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Page added on June 23, 2013
Are we overpopulating?
The premise of Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code’’ was that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, presumably bored of miracles and sermons, married and had kids. His newest novel, “Inferno,’’ is kind of the same except that this time (spoiler alert!) it’s the rest of us having kids — and far, far too many. The shocking solution: Wipe out almost half the human race. Many finished Brown’s earlier book believing descendants of God literally walk among us. So before they treat his latest offering as gospel, so to speak, a word of caution: Brown is flat-out wrong.
Brown draws from the work of political scientist Robert Malthus, who in 1798 warned about the dangers of unchecked human reproduction. The collapse of civilization, he feared, was near at hand. The logic of that view led Malthus to oppose the British poor laws — which gave aid to the destitute — for the reasons most pithily expressed by Ebenezer Scrooge: “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Other have taken up Malthus’s crusade, notably Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,’’ predicted a near cataclysm in the 1970s. Oops. Malthus, Ehrlich, and their followers aren’t wrong on their math, however. The earth’s population has grown, and that growth has been rapid. In 1800 there were just 1 billion. Last year, according to the US Census Bureau, we hit 7 billion.
Population notwithstanding, however, humanity is better off than it ever was. What the doomsayers didn’t anticipate is that human ingenuity would be able to keep pace, and more so. Food production per acre climbed. We found new sources of energy. Modern, free-market economies created wealth where once there was only misery. Indeed, over the last 20 years the global poverty rate has been cut in half, and it is realistic to expect that dire poverty could well be eliminated in the next 20.
Still, at some point you’d think, Malthus and Ehrlich have to be right. The earth may be able to tolerate 7 billion. But double, triple that? There is, after all, only so much room.
Except that the predictions of inexorable population growth are wrong. Our population won’t grow to 21 billion, or even 14 billion. It now looks as if earth will max out at around 10 billion by 2100. And after that, world population might actually fall.
Brown’s fictional hero, Robert Langdon, wanders the hot spots of Europe — Florence, Venice, and Istanbul — observing how crowded those cities are. But that’s because they’re tourist traps. Europe, in fact, is shrinking. The so-called replacement level — the number of children a woman must have to keep population stable — is 2.1 (the fraction accounts for childhood death or infertility). Europe is an amazingly low 1.51 (and Italy, the country that seems especially crowded to Langdon, a mere 1.41). Other developed nations follow suit: Japan is 1.39, Canada 1.59, Australia 1.77. The United States is somewhat of an outlier, at 2.06 (in large part because, as former Florida governor Jeb Bush recently and clumsily put it, new immigrants are “more fertile”). Still, we’re lower than the replacement rate.
Yes, poorer parts of the world continue to have high growth. Sub-Sahara Africa is 4.66, for instance, but demographers see that declining to 2.1 by 2070. In fact, by 2027 the entire world will likely fall below the replacement rate.
And why? Population experts call it the “demographic transition.” As countries develop — as they modernize, grow their economies, improve health care, decrease mortality, and educate more of their population (especially girls) — a remarkable thing happens: birthrates fall. The effect of education is particularly profound. Educated girls grow to be women who have more choices in life than merely being pregnant. Educated girls are as well a proxy for how societies are evolving in terms of their economies, their attitudes toward their citizens, and their regard for women’s rights.
One of the principal characters in Brown’s book initially dedicates her life toward social work but, seeing the teeming slums of Manila, she despairs, turning instead toward a manufactured plague as the solution. She should have stuck it out. The Three Rs, it turns out, are more powerful than any germ.
16 Comments on "Are we overpopulating?"
Beery on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 1:20 pm
So universal education will stop overpopulation? Yeah, right! Who exactly is working to ensure Africans, Asians and Indians get educated. Not fricken Walmart or Nike, that’s for sure.
More naive utopianism in the face of disaster.
GregT on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 1:51 pm
D-E-N-I-A-L. And utter stupidity.
rollin on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 1:53 pm
Yes, the number of “well off” people is higher than ever. Ignored by the author is the fact that the number of poor and starving people is greater than ever also. According to certain experts the world is getting better off, but at what price?
The well off are stealing their futures, so when the cupboard is bare it will be a great shock to them. When the house blows down or washes away and there is no insurance money, that will be a shock too. The well off cannot see even a few years into their future. Many are going over the cliff now, many more will follow.
Ed on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 2:14 pm
10 billion by 2100 !! Lol There is more chance that it will be down back to 1 billion.
BillT on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 2:21 pm
Is it me or are the ‘over population’ articles reproducing like … people?
I love all of these prophecy stories. No-one even has a good handle on what tomorrow will bring, but they talk about decades from now as if they were yesterday. And to make it worse, they are not even close to being realistic.
Juan Pueblo on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 2:35 pm
Unmitigated BS from start to finish!
😉
SilentRunning on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 3:19 pm
Anybody who thinks that ever soaring numbers of people is not a problem should be sent to “Overpopulation Island” – or as the Corny’s would call it “Happiness Island”.
It would be a small Pacific Atoll with limited resources. Every person on earth who denies overpopulation problems would be relocated there. They would have to make do with only those resources found on the island (no Care packages from elsewhere)
Now, if the Cornies are right, then billions of people should be able to exist on this square mile or so, and innovate their way to Nirvana. If Malthus and environmentalists are right, the place will turn into a nightmare.
There should be only two ways to leave the island: 1) Sign a statement that says that overpopulation is an urgent problem or 2) Die.
DC on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 5:17 pm
I love it Silent! Maybe the amerikans, ever the Telemarketers they are, could make a reality TV show out of it.
