Rush hour: Commuters arrive at Churchgate station in Mumbai. India has 1.14 billion people, second only to China, which has 1.33 billion. (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Newscom/FILE)
Earth’s big problem: Too many people.
But how can we ease population without taking draconian steps? By developing in ways that we should be anyway, experts say.
By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ January 28, 2009 edition
Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Newscom/FILE
Suburban commuters pour out of a train at Churchgate railway station in Mumbai.
Are there too many people on Earth?
That question is rarely raised today, in part because it conjures up the possibility of governments intruding into the most private and profound decision a couple can make. In a worst-case scenario, authorities could impose discriminatory policies that would limit births based on such criteria as race, ethnic origin, cultural background, religion, or gender.
But with huge, vexing questions such as food security, poverty, energy supplies, environmental degradation, and climate change facing humanity, some are asking whether aggressive measures to control population growth should be on the public agenda.
Politicians generally stay clear of suggesting population-control policies, recognizing the deep-seated concerns they raise. President Obama did not mention the issue as part of his campaign last fall. But the new Obama administration has promised to take a fresh look at solutions to energy and environmental challenges and has brought in a new slate of scientific advisers. The United States remains the only developed country without an official population policy.
Might the new administration dare to raise the idea?
“You’ve got to get a president who’s got the guts to say, ‘Patriotic Americans stop at two [children],’ ” says Paul Ehrlich, a professor of population studies at Stanford University. “That if you care about your children and grandchildren, we should have a smaller population in the future, not larger.” Professor Ehrlich wrote the groundbreaking 1968 book “The Population Bomb,” which predicted disastrous effects from unchecked population growth.
Earth’s population is about 6.8 billion people today, or four times the population of a century ago. Even though birth rates are lower than during the 1960s and ’70s, the world is adding 75 million to 80 million people per year and is expected to peak at more than 9 billion by midcentury – far too many, say some population experts.
Whether this growth can be sustained and still provide a decent living standard for people is itself controversial. Some, including Ehrlich and Alan Weisman, the author of the best-selling book “The World Without Us,” argue that even today’s population is too large to maintain without ravaging the environment and creating an inhospitable planet.
How much would today’s population have to shrink to become sustainable? “I don’t think anybody knows,” Mr. Weisman says. “All I know is, ‘less is better.’ ”
Weisman’s book imagines a world in which humans are extinct and suggests that nature could bounce back relatively quickly from the burden placed on it by its billions of human inhabitants.
Demographers calculate that if suddenly every family on earth limited itself to one child, by 2150 the world’s population would be 1.6 billion, exactly what it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
He’s not arguing that that’s a perfect number of humans. But “it would create a lot more space for [other] organisms to live … a much healthier ecosystem for us all,” he says.
Lifestyles are bigger issue
Ehrlich and Weisman agree with critics who say population alone isn’t the issue. Lifestyles in developed countries in North America and Europe consume a lot of resources. Everyone living in an industrialized nation puts a much heavier burden on the environment than does someone living in, say, Asia or Africa. Though family sizes in the developed world are smaller, the number of households hasn’t shrunk commensurately.
“It’s actually the number of households – and not the number of people – that has a bigger impact on the environment,” says Matthew Connelly, a professor of history at Columbia University in New York and the author of “Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.”
“This is not a population crisis,” Professor Connelly argues. “The crisis is us, the consumption patterns of the wealthiest people in the world. That’s what’s unsustainable.” The problem in trying to control populations “is that we don’t know how to do it,” he says. “We don’t have a good theory to explain, much less predict, why people have babies and why they have as many as they do.”
China’s strict one-child-per-family policy, established 30 years ago, has cut its population growth significantly. But it has also created a huge gender imbalance, as families have chosen male children over female, he says.
“There’s a long history of governments trying to make it illegal for parents to have large families,” Connelly says. “China is just the most notorious example.” But, he asks, “Is that the kind of country we’d like to live in, where the government could make it illegal to choose the number of children we have?”
Doom-and-gloomers assume technology is static
Those arguing that a calamity awaits if population isn’t reduced are looking at the past and trying to project it into the future, says Ted Nordhaus, an environmentalist and coauthor with Michael Shellenberger of “Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.”
“They assume that technology and resources are static,” Mr. Nordhaus says, and that breakthroughs and discoveries that could dramatically improve living conditions on earth won’t be found.
“The greatest antidote to rapidly growing population is prosperity and development,” Nordhaus says. “As people become more prosperous, birth rates decline…. It’s an economic development challenge, not a population challenge.”
