in deciding how large of a family to have. But statistically, by switching children over from an economic advantage to an economic disadvantage, will drop the average number of children in the family. Indeed, the population census clearly shows a trend of smaller urban (i.e. industrial) families as opposed to rural (i.e. agricultural) families dating back to at least 1840. Religious or social forces do not overcome the fundamental economic forces. Speaking as a catholic, catholicism is pro-large-family religion (everybody: "Every sperm is sacred..."). And yet, Ireland and Italy are also seeing the same population growth slowing that the Protestant countries are (I've lost my bookmark to the CIA's world book). George Bush wasn't kidding when he annouynced a "new world order" (that bit about the taxes was a joke). The late eighties and early nineties saw a fundamental shift in American foriegn policy. Since the 16th century, colonies were the route to economic power (and colonies were the heart of the cause of both World Wars- the colonial haves, England, France, and America (America having claimed the Spanish and Portugese colonies) teaming up against the colonial have-nots, especially they newly-united Germany and newly industrialized Japan). But the economic shocks of the 1980s showed us that our most important trading partners were not our colonies (which had, by that point, expanded from just central/south America to include much of Asia), but rather the other rich industrialized nations- mainly Japan and Europe. In this new economic order, poor colonies are worth squat- illiterate peasants can make much of anything we want to buy, and don't make enough money to buy anything we want to sell. Thus a switch occurred from discouraging colonial independence and economic development to encouraging it (a trend the colonial powers have been bucking, with some success, for over 200 years- we didn't cause it, we just stopped impeding it). With rising economic conditions comes the economic disincentive to large familes, and thereby decreases the population growth (even pushing it negative). Two comments- one, technology is a much bigger influence on military power than numbers. If there is one thing the Gulf War showed, that was it. There is some disagreement by how much Hussein's army outnumbered the allies- I've seen numbers as low as 2x and as high as 5x- but simple numbers didn't help much. The second thing is that modren warfare is incredibly destructive- even conventional warfare. The European theater of WWII was entirely conventional- and it took Europe decades to recover (England still had rationing into the fifties). The "sudden emergence" of Europe and Japan as economic powerhouses in the seventies wasn't- it was a re-emergence after having to rebuild their economies after WWII. Nuclear weapons just make the situation worse. This is one of the main reasons we didn't go to war with the Soviet Union in 1962-63 timeframe- both sides looked at the results of WWII, added a large amount for nuclear weapons, and declared it to expensive. That didn't stop the colonial sniping that went on for another three decades, but it did stop the massive tank thrusts into central germany. Second, by itself, the population implosion doesn't solve the Malthusian dilemna. Yes, you have fewer people being born, put the demand for raw materials and energy per capitia is increasing to make up the difference. There is a solution to this, which I'll post if anyone cares.
From: http://www.fieldingtravel.com/blackflagcafe/messag es/6559.html
r ent/Groups/Opposing/pri.html
According to
http://www.iti.com/cgi-bin/iti-cgi-bin/mfs/01/Cur
the "Population Research Institute" 'is a bogus organization set up by the Catholic Church to provide
population mis-information.'
And
http://205.177.10.11/agm/main/news/pri.htm
says:
'In the past few days, opponents of the upcoming international family planning vote in Congress have been
rallying around
something called "Population Research Institute." Quotes from this
organization have appeared in wire stories, newspapers and on
television without mentioning just what "Population Research
Institute" is.
According to papers filed with the IRS, "Population Research
Institute" is simply an arm of the infamous Human Life International
(HLI) -- the venal ultra-right group that claims as its founder and
board chairman the venomously anti-Semitic Paul Marx.'