Coping with only six billion
Here's a column in The Times, imagining what the world might look like if the UN's low-fertilty scenario comes true.
The peak is in sight. Even as the population passes seven billion, the growth rate of the world population has halved since the 1960s. The United Nations Population Division issues high, medium and low forecasts. Inevitably the high one (fifteen billion people by 2100) gets more attention than the low one (six billion and falling). But given that the forecasts have generally proved too high for the past few decades, let us imagine for a moment what might happen if that proves true again.
Africa is currently the continent with the highest birth rates, but it also has the fastest economic growth. The past decade has seen Asian-tiger-style growth all across Africa. HIV is in retreat, malaria in decline. When child mortality fell and economic growth boomed like this in Europe, Latin America and Asia, the result was a rapid fall in the birth rate. For fertility to fall, contraception provides the means, but economic growth and public health provide the motive. So the current slow decline in Africa’s birth rate may turn into a plummet.
If that happens, the low UN estimate could prove more accurate with the world population peaking a little above eight billion and falling to a billion less than today by the end of the century.
Imagine too that agricultural productivity continues to rise. Abundant gas drives down fertiliser prices. Demand from China ensures that new varieties of seeds, better storage and cheap fertiliser reach more African farmers. Perhaps even EU tariff barriers against African produce are lifted and America’s crazy policy of diverting food into motor fuel is reversed.
Let us dream, too, that Europe’s dogmatic objection to genetic modification is quietly dropped, releasing a plethora of crops that are drought-resistant, salt-tolerant, better at utilising nitrogen fertiliser and better protected against pests. Let us suppose that the efficiency with which chickens, pigs and cows convert plants into meat continues to rocket upwards, thanks to selective breeding, without worsening cruelty.
If even half of these things happen, feeding six or even nine billion in 2100 would take far less land than feeding seven billion requires today. A greater proportion will live in cities, freeing still more land. And with more people able to afford fossil fuels, fewer will depend on forests for cooking fuel (or bushmeat), freeing still more land from human pressure. If they wear synthetic fleeces instead of wool and live in steel and concrete buildings instead of wooden ones, the footprint of their lives will shrink. Even their carbon footprint will fall as gas replaces coal and oil.
Imagine, too, that water use grows steadily more efficient with the spread of drip irrigation (where water is delivered straight to plant roots from a tube, with only 10 per cent wastage), and that fish farming provides a greater part of our protein, taking pressure off wild fish stocks.
It is quite possible that your great grandchildren will not only be fewer in number, but will live in a world with huge nature reserves, vast forests and rich seas.
Of course, none of this may happen. The most fundamentalist groups within Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Mormonism are furiously encouraging their followers to have big families; they may yet reverse the fall in global birth rates. The greens may win the argument for renewable energy and demand vast acreages for their expensive toys — Renewistan, as the inventor Saul Griffith calls it. The Luddites may prevent innovation from raising food yields and drive us back to land-hungry organic farming. My crazy optimism about the management of the oceans may well prove misplaced.
And even if these dreams come true, we will not have reached Utopia. The rapidly ageing population will be a huge burden. Not just Germans and Japanese, but Brazilians, Indians and perhaps even Nigerians will find that too few young workers are supporting too many elderly dependants with unaffordable pensions and expensive healthcare needs.
None the less, let us briefly dwell on what could go right, if only to encourage us to achieve it: by the end of the century, a smaller population, with higher living standards and a better environment.
Comments (10)
We live in a world where bad policies lead to huge levels of unemployment, and at the same time we worry that the population is ageing.
Remove the obstacles to the unemployed joining the labour force and the greying of the population will become less of a problem.
Is there really a risk that the world is at risk of being overrun by hyperbreeding fundamentalist Jews and Mormons? Or even more numerous Christians? I guess you do what you have to do to slip the truth by the PC editors.
On whether religious natalism can be a demographic factor, see this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Shall-Religious-Inherit-Earth-Twenty-First/dp/1846...
I've been thinking about a remark in one of your previous posts, Matt. You said that noone actually knows how big the world's population is.
Very true, given the poor census taking in most of the world.
However, I would expect a bias and I wonder if population statisticians have corrected for this.
Suppose you're a village headman. There are 40 villagers, 3 of them pregnant, you want a new road to the village, let's report 50 villagers.
