New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin has recently begun blogging on the subject of Earth’s burgeoning population. Revkin’s new blog - called Dot Earth - carries the great tagline nine billion people, one planet. It’s focused on the fact that, by the middle of this century, Earth’s population is expected to grow from its current 6.6 billion to 9 billion. Since there are those who say that we are already shifting into ecological debt - using more resources each year than Earth can regenerate - the notion of another 2.4 billion people is daunting to say the least. Revkin says he established his blog - which is made possible in part by a 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship - in order to examine “efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.”
And he’s off to a great start, with an interesting turn of phrase, a new way of thinking about global population, in a post that he calls the population cluster bomb. The idea is that Earth’s population isn’t moving in the direction suggested by the 1960s book by Paul Ehrlich titled The Population Bomb … which presented the essentially Malthusian idea that world population would keep growing and growing and GROWING toward catastrophe. I was there in the 1960s, and I remember holding The Population Bomb in my hands and believing it, as many did … but I was wrong.
Instead, as Revkin points out:
What (population experts now) depict is more like a dangerous scattering of cluster bombs, as the world splits into two types of countries: those with aging, shrinking populations, like Japan and much of Europe, and those regions, like most of Africa and parts of south Asia, still mired in poverty, disease, illiteracy or government dysfunction with resulting high birth and death rates.
In other words, some countries’ populations are expected to keep increasing, while others decrease. Overall, the rate of population growth - across the entire Earth - continues slowing down so that, by the time our children’s children arrive at the year 2100, the overall number of humans on Earth should be even smaller than now. When I first heard this idea, it surprised me. A shrinking world population? This possible outcome (surely, no one knows what will happen) is something that I - in my teens, reading Ehrlich’s book - never contemplated. World population may stabilize.
The idea of a population cluster bomb (what a great description) means that, despite ourselves, birthrates are already falling in some places on Earth, if not in all. Why not all? Because the key for falling population rates seems to be wealth and urbanization. As nations become wealthier and more urbanized - as people forsake the agricultural lifestyle for cities - they apparently begin to think that two children are enough. Women play a pivotal role, because as women become more educated, become wage-earners, have more power within the family and ultimately take our places alongside men as true equals, most women opt to have fewer children.
Revkin spends most of his blog post on the population cluster bomb speaking with demographer and sociologist Joseph Chamie of the Center for Migration Studies. It’s a fascinating interview. Check it out.
In the meantime, tell me what you think. Do you agree with population experts? Will Earth’s population be able to stabilize by the end of this century? And, if it does, what sort of world will that be?
Photo credit: Thanks to the European Parliament which points out that many people want to have their say.
When I first heard the projections that world population may stabilize, I thought the reason must be because the world won’t be able to hold any more people. Already we’ve overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity - by that I mean the resources that the planet can produce during the year, in comparison to the demand. So how long is it before we start seeing the reality of what the world will support?
I have this image of the world’s population, standing out on a wooden beam straddled between two cliffs. We keep putting more and more people out on the beam, gradually squeezing everyone towards the middle. And eventually the beam will snap under the weight. People on the ends, with more room to move and more time to react, will be able to hold on to the broken pieces, and rebuild, and get back on. And then the beam will be stable again.
Of course, that’s just a metaphor.
The population of the world (in absolute numbers) has only to increase year-on-year by a mere 0.9% for there to be 12 billion people by 2075. The current population growth (in absolute numbers) is 1.27% (most recent UN figures), some 41% above the percentage increase for 12 billion humans to exist in 2075. But looking at the present rate of human growth, there would be 15.6 billion human inhabitants living on planet Earth in 67-years time. But again, as growth rates are, in statistical terms (not the best accurate measure by any means), slightly declining year-on-year, let us assume that the growth rate is the average of the two, which is 1.18%, then we would still have 14.7 billion people to support. In every scenario it is something that the world’s resources could not possibly support considering rising standards of living throughout the world
and where it is predicted that India alone will have over ½ billion middle class citizens by 2025 (McKinsey, May 2007) on its present economic path. And a final point, what is happening with statistics is that they are being manipulated as usual. In this respect people say that population is declining statistically, but where in reality as we have a greater number each year for our base-line, the figures are really growing at the same rate as the year before, or close to that. It is a bit of a con job that governments in particular like to use so not to alarm their electorate.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
While projections that world population may level off at around 9 billion provide some level of comfort to some, there are two very serious questions about this. First, of course, many scientists believe (and the evidence seems overwhelming) the planet cannot even sustain the 6.6 billion we have today. So 9 billion is of little comfort. Second, however, the population growth could instead continue if some disturbing trends continue to develop. Recent headlines point to nations which are paying families to have more children. The nations experiencing declining population, instead of being thankful for this trend toward sustainability, are concerned about decline of the almighty GDP. The UN projections do not factor in this backlash against stable or declining population.