But that doesn’t mean that we need to just sit back and do nothing. “We can’t take a laissez-faire approach to this,” he says. “We can’t just assume technology advancement will happen as quickly as we would like it to. There are all kinds of things we need to do to invest in productivity improvement.”
Despite the fears of some, rising living standards in the developing world don’t mean that the environment will be devastated in the process, he says. The idea that Chinese and Indians will all be driving around in Humvees and flying in private jets is “not true,” he says.
The concept of some environmentalists that humans are somehow an intruder or “a scourge on the earth” disturbing an otherwise harmonious nature, needs to be challenged, Nordhaus says. “The reality is that nature is neither stable nor harmonious,” he says. “We’re as natural as anything else, and a world with us is as natural as a world without us.”
Short of government limits on family size, both advocates and opponents of population control agree that many other useful steps can be taken that may lead to reduced population growth. Among the most crucial are better education, economic opportunities, and access to contraceptive and reproductive health care services for women in developing countries with high birth rates.
As economist Robert Cassen put it in 1994, “Virtually everything that needs doing from a population point of view needs doing anyway.”
What effects will world population growth have by the mid-21st century? Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, makes the following points:
Emerging trends in Global population
• In 1950 the less-developed (poorer) regions of the world had roughly twice the population of the more developed (richer) ones. By 2050 the ratio will exceed 6 to 1.
• Human numbers currently increase by 75 million to 80 million people annually, the equivalent of adding another United States to the world about every four years.
• At present, the average woman bears nearly twice as many children (2.8) in poor countries as in rich countries (1.6 children per woman).
• Some 51 countries or areas will lose population between now and 2050. Germany is expected to drop from 83 million to 79 million people, Italy from 58 million to 51 million, Japan from 128 million to 112 million and the Russian Federation from 143 million to 112 million.
• If recent trends continue as projected to 2050, virtually all of the world’s population growth will be in urban areas.
• Everyone born in 1965 or earlier and still alive has seen human numbers more than double from 3.3 billion in 1965 to 6.8 billion in 2009.
• The peak population growth rate ever reached, about 2.1 percent a year, occurred between 1965 and 1970. Human population never grew with such speed before the 20th century and is likely never to grow with such speed again.
( More stories )
Comments
2. Wally | 01.28.09
At current growth rates — births & immigration — the United States will reach 450 million people by 2050. That’s what the population of India was in 1965. Of course, USA won’t have the problems that plague India … will we?
3. Xavier | 01.28.09
One third of pregnancies are unwanted in the United States, and I suppose that the rate is higher in developing countries.
Therefore, there is no need to have strict government policies, but just to facilitate access to family planning, through education of both girls and boys.
Iran has managed to reduce its birth rate significantly, by mandatory sexual eduction for both men and women wanting to get married.
We must also abandon the “more is better” fallacy that is present in many governments. Baby bonuses such as in Australia, where a cash sum of 4000 Aus$ is given to new mothers, only encourage irresponsible pregnancies.
That money should be better spent on eduction.
4. Paco Verin | 01.29.09
We have cleverly dodged infant mortality and increase life span, which increase the “consumptive time” of an individual (especially in the “consumer” nations).
Fear of death, and living apart from the natural world and its laws is the crux of the matter.
“The greatest antidote to rapidly growing population is prosperity and development,” Nordhaus says, is a naive, arrogant, over-intellectual comment. Technology cannot save us. We do not have time for such clever quips. We need to change what we value, distinguish “need” from “want,” and do a whole lot of restoration of the natural world.
This does not mean revert to living in caves. It does mean giving consumerism up, and devoting our attention to caring for the land, which will in turn care for us. Shall we put our time and energy into making and owning plastic stuff, or taking care of the soil and water and trees and air that allow us this magnificent life?
5. Bang | 01.29.09
The Earth’s population doubled since 1965. The rate of population change during that time was 1.6 percent. Since research suggest the population rate has slowed and will likely continue to slow you think you might be safe. However let’s assume it stayed a constant .75 percent growth rate per year. How long will it take to double the population at that rate? Long time right? Using the exponential function to determine the doubling time we have 70/.75 it would be 93 years. There will be 1.3 trillion people on the earth in less than 100 years unless something drastic happens. A trillion people vying for the limited resources of water, food, air. It is going to be ugly. If we are lucky a virus like the spanish flu will wipe out half of us and let the other half live in peace a few more years.
