Inspired by eek's typical comments here and in the spirit of debunking irrational fears of a coming Oilmageddon, let's look at some of the ample evidence that overpopulation is little more than an idiot's cause, typical leftist crap that gets put out and taken as Gospel without any real thought or investigation by its adherents.
A recent article by Phillip Longman in the Australian Financial Review:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The Empty Cradle
Both day-to-day experience and the media frequently suggest that the quality of life enjoyed in the West is under threat by population growth. Sprawling suburban development is making traffic worse and reducing opportunities to enjoy nature. Televised images of Third World famine, war and environmental degradation prompt some to wonder, "Why do these people have so many kids?" Immigrants and other people's children wind up competing for jobs, access to health care, parking spaces, favourite fishing holes, hiking paths and spots at the beach.
Yet a closer look at demographic trends shows that the rate of world population growth has fallen by more than 40 per cent since the late 1960s. And forecasts by the United Nations and other organisations show that, even in the absence of major wars or pandemics, the number of human beings on the planet could well start to decline within the lifetime of today's children. Demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis predict that human population will peak at 9 billion by 2070 and then start to contract. Long before then, many nations will shrink in absolute size, and the average age of the world's citizens will rise dramatically. Moreover, the populations that will age fastest are in the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. During the remainder of this century, even sub-Saharan Africa will probably grow older than Europe is today.
The root cause of these trends is falling birthrates. Today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972. No industrialised country still produces enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population ageing. Germany could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of what was once East Germany over the next half-century. Russia's population is already contracting by three quarters of a million a year. Japan's population, meanwhile, is expected to peak as early as 2005, and then to fall by as much as one third over the next 50 years - a decline equivalent, the demographer Hideo Ibe has noted, to that experienced in mediaeval Europe during the plague.
Although many factors are at work, the changing economics of family life is the prime factor in discouraging childbearing. In nations rich and poor, under all forms of government, as more and more of the world's population moves to urban areas in which children offer little or no economic reward to their parents, and as women acquire economic opportunities and reproductive control, the social and financial costs of childbearing continue to rise.
In the US, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through to age 18, according to the Department of Agriculture, exceeds $US200,000 - not including college. And the cost in forgone wages can easily exceed $US1 million, even for families with modest earning power. Meanwhile, although social security and private pension plans depend critically on the human capital created by parents, they offer the same benefits, and often more, to those who avoid the burdens of raising a family.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Continued here.
An article from BBC Online earlier this year:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
World Population Growth 'Falling'
The growth rate of the world population has slowed down, according to the US Census Bureau.
Its report says there were 74 million more people in 2002 - well below the 87 million added in 1989-90.
The rate of growth peaked 40 years ago, when it stood at about 2.2% a year. The bureau partly attributes the drop to women having fewer children.
It also projects a population decline in Africa because of the lower life expectancy due to HIV-Aids.
In 1990 women around the world gave birth to 3.3 children on average, the report says.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Full article here.
Austrian scientific group the IIASA beleives that global population will peak at about 9 billion around the year 2070 and then fall off, possibly dramatically so (see here.)
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Lie Back and Think of Australia
It's called the baby drought or the birth strike - and, writes Adele Horin, the nation's economic future depends on finding the policies to turn it around.
Around the world governments are desperate for babies. But young people won't partner and they won't procreate - or not soon enough to arrest falling birth- rates.
In Japan the carefree young are labelled "parasite singles", and the government tries to shame them into marriage and parenthood. In Singapore the government runs a dating agency that organises cruises for singles.
In Italy, women get a generous incentive to produce a second bambino. In the US, George Bush dedicates $1.5 billion to promote marriage. And in Australia the Treasurer, Peter Costello, exhorts us to have "one for your husband, one for your wife, and one for your country" after he announces a new $3,000 maternity allowance and $19 billion extra in family payments to make parenthood more attractive.
Despite the Prime Minister declaring that "families are a nation's greatest asset", and extolling the virtues of marriage, the marriage rate among young adults has plummeted. In just 15 years there has been a precipitous drop in the proportions of Australians in their 20s and 30s with partners, either married or de facto. And the nation's birthrate has been declining for 40 years. (It's now 1.7 babies per woman.)
Yet many Australians probably think overpopulation is the big global issue - too many babies, not too few. Even in Australia, most of us live in crowded cities where commodities, from water to parking spaces to a spot on the beach, are getting scarce. We're worried about the degradation of our environment. Sydney is expected to grow by an extra million people by 2022, mainly through immigration, and planners are trying to figure out where to put them all.
Who needs more babies? But if the world is overpopulated why are so many governments trying to bring on a baby boom?
A CLOSER look shows most parts of the world have managed to avert a population explosion, and now face a different challenge: an ageing and declining population. The world's population growth has slowed dramatically since the late 1960s. Family planning programs are still desperately needed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth rates outpace governments' capacity to cope.
