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No need to get worried about it now. World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century. Till then, the population is expected to grow.................
The discussion is actually a challenge to that projection. Many demographers, including the ones that wrote the book referenced, are saying the UN projection is flat wrong. And they seem to make a pretty good case. The UN insists that the world population will grow, but the actual fertility rate indicates that it will not - not after a few more years.
It was only in the past 5 years or so that the "population explosion" meme was seriously challenged. That meme falls into the category of vertical knowledge - that is, something that "everyone knows" but is actually wrong.
The experts say, "No."
In fact, they point out that the fertility rate (average number of children born to each woman) has been falling for a very long time. Women fought for - and won - the right to own property, the right to vote, for equal wages, and for equal status. And as they won, the fertility rate decreased.
Women do not elect to become childless because they cannot afford to raise children; they elect to become childless because there is a better life for them with fewer or no children.
Anything less than an average of 2.1 means population decrease. And nearly every country in the world is now at less than 2.1.
Gather 6 couple-friends around the dinner table. Do you count 13 children among those couples? .... No? Then you are not unusual, because we can't, either.
So it is happening and will continue. The question is, "What will the world be like in 100 years?..... How about 150?"
If the prediction timeline is a couple centuries, then sure I can agree that population will decline during that whole time.
But predicting something that far out, even with slow-movng targets like demographics, is impossible based on present trends.
In order to make a prediction that far out you need to rely on fundamental factors. Declining birthrates might be a trend, but the human will to survive is very powerful. We won't go extinct because no one wants to have babies anymore. There will be some new factor, a change in technology, culture, or resource availability, that changes the trend.
Did people in the 17th century predict the population explosion that would accompany industrialization and modern medicine? They couldn't have, because the system is too complex.
The 6.0-7.0 fertility rates in sub-Sahara Africa should be of little or no concern. How many of these children will even live long enough to celebrate their 2nd-3rd-6th or 10th birthday?
As far as Russia, the Muslims from the south are filling the gap.. I heard recently there's now more mosques in Russia than either France or Germany. And if you look at the fertility rates of the Middle East, they're far from breeding like rabbits.
In Iran, the President alarmed at the fertility rate having fallen to 1.8, recently banned vasectomies.
I don't for one minute believe the global population isn't going to drop much faster than predictions.
If the prediction timeline is a couple centuries, then sure I can agree that population will decline during that whole time.
But predicting something that far out, even with slow-movng targets like demographics, is impossible based on present trends.
In order to make a prediction that far out you need to rely on fundamental factors. Declining birthrates might be a trend, but the human will to survive is very powerful. We won't go extinct because no one wants to have babies anymore. There will be some new factor, a change in technology, culture, or resource availability, that changes the trend.
Did people in the 17th century predict the population explosion that would accompany industrialization and modern medicine? They couldn't have, because the system is too complex.
Well, actually, they did!
Thomas Robert Malthus predicted what has come to be called The Malthusian Catastrophe. Malthus predicted the world's population would continue to grow exponentially and humans would run out of food.
I'll leave it up to you to read Malthus' writing and comments about his forecasts. There are lots of articles.
In 1968 - I was alive then - there were dire predictions of population explosion in the book "Population Bomb". It was a best seller and was written by a Stanford University professor. He predicted a population overwhelmed by famine in the 80's. Of course, he was wrong, too.
In both of those cases, mathematics of what was right before the authors was used. There was no study of human behavior in the 1700's, but there is now. Human behavior can be easily tracked for many decades, now. And it all points to a reversal of human population.
I think the global population will continue to rise for some time, because the rate of increase in the increasing countries will outpace the rate decline in the declining countries.
That doesn't mean the declining countries don't have a problem. They do, big time!
It will be a shifting of population resources, that in 100+ years from now could see Africa providing aid to parts of the "west" like eastern Europe.
It's already happening with the religious communities. Lack of religious recruits in the west, is resulting in the importation of clerics from Africa to run parishes in the west.
Here's a table of fertility rates for 198 countries over 65 years.
New technology will enable longer lifespans and fewer premature deaths. I don't think we'll see a significant population decline until well beyond 2200, that's 178 years from now. 178 years ago we were building the first railroad systems and the Steamboat was a fairly new invention.
It's likely we'll hit a/the technological singularity long before we need to worry about population decline. I think it's quite likely that people will be able to electronically copy themselves and live essentially deathless lives. It's also likely that A.I. and robotics will be feasible replacements to most or all human labor long before then.
I think it's very unlikely that what little physical reproduction of humans (with bodies) there is will take place inside a live human's womb, as that will be seen as a disgusting, dangerous, and pointless exercise in self-abuse. Physical reproduction will take place invitro all the way from conception to birth, and will likely be curated by medical nanotechnology to prevent defects.
Well, actually, they did!
Thomas Robert Malthus predicted what has come to be called The Malthusian Catastrophe. Malthus predicted the world's population would continue to grow exponentially and humans would run out of food.
I'll leave it up to you to read Malthus' writing and comments about his forecasts. There are lots of articles.
In 1968 - I was alive then - there were dire predictions of population explosion in the book "Population Bomb". It was a best seller and was written by a Stanford University professor. He predicted a population overwhelmed by famine in the 80's. Of course, he was wrong, too.
In both of those cases, mathematics of what was right before the authors was used. There was no study of human behavior in the 1700's, but there is now. Human behavior can be easily tracked for many decades, now. And it all points to a reversal of human population.
Malthus wrote his book in 1798, which is in the 18th century and after industrialization and agriculture improvements had begun. He was extrapolating from an incipient trend.
It would have been impossible to predict in 1698 what would happen to Europe's population because of modern inventions. European population in the 17th century grew slowly in line with pre-modern trends, while population in the 18th century almost doubled, and more than doubled in the 19th century.
Some of it may be because women use birth control etc. I think another part of the issue is that more people means more pollution etc. People are generally toxic to the environment and they die younger. Taken to an extreme (bolding mine):
"LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Toxic air in India and other South Asian countries could be causing large numbers of miscarriages and stillbirths, scientists said on Thursday.
A study in The Lancet medical journal estimated nearly 350,000 pregnancy losses a year in South Asia were linked to high pollution levels, accounting for 7% of annual pregnancy loss in the region between 2000 and 2016."
Industrialization does much more than just deplete nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels. It destroys renewable resources, the soil and water we need to grow food. Pollution, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and nuclear waste will remain for millennia. With famine and pollution shortening lives and reducing fertility, a human population drop to 5% of the peak is a reasonable estimate of the bottom, centuries later. Slowly growing back up to a billion is possible in the more distant future. 7 or 8 billion is very unlikely. We won't have another fossil fuel age of cheap energy. The Limits to Growth covered this in plenty of boring detail five decades ago.
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