6. James Short | 01.29.09
“The greatest antidote to rapidly growing population is prosperity and development,” Nordhaus
This slowdown is a happy fact of the 20th century. It was caused by the emancipation of women, not by an increase in GDP or disposable income.
8. ZRJ | 01.30.09
The discussion gives hope and meaning but is ultimately irrelevant. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere has already exceeded the tipping point. So the answer to the question of how many people the planet can support is likely not in the billions. Mathematically, the answer is ultimately zero. If we do nothing but eat and breathe we still release methane and carbon dioxide. The ’solution’ is apt to be provided by the billion or so people who lack fresh water, another billion or so who depend on rapidly disappearing sea food, another billion or so who have lived marginally even in favorable times, another billion or so who are trapped by rising sea levels, another billion or so who are killed in conflict over meager resources, and another billion or so who die in the next iteration of a plague. Some people fall into more than one category, but there has been a history of underestimating the effects of climate change. It is a morbid scenario. The Dalai Lama says ‘If you have a solution to a problem, why worry? If you do not have a solution to a problem, why worry?’ Even so, it is hard not to.
9. Mike Moxcey | 01.30.09
Over-population is the most inconvenient truth there is. ‘Global Warming’ is a statement of a process, not of a problem. If the Earth were not already overcrowded and the climate changed, we would simply abandon certain areas and move to others as our ancestors did. Here’s another analysis: consider if we all followed the Christian/Buddhist ideal of loving each person like a brother, but we changed nothing else about humanity, such as our population growth and our need to eat food. We would end up starving to death together as we shared the last 10,000 grains of rice amongst 8 billion people. The only solution for long-term survival of Mankind is a migration into space. Achieving a never-ending perfect balance of population and resource usage on Earth is impossible, and the only other choices are 1) continued war, famine, and genocide, or 2) extinction of our species.
10. Robert | 01.30.09
Hard sell to people like me that live in the wide open spaces. The Earth is not overpopulated with people. The problem is the perspective of people who never leave the pavement or the cities and learn about the world from the idiot box and the news media which has no perspective of anything. The population of the area around Mexico City is about the same as the entire population of Canada and Australia combined. Prove the world is not overpopulated by simply getting off of the paved world. Remember, there are 160,000 miles of paved roads in America and 3,000,000 miles of unpaved roads. Doesn’t that get your wheels turning in your mind? Where do these roads go to? I know because I travel them all the time. They go to where the people don’t go, that is a much larger area than the places they do go. The world is not overpopulated, the perspective is simply small, news media small, 32 diagonal inches.
12. Mark Bahner | 01.30.09
“The United States remains the only developed country without an official population policy.”
Oh, brother. You might bother to mention that other developed countries (e.g. France) actually have official population policies intended to INCREASE their population:
http://sports.uniontrib.com/uniontrib/20060223/news_lz1n23read.html
13. Brian | 01.30.09
What is not discussed is that the many of the most technologically advanced and richest countries (except the US) are reproducing at a rate below replacement level. Japan and many European nations are getting very very old and are in a native population decline. Meanwhile, less developed nations are growing rapidly in population. The great die off will happen once there are no longer enough people living in the richest and most well developed nations to maintain sufficient technological advancement in food production, medical treatment and other aspects of technology that will assist the rest of the world in maintaining a high population. However, even before that will happen, the developed nations of the world with declining birthrates will bankrupt themselves caring for their aging peak population with comparitively few young workers.
Erhlich badly overestimated his numbers and dates, yet he is never held accountable.
14. Rick Saxton | 01.30.09
Actually, “developed” countries have the opposite problem. They do not have enough babies to keep their population level stable. They depend of “developing” countiries to increase their population. The problem is with “developing” countries. Unfortunately, it is the uneducated and poor who are expanding the population. It seems like a hopeless task.
However, if we can some how stabilize or reduce the human population, we need to prepare our cultures for it. Otherwise, we will be in the position where there are relatively too many senior citizens that cannot be supported by working population. Much like is going on right now in “developed” countries with the baby boomers.
Until we can educate the uneducated, help the poor to become more prosperous, and find ways of supporting senior citizens, the problem of over population in some areas and underpopulation in others will be with us.
15. Doug | 01.30.09
Since America is a democracy and we have various constitutional rights forcing lower birth rates will not happen. Whether it is religious mores or irresponsible people no politician can or will touch this. The problem is the same with consumerism (I agree with the principle of limiting it by individual choice). The answer maybe the unfortunate reality of the ages - war, disease, etc. I don’t believe anyone can fix it without a totalitarian control. And do we want this?