But now 59 countries over the next 50 years will actually shrink in size. And no industrialised country is producing enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population ageing.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Full article here.
The United Nations project studying aging trends from 1950 on concludes that the population of the earth is getting older substantially more rapidly than it is getting bigger (and that this has its own problems, some far worse than overpopulation.)
Another article by the aforementioned Longman, published originally in the Baltimore Sun:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Turn on your TV these days and you're bound to see images of Iraqi youths dancing atop burned out Humvees or of Mexican youths slipping across border fences. We see Liberian child soldiers brandishing rifles and Palestinian kids throwing stones. No wonder so many Americans form the impression that Third World population growth is a major threat to global stability.
Yet these images capture only the surface of life and miss a deeper demographic reality. Nearly everyone knows that the United States and other industrialized countries are all aging societies. Europe already has more elders than youths, and by mid-century all of the United States will be older than Florida is today. Yet the most rapidly aging areas of the world, according to the United Nations, the U.S. Census and virtually all other demographic forecasters, are the very places we today associate with destabilizing youth bulges - with the Middle East being among the most rapidly aging of all.
Iran, for example, is aging four times faster than the United States. It took 50 years for the United States to go from a median age of 30 to today's 35. It would take another 50 years for the median age here to reach 40. But while the median age in the United States will be increasing by just five years, the median age in Iran will be increasing by 20 years, reaching 40.2 by mid-century, according to U.N. projections. Similarly, Egypt is aging at three times the rate of the United States, and Iraq nearly 2 1/2 times faster. Virtually anywhere one looks in the developing world, the pattern is the same.
Between 2000 and 2050, Mexico's median age will increase 20 years, leaving half the population over age 42 and making the country older than its northern neighbor. On current trends, 30 percent of China's population will be over 60 by mid-century. Even Africa is aging at nearly double the rate of the United States. Countries such as France and Japan at least got a chance to grow rich before they grew old. Now, most developing countries are growing old before they get rich.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Continued here.
Overpopulation trivia: Al Gore, once one of the world's most vocal proponents of population control, has four kids. As P.J. O'Rouke said in All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty the typical anti-overpopulation control advocate's position could best be summed up by saying "Just enough of me; way too many of you."
So what does it all mean? We'll be facing an underpopulation problem long before we face an overpopulation problem, driven primarily by the global spread of socialist redistribution schemes in the 20th century, which have created an impending fiscal crisis of unprecedented proportions as the world's elderly become dependent upon the world's young to pump money into such Ponzi schemes as Social Security in the U.S. (see here and here for more info.)
Phaedrus
A recent article by Phillip Longman in the Australian Financial Review:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The Empty Cradle
Both day-to-day experience and the media frequently suggest that the quality of life enjoyed in the West is under threat by population growth. Sprawling suburban development is making traffic worse and reducing opportunities to enjoy nature. Televised images of Third World famine, war and environmental degradation prompt some to wonder, "Why do these people have so many kids?" Immigrants and other people's children wind up competing for jobs, access to health care, parking spaces, favourite fishing holes, hiking paths and spots at the beach.
Yet a closer look at demographic trends shows that the rate of world population growth has fallen by more than 40 per cent since the late 1960s. And forecasts by the United Nations and other organisations show that, even in the absence of major wars or pandemics, the number of human beings on the planet could well start to decline within the lifetime of today's children. Demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis predict that human population will peak at 9 billion by 2070 and then start to contract. Long before then, many nations will shrink in absolute size, and the average age of the world's citizens will rise dramatically. Moreover, the populations that will age fastest are in the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. During the remainder of this century, even sub-Saharan Africa will probably grow older than Europe is today.
The root cause of these trends is falling birthrates. Today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972. No industrialised country still produces enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population ageing. Germany could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of what was once East Germany over the next half-century. Russia's population is already contracting by three quarters of a million a year. Japan's population, meanwhile, is expected to peak as early as 2005, and then to fall by as much as one third over the next 50 years - a decline equivalent, the demographer Hideo Ibe has noted, to that experienced in mediaeval Europe during the plague.
Although many factors are at work, the changing economics of family life is the prime factor in discouraging childbearing. In nations rich and poor, under all forms of government, as more and more of the world's population moves to urban areas in which children offer little or no economic reward to their parents, and as women acquire economic opportunities and reproductive control, the social and financial costs of childbearing continue to rise.
In the US, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through to age 18, according to the Department of Agriculture, exceeds $US200,000 - not including college. And the cost in forgone wages can easily exceed $US1 million, even for families with modest earning power. Meanwhile, although social security and private pension plans depend critically on the human capital created by parents, they offer the same benefits, and often more, to those who avoid the burdens of raising a family.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Continued here.
An article from BBC Online earlier this year:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
World Population Growth 'Falling'
The growth rate of the world population has slowed down, according to the US Census Bureau.
