Tut, Tut, Tutsi, goodbyeeeeeee . . .
I am so going to Hell . . .
This may be overstating it a touch. China’s population is ~1.32 billion. The world population was about this much in 1875 or so.
Current China plus India is ~2.44 billion, which is roughly the world total in 1947.
Over-simplifying things here is a big no-no, but it’s always been my theory that part of the reason you hear so few Club of Rome-type predictions nowadays has to do with air travel.
Three to for decades ago, the percentage of those who could afford air travel was significantly less than it is today. And as any of those who’s ever had a window seat on a jet liner can tell you, even in the most populous areas of the world, there’s still plenty of land to live and/or farm on.
How dare you inject facts into this discussion. 
My understanding is that economic growth and better health tends to reduce population growth, as families find they do not have to create children every year to ensure that some number survive. In addition, birth control in developed nations, at least, is a no-brainer, and no longer controversial, despite the best efforts of certain religious groups.
I believe the birth rate was trending down even before AIDs, so though condoms for AIDS prevention helps, I doubt they’re the major contributing factor.
(Anyhow, if the OLPC program catches on, we’ll be creating a large population of geeks in the deveoping nations, and that should cut the legs right out from under population growth. )
However, citizens of developed, industrial countries have a much larger resource ‘footprint’. This is a serious concern with the rapidly industrializing China; 1.2 billion people, each demanding the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by the vast majority of Americans and Europeans, would double the demand on agricultural, mineral, energy, and other natural resources. It’s not clear that even the current level of resource use is sustainable in the long term, so a flattening or even slight reduction in population may not give relief. A world population that makes the kind of resource demands that North America and Western Europe does now is almost certainly unsustainable. And a rapid decrease in population may have its own undesirable economic effects, which is why nations in which population growth is going red are trying to push incentives to encourage people to have children.
At some point, a reckoning will come due; it may not be catastrophic, but it will require a dramatic change in either resource allocation or resource usage. Hopefully development of energy production, desalination, agriculture, and ‘green’ manufacturing methods will soften the blow, but with current resources and technology the population cannot continue to grow to the predicted level of 10-12 billion and be indefinitely sustainable.
Stranger
I was gonna say something about this, but I didn’t want to call Zoe old or anything… 
Well, maybe Zoe is. So, Zoe, what was the Straight Dope like when it ran on a Difference Engine? Were there as many timeouts?
That’s an illusion, but one that’s easily embraced. In fact, I think within one month a couple of years ago, I saw two different columns, both by not overly-bright conservatives, that both said: “From my airplane seat, I couldn’t help noticing that most of the acreage in the U.S. isn’t covered with concrete yet. We’ve got plenty of room!”
So, because people don’t like to think through complex issues, you may be right.
ETA: If I had a drug that would cut human fertility to .1% of its current rate, I’d put it in the water supply. Population pressure is probably going to destroy the civilization I’ve come to enjoy.
So in other words, you’d be happy to wipe out the human race to ‘save’ the Earth. Is that right?
The population bomb was a population bust. There are plenty of old threads on this topic. Fertility is already dropping all around the world. The latest U.N. population council projections have the Earth’s population leveling off at under 9 billion, or possibly even declining to as low as 3.6 billion by the year 2100. Fertility has even declined in many 3rd world countries. Japan is facing a severe population decline in the next 50 years. Europe is breeding below replacement levels. The United States and Canada are only slightly above replacement, with immigration being a big factor in population increases here.
And I’m guessing we might see estimates going even lower when the next population projection is done by the U.N. Population Council, they’ve consistently erred on the high side and had to correct downwards in subsequent reviews. We’ll see if that continues.
No, that’s not at all what he said. But it does make for a nice effigy to burn.
You’re going to have to cite that last claim. I can’t recall reading anything that projects such a dramatic overall drop in global population, though the reduction of population in some European nations and Japan is expected to be nothing short of precipitous and carries its own economic reprecussions.