16. Elizabeth Tang | 01.30.09
Consumption truly is a significant problem because there is a cause and effect relationship between it and toxic waste. The more highly developed/urban a country is, the larger a footprint it leaves behind. Even if that country has a low birth rate, It will not be able to sustain it. The prosperous country will be swamped by immigrants with a culture regarding a high birth rate as a positive.
17. mike236 | 01.30.09
#5, your math is screwy. True at o.75% increase the population will double in about 95 years, from 6.8 billion to 13.6 billion and in another 95 years from 13.6 to 27.2 billion and in another 95 years from 27.2 billion to 54.4 billion. To reach your calamitous 1.3 trillion (1300 billion0 will take about 705 years.
18. MikeU | 01.30.09
It’s difficult to believe that anyone actually listens to Paul Ehrlich anymore, with his decades long track record of spectacularly bad “predictions” of doom. He’s predicted “mass starvation between 1970 and 1985″, “smog disasters” that would kill 200,000 in LA and NY in the mid-70s, a willingness to bet “even money that England will not exist in the year 2000″, and major scarcity of key minerals by 1985. He even made a wager on the last prediction (spanning 1980-1990), and lost. Badly.
The “population experts” continually underestimate the effects of (or growth rate of innnovation in) new technology, and their exaggerated, hysterical cries of “wolf!” only lower people’s trust in scientists over time. The same thing is happening with global warming - it ranks last in a survey of 20 important issues because people have overhyped crisis fatigue.
19. Richard Grossman | 01.31.09
I am happy to see this article in the Monitor! I have a couple of comments, however.
I am not sure what the fraction of pregnancies in the USA are unwanted, but a good study found that 49% are unplanned.
Dr. Joel Cohen should have noted that it is estimated that 201 million couples world-wide wish to limit limit their fertility, but do not have access to modern family planning methods. If contraception were made available to all people, we would certainly be closer to stopping population growth.
In response to #10 above, it is true that there are areas on the planet with low population density. That doesn’t prove, howeveer, that the planet is not overpopulated. Overall, we are using 40% more resources than the planet can supply sustainably (www.ecofoot.net).
This month is Global Population Speakout (www.gpso.wordpress.com). The time has come to recognize that population growth has serious drawbacks, and to do something about it. Fortunately our new President will facilitate people voluntarily limiting their fertility.
20. Glenn Lego | 01.31.09
The fallacy of China’s “one child per family” policy was played out before the whole world last summer when the earthquake killed so many school children. And the televised images of the distraught parents who saw their future generations wiped out in a moment! Remember their population control “solutions” are not voluntary but quite brutally enforced. They have population control police that go from door to door searching for “illegally pregnant” women and when they are found they are strapped to tables, forcibly aborted and sterilized. Gives a whole new meaning to “Pro-choice,” doesn’t it?
21. boom selecta | 01.31.09
paco vira-your right on Nordhaus is putting out arrogant over intellectual ideas. i don’t really know why they were even included in this article. i think it was towards the beginning of the article that conelly adresses the fact that developed countries consume more resources than underdeveloped countries (and produce more greenhouse gasses) so if the whole world underwent an economic developement wich ended with everyone being prosperous the birth rate might decline (as he irrevently pointed out) but we’d still be screwed because everyone would be consuming just like the developed countries are now, which is too much. robert #10 there is alot of wide open space in the world buddy (sahara baby!) and you should definitly be enjoying it but what your missing is that its a matter of numbers moreso then where those numbers are located.
in regards to all these comments about “why should the good developed countries limit their population when the poor ones don’t? why should the good die off?” i got news for you. money rules this world and when the water and food starts to dwindle i gaurantee you the poor and third world countries will die off first. if these countries can’t provide their people with a decent standard of living in times like these i don’t feel they will miraculously get it together in times of real emergency.
as developed countries we should be putting birth rate policies into place. not only are we responsible for a significant portion of the damage done but who sets the bar that undeveloped countries strive to reach? its such a touchy subject that people don’t even want to go near it but i feel like if some good minds focused on it a little bit most of america could be satisfied. for example if you have three kids you have to adopt two more. five minutes of thought from some random guy. no jail time but still deterrents in place-not a serious plan or anything but we have to start thinking about it now and when we go on forums like this we can talk about solutions instead of playing ego games. SOCIAL PROGRAMS WILL NOT WORK ON THIS ONE. America hasn’t faced too many real crises and i think that is reflected in our response to the ones we’ve seen. global warming and overpopulation cannot be willed out of existence or ignored out of existence we gotta take serious steps.
