Demographics
File: c:/Users/Dennis/Desktop/Tragedy/Demographics.html Date: Sat Aug 16 21:18:59 2014/ 2019 (C) OntoOO/ Dennis de Champeaux
We, the people, are ... actually also a problem, which stares us in the face and we are not willing and/or not able to admit it. The World's population grew from 1.6B in 1900 to 6B in 2000 and yet another 1B was added in the next decade. Fertility was around 5 until 1950 and has been declining steadily till 2000 to around 2.5, which still entails exponential growth.
Fertility declines differ on the Planet. Numerous wealthy nations have now fertilities below 2.1, which causes ultimately population declines in these nations without immigration. Japan is a country with a fertility now of 1.4 and has already a declining population of -0.13%/year (2014). Still there are nations, predominantly poor ones, where the fertility is still high; for example: Niger 6.89, Afghanistan 5.43, Nigeria 5.25 (2014).
The population problem at the global level is simply that we have gone beyond the ability to feed the World population in a natural way. I.e. we need artificial fertilizer - produced by an expensive, energy intensive chemical process - to obtain the World's food. There are already over 800M people hungry (2014) (800M is half the size of the World population in 1900) [Hunger]. Organizational desperation yields:
The good news is that hunger is entirely solvable. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone and no scientific breakthroughs are needed. Today's knowledge, tools and policies, combined with political will, can solve the problem.
The population problem in poor countries is that they have typically high fertility and that all progress through assistance cannot keep up with further population increases.
The problem in high fertility (oil) rich nations is that per capita resources decline and that when export stagnates the nation joins the poor ones.
The problem in now low fertility, rich nations is that they have state pensions and state healthcare obligations that were set up decades ago with pay-as-you-go arraignments (in essence Ponzi schemes), which have become problematic when the fertility dropped. This topic has been discussed for decades but addresssing it effectively is continuously pushed forwards.
China is a special case, at least because it is the nation with the largest population. It is also exceptional because it is the only nation that recognized that action was required because its population growth was out of control. It took decisive action, already in 1979, with its one child policy. While they must be applauded for the example they set, the rest of the world derided their policy instead of following their lead. Selective abortion of females, unfortunate indeed, gets ample attention in the international discourse, while the long term benefits of the one child policy for the World community is systematically ignored, if not censored.
Future historians will connect the 20th century exponential population growth with wars, genocides, ideological conflicts, ecological destructions, (global) pollutions, climate changes, exhaustion of the ocean fisheries, surpassing the Planet's carrying capacity (sustainability), etc. We have been discussing these issues forever but the population explosion as the underlying cause has been taboo. Only fringe groups and individuals have been able to articulate the connections. The San Jose Mercury News published the following letter to the Editor on 1991 July 22:
I wholeheartedly agree with June Chambers (July 11) on the subject on the child-rearing tax credit.The World population increased with around 2B people since this letter was published.What this country needs is concentrated effort to stop the population explosion, not more tax credits to encourage higher birth rates. Is it really that difficult to see that more people use more space, more water, more natural recources while they dump more and more waste into the ground, the ocean and the air?
The Earth is not getting bigger. It is rather obvious that unless we stop our population growth, our individual space will get slowly squeezed down until we all live in match-size boxes, drinking strictly rationed recycled water, and forests and wildlife will only exist in history books.
The swelling number of the poor and destitude will increase beyond comprehension the social unrest throughout the world. No amount of welfare and aid can equalize the negative consequences of having too many kids in an already impoverished family.
Why is the idea of not having more than two kids per family so difficult to accept? Why can't civic and religious groups discuss and promote such a simple solution to much of our problems? Do we have to wait until it is too late?
Peter M. Vadasz
Weisman goes down to business in the last chapter titled The World With Fewer of Us. Given that hunger is already endemic another green revolution is required to accomodate the next billion people, which is not likely to be pulled off again. This (and all the other problems that he has described in exhausting details from all over the world) leads to his conclusion that reducing the world population is mandatory.
But how? He limits himself to describing that fertility has already decreased below the level of replacement in Japan, China and several nations in Europe. And the target size? He retreats in fuzziness further by referring to a 1995 book by the academic Joel Cohen How Many People Can the Earth Support? [Cohen], which also avoids a numerical answer because that question "... begs so many other questions."
[Hunger] http://www.wfp.org/hunger
[Weisman] Weisman, Alan, Countdown/ Our last, best hope for a future on Earth?, Little Brown & Company, 2013.