But even assuming this is true, it still masks the real depth of the issue. Sure, evidenced birth rates are dropping in industrialized nations; the costs associated with having children are rising, and the traditional benefit of extra labor around the farm or support in old age has disappeared. From an economic standpoint having many children is a liability, and in many industrialized nations the stigma of not having children is greatly lessoned, replaced by material attainments. And therein lies the problem; the amount of resources used by a resident of Europe, the Pacific Rim, or North America (above the Rio Grande) is many time what a typical resident of Africa or Central Asia has. It’s not a matter of X (people) times Y (resource demand) = Z (total resources used); even with a much lower population of population-heavy nations of China and India, the United States and Western Europe take the lion’s share of resources, including resources that are not readily renewable or supplanted by others (see the above discussion about the use of fossil water for agriculture and industry). Even assuming technological advances in energy production that release humanity from the limits and hazards of fossil fuels, we will still require intensive agriculture that is not, in its current guise, sustainable. And as India and China (and other nations) become more industrialized and wealthy, they’re going to demand their share of the rapidly disappearing pie.
That doesn’t mean that the direst predictions of the Club of Rome and neo-Malthusiasts will come to pass, but there will certainly be significant adjustments in how resources are obtained and distributed, and that may have significant impacts on future society. This is not a trivial issue, and simplistic dismissals based upon the notion that if it hasn’t happened yet it must not be a problem are not persuasive or well-considered.
Stranger
I understood that the US is now growing at over replacement rate, almost uniquely among Western countries. Certainly the birth rate here in Australia has ticked up significantly in the last 10 years or so.
Australia: 1.76 births per woman up from a low of 1.7.
The effect of both these increases is exaggerated by record immigration rates.
Well, now, I was wondering about this. What effect WOULD a fertility rate of .1% of its current rate have on the human race?
(This is ignoring the squeamishness of the whole “I know best” vibe I get.)
I’m pretty sure a 0.1%-of-current birth rate would be catastrophic, myself. By the time Baldwin was ready to retire and enjoy the fruits of his undestroyed civilization, there won’t be any doctors to take care of him. At least there won’t be any kids on his lawn. Or pretty much anyone’s lawn, for that matter.
A drop to 50% of current might be tolerable. Of course, what we really need is for the Baby Boomers to politely start dropping dead in large numbers. Hop to it, people!
As an afterthought, if Baldwin’s plan came to pass everyone would start claiming Children of Men was a prophetic film and it would get played over and over again, which for me is Hell on Earth because that movie really sucked.
Let’s review what Baldwin said: “Population pressure is probably going to destroy the civilization I’ve come to enjoy.” He doesn’t say he wants to kill off humanity to save the world; he states that increases in population will choke off the ability to sustain the same level of ‘civilization’ that he enjoys. It’s an entirely selfish statement about maintaining the present lifestyle.
Admittedly, a three order of magnitude reduction in fertility would have vast and undesirable effects on civilization; if it happened suddenly, the result would be more devastating that even George Stewart could have imagined; as the population became elderly and incapable of functionality civilization would have to dispose of those people or fall apart. But aside that, in modern industrialized nations, the fraction of the population directly involved in agriculture hovers around the 1-2% range, a mass reduction in population wouldn’t threaten the ability to produce food. The more pressing concern would be retaining intellectual knowledge and ability to progress in the science and technology fields. On the plus side, we probably wouldn’t have as much time for political debate shows and reality t.v. I’m not so certain that this isn’t worthy of a holocaust, especially whenever Bill O’Reilly opens his idiot release valve.
Stranger
Nonsense. We already have too many peeps, and 50% more is way too many. We are getting by with it now b/c the footprint of most of them is fairly small. As that average per-capita footprint rises, the global impact will rise. When every Tanzanian gets to the point where he’s consuming like an Al Gore, a “leveling off” of currently industrialized countries ain’t gonna be the answer.