p.s. mike236 it doesn’t matter if #5’s math was screwy because the higher estimates for how many humans this planet could take are around 20 billion so with correct math that leaves us how many years? 27 billion in 190 years…theavy
22. kiwichick | 02.01.09
our food supplies are totally dependant on oil
on average it takes 10 units of oil to produce 1 unit of food
global crude oil production has been on a plateau since 2005
arable land /capita is declining due to erosion climate change and urban sprawl
global marine harvest is also declining; big problems ahead!!!!!
23. Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. | 02.01.09
This will reduce the population.
Global crude oil production peaked in 2008.
The media, governments, world leaders, and public should focus on this issue.
Global crude oil production had been rising briskly until 2004, then plateaued for four years. Because oil producers were extracting at maximum effort to profit from high oil prices, this plateau is a clear indication of Peak Oil.
Then in August and September of 2008 while oil prices were still very high, global crude oil production fell nearly one million barrels per day, clear evidence of Peak Oil (See Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of “Oil Watch Monthly,” December 2008, page 1) http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2008_december_oilwatch_monthly.pdf.
Peak Oil is now.
Credit for accurate Peak Oil predictions (within a few years) goes to the following (projected year for peak given in parentheses):
* Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2007)
* Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of “Oil Watch Monthly” (2008)
* Tony Eriksen, Oil stock analyst; Samuel Foucher, oil analyst; and Stuart Staniford, Physicist [Wikipedia Oil Megaprojects] (2008)
* Matthew Simmons, Energy investment banker, (2007)
* T. Boone Pickens, Oil and gas investor (2007)
* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2005)
* Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton professor and retired shell geologist (2005)
* Sam Sam Bakhtiari, Retired Iranian National Oil Company geologist (2005)
* Chris Skrebowski, Editor of “Petroleum Review” (2010)
* Sadad Al Husseini, former head of production and exploration, Saudi Aramco (2008)
* Energy Watch Group in Germany (2006)
* Fredrik Robelius, Oil analyst and author of “Giant Oil Fields” (2008 to 2018)
Oil production will now begin to decline terminally.
Within a year or two, it is likely that oil prices will skyrocket as supply falls below demand. OPEC cuts could exacerbate the gap between supply and demand and drive prices even higher.
Independent studies indicate that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
“By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.”
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
Documented here:
http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
24. Haldun Abdullah | 02.01.09
Every human is born with an energy budget. On the average we need between 2000-2500 kcal of daily energy intake (through food) for healthy survival as recomended by experts. Taking the upper limit, the yearly need per capita is roughly one million kcal. Assuming that we can make this food edible and at a close location for consumption at 10% efficiency then, every person must consume an energy value of 10 million kcal yearly for his/her entire life.
In recent years, the actual total energy spent per capita per year in Germany, France and UK was 40-45 million kcal while that consumed in the US and Canada was more than 92 million kcal. The total yearly energy spent per capita in Turkey, China and India was 11.2, 9.0, 3.4 million kcal. respectively. Most of the energies spent worldwide, so far, were of the non-renewable type.
Noting that 1. Humans are born outside (in spite of)their will power, and that they will instinctively try(!)to live forever, but will eventually die (also outside their own willpower). 2. Once born everyone must consume from the finite energy resources for survival,
we see that as per our understanding of the laws of nature and of human rights we must reproduce to continue the human race. So, we can say that the two children as proposed by Ehrlich relate to human rights. The third child and more would, in my opinion, clearly raise a human resposibility and obligations issue since they will be consuming energy that should be saved for every family’s two children. With this in mind it seems that the issue of global sustainable population could be handled with a quantitative approach where each political entity (even a small city)could be handled separately.
25. alix cleverdon | 02.01.09
If you consider the estimated gross world production in 2000 to be US$43.6 trillion (1000 billion in the short scale numerical system) and look at the global population figure of 6.756 billion. Divide the currently used and processed units of that gross world production equally and every living man, woman and child stands to receive $44,000 per annum of global resources. Essentially it is obvious that earth has the capacity to easily provide a healthy lifestyle for all world citizens. The problem is man’s inability to correctly harness and share earth’s resources in a humanitarian way.
