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Page added on March 20, 2013
World population not likely to stabilize at 10 billion people
Projections suggesting the world human population will stop growing around 10 billion people at the end of this century are improbable, according to new research by SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Marcus Hamilton and collaborators. While there could be stagnation over the short term, even small fluctuations in the energy or food supply could cause the population size to deviate from the 10-billion mark, and enter another period of strong growth, according to results of modeling by Oskar Burger at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, John DeLong of Yale University, and SFI’s Hamilton, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The model is based on the observation that population growth strongly depends on per capita energy use: if more energy is available, economic development will continue, which will in turn put pressure on birth rates. If birth rates are sufficiently low throughout the world, the global population will stop growing. The researchers’ model is thus at variance with the projections of the United Nations, which simply extrapolates a trend towards declining numbers of birth observed over the past several decades. “The upper limit suggested by the United Nations hardly represents a stable equilibrium,” says Burger.
11 Comments on "World population not likely to stabilize at 10 billion people"
DC on Wed, 20th Mar 2013 6:47 pm
Finally, someone saying what I have been all along. Just because the rate of increase is slowing, does not mean the population is going to magically ‘stabilzie’ itslef like the pro-growthers keep insisting. There is no iron law or any law, that says the worlds population will ever stabilize. It will only stop growing when it it no longer phsically possible for it to do so. Ie war, famine, disease, whathaveyou. The population WILL keep growing as long as it phyiscally possible for it to do so. I do not buy into the fable population will stop growing in 2050 or whatever just because some people hope it will.
J-Gav on Wed, 20th Mar 2013 10:12 pm
It is doubtful that the world’s population will ever reach 10 billion in any century, but not for the reasons demographers might give …
DC on Wed, 20th Mar 2013 11:32 pm
It is immaterial where the population peaks. 8,10,15 billion. The important point is, it will stop growing only because physical barriers and shortages prevent it from doing so. What that specific # is, is beside the point. On its own, barring strict population controls, the population will keep going up, even if the rate of increase itself slows. Like the article points out, just because the rate of increase happens to be slowing now, there is again, no iron law to say in 5 or 10 years the rate of increase cabt or wont pick up again-nothing preventing that at all.
rollin on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 12:46 am
Since it’s been estimated that the current population is using 1.5 earth resources now, we are already past our limiting point.This is the “dog on the rope” time. We just haven’t reached the end of the rope yet. So unless the fat cats slow way down on resource use (you can laugh at that one) nature will limit population. As to how much, is it really that important when this much is too much already?
Kenz300 on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 12:51 am
Around the world we have a food crisis, a water crisis, a declining fish stocks crisis, a Climate Change Crisis, a financial crisis, a JOBS crisis, an energy crisis, and an OVER POPULATION crisis.
Every problem is made harder to solve with the worlds ever growing population.
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.
Every country needs to develop a plan to balance their population with their resources, food, water, energy and jobs. Those that do not will be exporting their people and their problems.
BillT on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 3:33 am
The Bible mentions the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They are already saddled up and ready to ride. The worse is just beginning.
Look at the financial events around the world. Most of the Western countries are past being broke and are collapsing. Asia is losing it’s markets. Central banks are printing money like crazy trying to slow the decline.
Then look at the climate changes happening. Bigger, badder storms. Heat waves and drought in the world’s bread baskets. Permafrost melting.
Then look at the trends in resource wars, etc. Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, etc. The South China Sea. Japan vs. China.
Look at food shortages in the making, energy shortages, plagues, gun sales, drug sales,and then tell me that we will continue to increase in population in the near future. I don’t think so.
Kenz300 on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 4:53 am
The world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy for every year.
This is unsustainable. Too many people and too few resources. Endless population growth produces more poverty, suffering and despair.
Every country needs to develop a plan to balance its population with its resources, food, water, energy and jobs.
It would be interesting for the UN to produce a study to see what countries have any kind of plan to balance their population with the resources they can provide.
We might then begin to see how unsustainable our endless quest for growth really is.
Arthur on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 9:24 am
As long as the elites of the third world do not succeed in destroying the family, like the western elites achieved to a large extent in the West, by pushing women in the workplace, away from the cradle (sold as “liberation”), population reduction can and will be achieved only the hard way, by mother nature herself.
Meanwhile the West is walking on it’s last legs, which is not necessarily good news for the third world. Sure the West was a colonizer and a major league warmonger… but it is/was also the goose with the golden eggs as far as technology and wealth producing capabilities were concerned. With the demise of the West, to start with a disintegrating USA, the possibilities for the third world to further expand it’s population numbers will come to a premature halt, when the West will no longer be able to generate food surplusses, like it did in the 20th century. The third world will be on it’s own this century. The colonial era will be looked upon with nostalgia:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.html
BillT on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 1:01 pm
Arthur you have never lived in a ‘colony’ or you would not say that. Colonies are plundered, not helped. They are raped for everything of value that can be exported. The land is despoiled, the people indentured, and the poverty maintained. Only the wealthy elite enjoy the ‘benefits’ of technology. Most of the 3rd world will actually breathe a sigh of relief when the West is gone.
Arthur on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 1:34 pm
Bill, in my family there are ties to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The brother of my mother fought there in 1948 against the rebels. One elite is replaced by another. Sure the Dutch exploited the country, but at the same time they brought technology, education and methods into the country that were not present before the Dutch arrived. In fact the ‘country’ did not exist as such, it was a jungle. Anti-Dutch resentment is rare. Similar I have yet to meet an Indian who is resentful against the British colonial rule, usually there is an attitude of admiration for what the British accomplished.
“Most of the 3rd world will actually breathe a sigh of relief when the West is gone.”
Really?
From the Time article:
“Le Blanc isn’t much concerned with that history; he lives in the present, in a country where education is a luxury and death is everywhere. Around 45,000 people die each month in the DRC as a result of the social collapse brought on by civil war, according to a study released in January by the International Rescue Committee. It estimated the total loss of life between 1998 and April 2007 at 5.4 million. For many Congolese like Le Blanc, the difficulties of today blot out the cruelties of the past. “On this river, all that you see — the buildings, the boats — only whites did that. After the whites left, the Congolese did not work. We did not know how to. For the past 50 years, we’ve just declined.” He pauses. “They took this country by force,” he says, with more than a touch of admiration. “If they came back, this time we’d give them the country for free.”
Ask an average Zimbabwian (in private) what he prefers: present day Rhodesia or Zimbabwe. I know his answer.
When the West falls flat on it’s face, Africa will return to the stone age, (unless China intervenes).
‘A sigh of relief’ my foot.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/3081238/Fishing-boat-migrants-taken-to-Italian-island.html
GregT on Thu, 21st Mar 2013 7:47 pm
Cheap ” abundant” energy in the form of fossil fuels, has afforded mankind technologies, education, medications, modern agriculture and mass resource extraction. All of which have contributed to population overshoot.
When cheap energy is no longer abundant, the population will decline rapidly, as will technology, education, medicine, modern agriculture, and resource extraction.
If we do not completely fuck up the environment, we will go back to where we came from, pre-industrial society. It does not appear likely, that we will be that fortunate.