You're the guy down the road, in charge of 10 villages, you get funding by mostly headcount. You bump up the figures: a bit: more people, more fundng.
You're the district commissioner, competing for central funds (big roads) to whom these figures are reported...
Population explodes again.
If the stats are fudged by only 10% each time then through 7 administrative layers you've "doubled" the population.
(For comparison, French local govt has 8 layers of bureaucracy, so 7 is not outlandish.)
I'm not suggesting that the figures are fudged as far as 100%, but I cannot see any advantage to the locals in underestimating their population. So: does the UN apply a correction factor to reported country population statistics?
If not, we may still be under 6 billion.
Thank you, Sir, for doing an excellent job in promoting the values of REAL science in a world where group politics comes first and Truth comes last.
I would be very happy to read your opinions on what IMHO is the biggest scientific taboo today: the Inscribed Slate (as opposed to the Blank Slate) theory of human nature, especially with its sister theory of HBD (Human Biological Determinism / Diversity).
Basically, the claim is that human races exist as meaningful biological distinctions and differ much more than the leftist, PC propaganda leads many people to believe. I find this obvious in light of the knowledge that only non-Africans are part Neanderthal and only Melanesians and Aborigines are part Denisovan.
Research on "race and intelligence", for example, is particularly reviled in our societies, as well as any policy recommendations based on increasing that other predictor of GDP/capita besides economic freedom - average population IQ (occidentalascent.wordpress.com provides many studies showing that average IQ matters for prosperity).
Since science seems the single most important endeavor that creates prosperity and that it takes creative geniuses to do science, I think that 100% voluntary, peaceful eugenics for intelligence is a common-sense proposal (although it won't work overnight because of the phenomenon of regression to the mean), can and should be implemented, yet any response to such proposals is an Argumentum ad Hitlerum.
Here is a good video summarizing the flawed leftist arguments against HBD and research supporting this theory: [youtube]/watch?v=GJ-e5XjlmZA
As someone who believes HBD research is true and has meaningful predictions, I agree with James Watson that we can't help other people from other parts of the world (Africa in particular) without understanding how they are different from us. I also think that 100% voluntary eugenics is a common-sense solution to a lot of problems we have today.
I think HBD as a scientific theory deserves as much support as it can get, since it's proponents are vilified as racists and may even lose their jobs for stating their beliefs in public. We cannot even begin to have an honest argument until one side is almost burned at the stake as heretics (even more so than climate skeptics)
@ Anonymous (the latter):
Well, just because you anticipate the response to your ideas and try to deflate it before it's uttered doesn't make that response off the mark. You rightly expect your ideas to be declared 'Hitlerish' because, well, they are.
Look, this post and others Ridley has posted show that the population is declining already all by itself, without any outside eugenics being applied. And world living standards are rising everywhere, most rapidly in Africa where you are clearly dying to state how dumb you think black people are.
So what really is your point besides trying to make sure we all know how much smarter you are than the duskier races?
@ Anonymous (latter)
Just because you preempt the criticism you know is coming, doesn't make that criticism untrue. Your ideas get compared to Hitler's because they are, well, Hitlerish.
This article just discussed how population growth is already slowing without any eugenic plan, and that the black people you'd like to convince us are dumdums are experiencing the most rapid improvement in living standards of anyone in the world.
So really, you're just trying to wave your hands to have an excuse to claim how smart you and your race are. And that makes you a filthy racist.
Again, it's not the birth rate that is crucial to the population growth. It's the precipitous drop in the death rate. People aren't dying as fast as they used to. And for all of us who are living, I'm happy for that. Happy for myself and for my friends and family.
However, we are all aging and we all will someday die. And when those who were born in the 40s reach that terminal point, there will be a huge drop in population, probably dropping down to under 6 billion. And when that occurs, the economic effects might be quite catastrophic. (When you lose 1 billion people who can contribute to the economy through buying things, you lose a lot of customers!)
@ Eric:
Exactly! Around 2050 or 2060 or whenever global population growth levels off and begins declining, we have a major problem with the system of capitalism itself. How does capitalism function with no growth in consumption?
The best response I've heard yet is 'productivity', if the declining labor force gets that much more productive maybe it works. Seems like pretty weak sauce.
[...] feeding six or even nine billion in 2100 would take far less land than feeding seven billion requires today. A greater proportion will live [...]