Poor harvests are not to blame, inadequate economic policies are our stumbling block. The global population is beginning to decrease quite naturally, deaths are rising and births are falling. Less children are born to capitalist societies due to financial constraints, so called developing nations are more rurally based and therefore have not become slaves to money yet. The problems in developing countries are caused by wars which are generated by capitalism as the populations there resist the onslaught of consumerist culture. Their citizens are treated as second class by the powerful capitalist governments, racism and ignorance are symptoms of corporate greed. The blinkers of materialism negate the reality of the human condition as a child of nature and adventure. We are herded into industrial compounds and employed by task masters to promote destruction and consumerism, through the influence of souless promissory paper.
26. UncomfortableLogic | 02.01.09
You guys are thinking too hard. There’s probably just nothing to do in poor undeveloped countries (think kids pushing around tires with two sticks), so naturally the population just ends up having too much unprotected sex. I doubt they really want to have all those children. Lets set up some clinics for free voluntary contraception surgery. Make more jobs, less people. Everyones happy. And as far as families in the U.S. having too many children. I think a little tax punishment for over-procreation is way overdue.
27. SteveA | 02.01.09
Some of these comments are really good. It good to see that some people understand the idea of Diachronic Competition (stealing resources from future generations) and we have some really big problems that Nature is likely to settle for us.
Men Argue, Nature Acts - Voltaire.
ps MikeU - you really need to read William Catton if you think technology is a fix.
28. Judy | 02.01.09
Don’t worry! The eugenists are busy at work and have been for a very long time. They are killing us with chemicals. Chemicals in our water, food, the air (chemtrails) and in our prescription medications are getting rid of us slowly but surely. Just ask Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Rockerfeller and any of the New World Order criminals. Just googe Eugenics and a name. You can read for yourself!
29. I’m not so smart | 02.02.09
There are a lot of iron-fisted solutions suggested here, earnestly justified by the projected catastrophe. My favorite is from xavier (#3) - to model ourselves on Iran:
“Iran has managed to reduce its birth rate significantly, by mandatory sexual education for both men and women wanting to get married.”
I’ll bet they have “mandatory sexual education”, considering that Iran is a theocratic dictatorship where a woman can be legally stoned to death for bringing “dishonor” to her family. I also have to recognize xavier’s hilarious choice to applaud a country where the economy is almost entirely based on pumping oil and selling it to the West!
I agree with you on one thing - the fewer children (especially girls) destined to live their lives in a place like Iran, the better.
31. iduhpgyf | 02.03.09
#22: “on average it takes 10 units of oil to produce 1 unit of food”
That’s completely meaningless unless you specify which units. (Barrels? gallons? calories? chicken legs?…). I’d be curious where you heard this idea and how they came up with this.
32. Byron | 02.04.09
These spin doctors like Nordhaus want to delay, delay, delay any kind of responsible population program so they spout fantasies like predictions that the population will just start going down on its own in the future so we don’t need to do anything substantive about it. No, this is too important an issue to leave to hope and chance. The world needs to take this problemas seriousl as climate change. It’s already devastating the world ecology. Any nation that is not self-sufficient and must rely upon the resources of other nations to survive is, by definition, overpopulated. Further, any population which must reap so huge a percentage of it’s own resources that other species (which also have a right to survive) must struggle to survive is, by definition, overpopulated. Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s premier science organization has stated in the ” AAAS Atlas of Population & Environment”, “we have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century”.
33. Patrick Cappola | 02.04.09
These peope scare me. Next thing you know is they will have voluentary suicide….children quotas….limited medical care that is intended saves lives….who the heck knows what else. Now am I to feel guilty for living?
35. sue young | 02.04.09
byron climate change is a product of overpopulation as is the extinction of all these species, thats what makes the population rate our biggest problem and thats why it requires alot of thought. patrick coppola #33 no ones suggesting mandatory suicides (but i don’t see the problem with children quotas-can’t imagine why someone would NEED to have six children…). futhermore no one is suggesting you’ll should feel guilty for being alive, most of us just think you should feel responsible for the earth that supports us. if you aren’t worried already than these comments shouldn’t hurt. the population has multiplied by four in the past century and with it species are dying off in excess (member the bee scare-plant polination?) and since 1995 we’ve had the 10 warmest years since we’ve been recording the weather. one may think of having a limit on your ability to reproduce as a problem but when you compare it to the latter it really starts to look like a solution.
36. Mark G. | 02.05.09
Lots of corrections…
1) “Doom and gloomers” do NOT assume technology is static.