I am also skeptical of the whole “leveling-off” argument. There is no guarantee the trend will continue. It’s too early to tell. It is driven by narcissism and nothing more. It basically costs too much to have kids in a typical western culture. If that changes, the birth rate may well climb again. In addition, we aren’t croaking as fast as we used to, and if that really changes–if we solve old age–we are totally screwed.
The 3.6 B figure is really at odds with any reasonable estimate unless the Big Comet comes along. We’ve got 6B or so now, and they are easily going to live longer than ever before.
I am sticking with Bob Malthus.
The 3.6 billion number is the ‘low range’ estimate of the U.N. population Council. 8-9 billion is the median estimate. The high estimate I can’t recall offhand, but you can extrapolate.
Stranger on a Train: He said that if he had his way, he’d reduce human fertility to .1% of its current rate, which is essentially zero. In two generations, humanity would be an endangered species or gone completely.
And while the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s energy, it also produces 25% of the world’s goods - much of it for export. If you look at energy consumed per dollar of GDP generated, the U.S. is among the most efficient countries.
You are kidding, right? Reducing population to .1% of it’s CURRENT reproduction rate would make the entire species extinct in 2 generations. It’s a wish for the end of the human species. A reduction to 10% of it’s current rate would probably destroy the human species in a few additional generations. On has but to look at how Europe’s rate is only slightly below replacement (1.0) and has a rather profound effect on their declining population. Set that to (.001 or .1% of replacement) and you are talking about an imploding population…and that’s for countries that START at above replacement. Looking at a chart of Europe, many countries, especially in Eastern Europe are currently at below .75 reproduction.
I think the original poster didn’t fully grasp what a reduction to .1% of current reproduction MEANS…and it seems he wasn’t alone. Sheesh.
-XT
Quick Google search turned up this chart showing population decline in Europe as of 2000 (sorry, on the way to work and doing this on my phone). Only 3 countries are shown in the green…Turkey, Albania and Iceland…and none of them are what I would call excellent reproduction rates.
-XT
Thread from 2004: Can nine billion people enjoy the standard of living of the rich?
The two of you are the only ones who have said anything about “two generations”. And while it is convenient to focus on one offhand hyperbolic statement, it in no way addresses the more substantive issues brought up. Citing low end population estimates and ignoring the impact in increasing per capita resource demands of nations transitioning into a modern industrial society is disingenuous at best.
While I’ll agree that the apparently inequitable distribution of resources has justification in terms of the technology developed in the U.S. and Europe which has subsequently benefitted the rest of the world, I’d like to see a cite that the united states produces 25% of the world’s real goods. GDP is an illusionary measure of this, as uses the local value of goods and services; manufactured exports from the U.S. are negligible compared to nations like China. Comparing the GDP of a services-based economy like the U.S. (especially when a large portion of that “value” is based upon internal inflation of real estate and resources) to a nation like India or China is deceptive.
The CIA World Factbook Population Growth Rate shows essentially all nations of Europe, save Germany and the nations of the former East Bloc which have had estimated negative growth rates since the 'Seventies, have positive growth rates. (The East Bloc nations tend to have much older populations, both because of the impacts of Communism and because the brain drain in the post-Autumn of Nations have resulted in the younger and more mobile populations to move to the West.) It’s true that some nations, such as Italy, expect to have negative rates in the near future, but the fact that hugely populous nations like India an Pakistan have annual growth rates of 1.6% and 1.8% respectively dwarfs the losses. Exacerbating this is the fact that growth in the latter nations is dependent upon non-renewable agricultural resources. India is already seeing shortfalls in grain production, their first since the Green Revolution, and water for residential consumption and irrigation is declining rapidly.
The Green Revolution which supported all of this growth was dependent upon common resources which are not, for the most part, readily renewed. Denying that this will have a significant and likely severe impact on continued growth and population sustainment is an exercise in head planting.
Stranger