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director of the documentary,
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growthbusters.com
These are three very interesting and insightful comments. Also very pessimistic.
Are we truly at a turning point in human history, where human population will no longer be able to support itself via the natural resources around us on the planet? Are we riding for a fall?
Or will human technology and innovation somehow save us?
Deborah
I like to think that the optimists are those who believe the human race can wise up and start acting responsibly and the pessimists are those who believe you can’t buck greed so may as well enjoy the ride down!
What I don’t get is why so many people will go to such great lengths to avoid admitting that our planet has a limit and that our technological fixes generally turn out to be the causes of the next set of problems. What is SO wrong with saying “enough?” Deborah, that would be an excellent thing to explain to your readers. I may be wrong, but it appears even you are reluctant to come to grips with the whole notion that we are basically living in a very large terrarium! Give us some insight.
Dave, no, I’m not reluctant to come to grips with the notion that we are living in a large terrarium. I came of age in the 1960s … and our materialistic society and world have never make sense to me.
I guess I’m an optimist by your definition, Dave, because I do believe the human race will ultimately “wise up,” as you say. Perfect choice of words by the way. It’s just that things are not usually black and white. And so I suspect some of what you consider to be the pessimist’s view - that you can’t buck greed, and that there will be a ride down - is also part of my thinking.
We had an interesting post some time back about whether the human race will need a global crisis in order to come to its senses. What do you think? Will it?
Striving NOT to be narcissistic, I assume your question was directed at all readers, not specifically me. However, no one has stepped forward to offer an answer. So…how about this for a shocker?
It is beginning to look like we are already experiencing the crisis, and even THAT is insufficient to motivate us to embrace action that might involve giving up our vacation home in the mountains, 4-car garage, 6,000-square-foot home, 18 mpg full-size hybrid SUV, air conditioning, plasma TV in every room, and insistence that Christmas sale be up and GDP next year be higher than last.
Just look at the response to Atlanta’s water crisis. Very few are even considering that the city has vastly exceeded its carrying capacity. It’s enough to make me resign my Polyanna persona. I’m no longer certain I can be an optimist!
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growthbusters.com
Dave, perhaps more of a crisis is needed to motivate us.
People have a very interesting notion of what such a crisis would mean. What would economic collapse mean, for example? Remember … even if our economy were to collapse completely - even if all global economies collapsed simultaneously - there would still be 6.6 billion people on Earth today. Global pandemic? The outside predictions are that a global pandemic might take half a billion lives. Given the global birth rate (unless that pandemic left us all sterile), we’d be back up to 6.6 billion in only a matter of a few years.
The large global human population is the dominate feature of Earth today. Even if our human society collapsed completely, there would still be a heck of a lot of us around. Would we all just stay in our homes and die? Of course not. People of good will would get out there and struggle to survive … to cooperate, as we humans are so good at doing … and to establish some form of civilization once more. That’s just what humans do.
So am I optimistic that our human culture - as currently expressed here at the end of 2007 in the United States - will continue? Not necessarily. But I do believe in the human spirit, the will to survive, our intelligence and ability to cooperate … no matter what challenges we are facing.
Deborah
As a woman who chose not to have any children, I got (and get) a lot of social pressure against my decision and yet in spite of expectations I have (in my own opinion) a rich and fulfilling life so far. It is one thing to talk about population in the abstract but it boils down to having children or not. In general when women are educated, economically viable, and free they will have reasonable numbers of children but this is not the situation for most people in the world today.