Its report says there were 74 million more people in 2002 - well below the 87 million added in 1989-90.
The rate of growth peaked 40 years ago, when it stood at about 2.2% a year. The bureau partly attributes the drop to women having fewer children.
It also projects a population decline in Africa because of the lower life expectancy due to HIV-Aids.
In 1990 women around the world gave birth to 3.3 children on average, the report says.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Full article here.
Austrian scientific group the IIASA beleives that global population will peak at about 9 billion around the year 2070 and then fall off, possibly dramatically so (see here.)
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Lie Back and Think of Australia
It's called the baby drought or the birth strike - and, writes Adele Horin, the nation's economic future depends on finding the policies to turn it around.
Around the world governments are desperate for babies. But young people won't partner and they won't procreate - or not soon enough to arrest falling birth- rates.
In Japan the carefree young are labelled "parasite singles", and the government tries to shame them into marriage and parenthood. In Singapore the government runs a dating agency that organises cruises for singles.
In Italy, women get a generous incentive to produce a second bambino. In the US, George Bush dedicates $1.5 billion to promote marriage. And in Australia the Treasurer, Peter Costello, exhorts us to have "one for your husband, one for your wife, and one for your country" after he announces a new $3,000 maternity allowance and $19 billion extra in family payments to make parenthood more attractive.
Despite the Prime Minister declaring that "families are a nation's greatest asset", and extolling the virtues of marriage, the marriage rate among young adults has plummeted. In just 15 years there has been a precipitous drop in the proportions of Australians in their 20s and 30s with partners, either married or de facto. And the nation's birthrate has been declining for 40 years. (It's now 1.7 babies per woman.)
Yet many Australians probably think overpopulation is the big global issue - too many babies, not too few. Even in Australia, most of us live in crowded cities where commodities, from water to parking spaces to a spot on the beach, are getting scarce. We're worried about the degradation of our environment. Sydney is expected to grow by an extra million people by 2022, mainly through immigration, and planners are trying to figure out where to put them all.
Who needs more babies? But if the world is overpopulated why are so many governments trying to bring on a baby boom?
A CLOSER look shows most parts of the world have managed to avert a population explosion, and now face a different challenge: an ageing and declining population. The world's population growth has slowed dramatically since the late 1960s. Family planning programs are still desperately needed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth rates outpace governments' capacity to cope.
But now 59 countries over the next 50 years will actually shrink in size. And no industrialised country is producing enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population ageing.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Full article here.
The United Nations project studying aging trends from 1950 on concludes that the population of the earth is getting older substantially more rapidly than it is getting bigger (and that this has its own problems, some far worse than overpopulation.)
Another article by the aforementioned Longman, published originally in the Baltimore Sun:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Turn on your TV these days and you're bound to see images of Iraqi youths dancing atop burned out Humvees or of Mexican youths slipping across border fences. We see Liberian child soldiers brandishing rifles and Palestinian kids throwing stones. No wonder so many Americans form the impression that Third World population growth is a major threat to global stability.
Yet these images capture only the surface of life and miss a deeper demographic reality. Nearly everyone knows that the United States and other industrialized countries are all aging societies. Europe already has more elders than youths, and by mid-century all of the United States will be older than Florida is today. Yet the most rapidly aging areas of the world, according to the United Nations, the U.S. Census and virtually all other demographic forecasters, are the very places we today associate with destabilizing youth bulges - with the Middle East being among the most rapidly aging of all.
Iran, for example, is aging four times faster than the United States. It took 50 years for the United States to go from a median age of 30 to today's 35. It would take another 50 years for the median age here to reach 40. But while the median age in the United States will be increasing by just five years, the median age in Iran will be increasing by 20 years, reaching 40.2 by mid-century, according to U.N. projections. Similarly, Egypt is aging at three times the rate of the United States, and Iraq nearly 2 1/2 times faster. Virtually anywhere one looks in the developing world, the pattern is the same.
Between 2000 and 2050, Mexico's median age will increase 20 years, leaving half the population over age 42 and making the country older than its northern neighbor. On current trends, 30 percent of China's population will be over 60 by mid-century. Even Africa is aging at nearly double the rate of the United States. Countries such as France and Japan at least got a chance to grow rich before they grew old. Now, most developing countries are growing old before they get rich.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Continued here.
Overpopulation trivia: Al Gore, once one of the world's most vocal proponents of population control, has four kids. As P.J. O'Rouke said in All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty the typical anti-overpopulation control advocate's position could best be summed up by saying "Just enough of me; way too many of you."
So what does it all mean? We'll be facing an underpopulation problem long before we face an overpopulation problem, driven primarily by the global spread of socialist redistribution schemes in the 20th century, which have created an impending fiscal crisis of unprecedented proportions as the world's elderly become dependent upon the world's young to pump money into such Ponzi schemes as Social Security in the U.S. (see here and here for more info.)
Phaedrus