Maybe call it, Survivor: Soylent Green. Maybe a Monsanto rep could be landed on your Island and attempt to sell the inhabitants GM coconuts to ‘solve’ there ‘food’ problem, only to be eaten by the famished hordes. Ah, only if….
I love how articles like this repeat 2 major fallacies. One, the every popular ‘educate girls’ trope, will reduce population. Funny, there are lots of educated women in the ‘west’ and our populations still keep growing. The US for example, leads the ‘west’ in unplanned, unwanted pregnancies by a huge margin. Im going to assume most of them went to amerikas excellent public schools. And yes, I DO support education..for everyone. People didnt stop having babies because they were smart, it was because basic human needs were being met, food, clean water, law and order and so on. Being ‘wealthy’ had little to do with it. Education is important, but education cuts both ways. Both Xtians and Arabs use there ‘education’ systems to promote the idea of, ‘go forth and multiply’. The idea that education alone stops over-breeding is completely discredited one. I wish people would provide solid evidence that this is the case.
The other lie, is the ‘demographic transition’. Its a polite way of denying the population is still expanding, while trying to pretend a slight recent slowing of the growth rate means the population is actually contracting, or will, maybe, eventually. The folks pushing this expert lie never explain how they believe the population is dropping, when in facts, its doing the complete opposite.
Jerry McManus on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 5:36 pm
“Population notwithstanding, however, humanity is better off than it ever was.”
Translation: Humanity has managed to greatly increase the standard of living for a relatively small percentage of the population through the prodigious burning of a large but finite store of energy in the form of fossil fuels.
“Food production per acre climbed.”
Translation: Massive application of fertilizer and pesticides derived from large but finite sources of fossil fuels has artificially but only temporarily increased yields at the cost of depleted topsoil, depleted aquifers, and massive ocean “dead zones” from polluted water runoff.
“We found new sources of energy.”
Translation: Having quickly burned through all of the high quality, cheap and easy to extract sources of fossil fuels we are now desperately digging up much poorer quality, expensive, difficult, and incredibly dirty sources of fossil fuels which can only be obtained at a massive cost to both the economy and the environment and which yield only a fraction of the surplus energy.
“Modern, free-market economies created wealth where once there was only misery”
Translation: Modern, free-market economies are incredibly efficient at depleting natural capital and converting it into waste products leaving behind impoverished populations enslaved to an incredibly unjust system of debt repayments and export markets serving a handful of ruthless multinational corporations backed by multi-trillion dollar military power where once there was only small, local, economies that were largely self-sufficient.
“It is realistic to expect that dire poverty could well be eliminated in the next 20 [years].”
Translation: It is realistic to expect that the human race could well be eliminated in the next 20 years due to climate chaos, resource depletion, and ecosystem collapse unleashing a shitstorm of war, famine, pestilence and death on a global scale.
Kenz300 on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 5:54 pm
Climate Change gets worse with a growing population.
Declining fish stocks gets worse with growing population.
Water shortages get worse with a growing population.
Food shortages get worse with a growing population.
Poverty and despair get worse with a growing population.
Wages decline and unemployments goes up with a growing population.
We have too many people and too few resources and the problem just continues to grow as the population increases.
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.
BS on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 6:43 pm
When you read Malthus in the opening, you already know where the article is going. The downside risk of accepting the predictions is simply too great. The world transitioning from fossil fuels will take time and resources. We are running out of both.
It is the same with global warming. You can believe anything you want, but what you believe has nothing to do with future events. They will be determined by the available resources. The writer does not address resource depletion, only human ingenuity.
‘Are humans smarter than yeast?’ That question has been answered in my lifetime.
socrates1fan on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 6:56 pm
Though I do not believe the doomer outlook is useful in this situation (however realistic and likely it may be in regards to overpopulation) this utopian “technology will take care of it” attitude is incredibly destructive.
He’s taking a very small segment of human history (the past 200 years) to predict the future of population growth even though the rules and game have changed entirely. We are dealing with very serious resource depletion.
Population decline due to resource depletion and over population in general has been seen in human history multiple times.
More people! More people! They fail to see the major issues and problems caused by this growth. The issue with people such as this is that they ONLY see short term problems but NEVER long term problems that build up slowly until they explode. They lack the patience or intelligence (maybe both) to see that.
Plantagenet on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 7:15 pm
Nature has its own way of taking care of populations that overshoot their environmental limits.
mike on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 9:36 pm
I know you post this stuff to keep us abreast of what the “normals” are currently thinking but it’s getting a bit tiresome and distracting from the real conversation. We can see idiots like this every day all day if we wish it. Please stop posting this utter guff and bringing the quality of your site down. Malthus was actually wrong in some respects, obviously population could never overshoot the ability to grow food, but food supply may well be swept from under the feet of the population. There is a big difference. You know if someone brings up Malthus in any kind of argument they are fishing for a reaction. Try telling the tribe of Easter Island that Malthus was wrong, …oh no you can’t they all ate each other.
CAM on Sun, 23rd Jun 2013 9:36 pm
So! This article has postulated, as so many others recently, that because something has not yet occurred, that indeed human ingenuity has so far overcome all obstacles, that will always be the case now and forever. Seems a rather flimsy theory to bet the future of the human race on!
desmodia on Mon, 24th Jun 2013 3:10 pm
10 billion? A worldwide plague of locusts would not do as much damage, espe. since everyone is going to want what the WEst has in terms of living standards. The rest of the earth would be stripped bare.
I believe we have an ethical and moral obligation to allow other species their lives. To think we can ravage every other lifeform to support our own to me shows how far out of balance we’ve gotten.