Half of the world’s living Nobel prize winners signed
a statement saying that population can’t grow
exponentially forever. The Nobel winners are the people
who are creating new technology — they aren’t denying
that there will be new technology. They are saying
that technology won’t necessarily keep up with
growth of population and per-capita demand.
Even Paul Ehrlich never said that technology is static.
2) Matthew Connelly says that the problem is the number
of households, not the number of people? Well, all
the kids born today will start their own households
25 years from now, so if the number of households
matters, then the number of births / people matters, too.
3) Not overpopulated because there are still some
roads that aren’t paved? Those unpaved roads
lead to the places that grow our food and our
lumber. Just because a piece of land isn’t
paved over, or doesn’t have a person living
on it, doesn’t mean that we’re not using it.
We are consuming resources faster than we and
the earth produce them (we are drawing down
accumulated resources from the past). So we are
overpopulated (and over-consuming).
4) There’s no problem because a few rich countries
have falling birth rates? Not true. You can’t
average birth rates in growing and shrinking
countries. As country #1 grows, its population
growth has more and more impact (because that
country’s population is
a larger share of total population). As country #2
shrinks, its population growth has less and less
impact. Thus the overall population growth tends
to converge towards the rate of the fastest-growing
country, not the average of the growth rates of
growing and shrinking countries.
5) Ehrlich was wrong in his gloomy predictions?
Ehrlich predicted that at least 200 million people
would die of starvation in the 1970s. The actual
number who starved was 180 million. Yes, Ehrlich
was too pessimistic — but not by much.
6) China’s 1-child policy was a disaster because
an earthquake killed so many school children?
Gee, would it have been better if every family
had 2 children and at least twice as many children
had been killed in the earthquake??
7) Redistributing from the rich to the poor
would solve the problem?
No. This would definitely buy some time
(which we desperately need!), and many of us
think we should do it on equity grounds,
but if the population continues
growing exponentially (or even less than
exponentially), we will eventually exceed the
carrying capacity, even if the average person
consumed 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/10 of what they do today.
Growth cannot continue forever.
37. Vanessa Elliott | 02.05.09
This is a scary subject to divulge into but look at the strains our huge population is putting on our planet, from oil to global warming and beyond. As the article was discussing one of our big problems is not only our huge population but also the major consumers we are all turning into. It seems like it would make sense to put some sort of limit on the number of children per household just until we can get other things secured like the use of renewable resources such as wind, solar and hydro power. Investing in energy efficiency and implementing energy conservation measures could help us cut down on some of the strains on our planet. Also simple things like birth control and education can be used to hold back our quickly growing Earth.
38. Chris Maddigan | 02.07.09
It seems ironic that environmentalists who claim that is arrogant and wrong that man should attempt to control Nature somehow believe they can. They claim to know that man is part of Nature and subject to its law but don’t seem to understand the implications of this.
If they analyzed the situation correctly they would understand that, from a biological point of view, environmentalism is a disease that reduces the fertility of infected populations. The result will be the reduction in the numbers of those susceptible and an increase in those immune to the disease. Unfortunately for environmentalists those populations that are immune are generally those whose religious and cultural beliefs see human life as special and more important than other life.
Environmentalist can rant and rave as much as they want but they cannot control the human population.
39. Don M | 02.07.09
Population has become the single biggest cause of all our problems: pollution, poverty, disease, war. The bigger the populaton gets, the greater these problems will become. We limited ourselves to 2 kids…and sometimes I feel sad we went that far because things just keep getting worse for the planet. But we all know this don’t we?
40. icewater | 02.08.09
@31. iduhpgyf:
I have seen this ratio expressed this way:
“As of the year 2002, approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US.”
It was on this website, which cites another source for the data:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
text-search for ‘calorie’ to find the statement.
41. albert hadjihil | 02.21.09
Everything around us is the creation of God including everyone of us,so no one can stop the growing of the worlds population.However,i believe that the rising growth of world pupulation is one factor in causing shortage of the worldfood and space of human to develop more about his life.In other words,small space plus small opportunity equals to less develop and the result is that the basic consumption of the people is not addressed anymore.
one thing im imagine to minimize this kind of problem is that people must create not a policy nor a law about population control but something medicine that is specialized in controlling sexual desire.Because whereever you are today, you can’t avoid to encounter that your sexual ego were stimulated.So,in my laymans mind maybe it is obliged than having sex education were in fact not to prevent sexual desire but to add.And also the moral values on this is seriously affected because it promote whatever form of sexual cohabitting only just follow such policy.
42. KAY | 02.22.09
What we need to do first - is get off our imperial high horses.. Then we need to address ALL the reasons people have children - not just ignorance, lack of access to contraception..
Sterility, nature’s great population control has been overcome.
Look at our own country, as well as India - where reproductive technologies are widely popular. (who doesn’t know someone who has had it? insurance usually even pays for it.)
we need to address THAT human need/ drive for reproduction. Then realistic discussions of population control can begin..
43. Dave in Iowa | 03.08.09
Living in the midwest farmbelt, I look out from my house and see thousands of trees. Imagine IF wood was the first option for heat/cooking/etc. How long you think before there isn’t a tree for miles? Ask that Q to yourself when you leave your home in the morning. Also, it is petrochemicals that make fertilizer so effective. No, mother nature as it stands right now without technology cannot support the population. I do think we have passed the tipping point on so many levels. It’s gonna be a very interesting next 20 years.
45. Jeff | 09.21.09
We should be workig toward uniform global population control measures, but it will never happen. The best thing would be to start with a gobal limit of 3 children per person, i.e. an individual can only father or mother 3 children in their life, but this will never happen. Instead we’ll just sit by and watch as we drive off the cliff cause that’s easier to do.
46. pat | 09.21.09
American births are already below replacement. According to my freebie 1992 Rand McNally, pop density in India, a third the size of the US and with substantially less potable water, was 707 per square mile while the US was 67 per square mile. India’s population density has increased by about 25% in the intervening seventeen years, even allowing for the huge NRI migration during that same period. America’s population growth in the last tweny years has been solely via immigration. Economic emigrees tend to be the most tenacious, ambitious of their brethren (since it is a big risk with a possiblity of no pay off, it isn’t for the weak or lazy) so this tends to skim off those of the underclasses with the greatest unexplored potential.
America has self-imposed population constraints until this current breeding generation. Birth rates among economically successful couples actually rose in the last ten years. Did the collapsing credit bubble collapse the birthing bubble? Not according to the CDC.
It isn’t that birth rates are up globally - they are not. Death rates are down. Wars kill fewer people than they once did (the number of American dead in eight years of Iraq was one tenth the number of dead in seven years in Viet Nam which was slightly lower than the number of dead in three days at Gettysburg.) Disease doesn’t kill as many (despite the hype, H1N1 didn’t kill any more people than any other annual flu season. Even the 1918 flu only killed 5% of the world population and that in highly congested areas with poor sanitation - and during a period where even in America, people still believed you went to the hospital to die.) Infant mortality was down globally though the last few years has seen a slight skewing of the figures since we are now treating what was once a terminal early birth as a source for heroic efforts in affluent countries, which calculates them as newborns rather than premature stillbirths. And to the increase in multiples from technically assisted pregnancies (which have a high order of failure) and the infant mortality figures are really comparing apples and oranges when comparing yesterday’s statistics against today’s.
People don’t die. The global life expectancy a hundred years ago was around 40. Fifty years ago, in affluent countries, it was 67. Today it is 76. The number of centigenarians in affluent countries is astounding.
So, if the West, because we consume so much and generate so much waste, allows itself to go extinct through failing to breed, do you really think the world would be better off?
47. Jim | 09.21.09
Certainly in places like Africa where they have 15 children without a nickel to their name and cannot support their families it is even a bigger problem..
Different ethnicities should be limited at different degrees based on the sheer amount of birthrates over the years to come.
48. Laura | 09.28.09
I think the post above made some interesting points, on a related side note I found a used version of Reproductive Technologies and the Law which is directly related to this topic for less than the bookstores at http://www.belabooks.com/books/9780820559865.htm
49. even stevens | 10.07.09
lets just face it, half the population needs to die to make life possible for the rest of us. Period!
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1. Anita Warren | 01.28.09
It was great to see Paul Ehrlich quoted in the article. The impact that his book, “The Population Bomb,” had on me when I read it in 1968 is still as strong as ever today with me as I hear and see how over-populated the world is today and the massive effect it is having on Planet Earth. The book should be required reading starting in middle school, coupled with a discussionon the effects of over-population and of that it should be slowed. But you’re correct, “population-control” is a politic hot potato. Nobody wants to stop little ones from coming into the world. Erlich doesn’t either, I believe, just, as my grandparents would say, all in moderation.