Friday, May 10, 2013

Less people, a minority opinion

Hans Rosling, Swedish statistics guy, wants to make statistics-based information available to everyone so that we are all working with correct information, true information.  See his fascinating website at "Gapminder, for a fact-based world view."

So I went there to see if he had substantially the same facts as author Jonathan Last (What to Expect When No One's Expecting).   The answer is, Yes, he does.  In his video "Religion and Babies," he agrees on the fact of declining and low birth rates all over the world excepting certain African and Middle Eastern/Asian countries (check which countries these are here) whose birth rates are still way above replacement rate (2.1 births per woman).

But there is a different conclusion.  When he announces the very low birth rate, he uses a triumphant tone and his audience smiles and applauds!  It makes me think of The Population Bomb, book of the 70's which pictured a horrific future due to overcrowding of earth.  There are still people who worry about a deadly population explosion and so they celebrate the birth dearth.

Maybe they don't know the economic struggle that the world will have to deal with as there are fewer people.  Are they fine with Russia, Japan, Germany, Singapore going so low that they may not recover?

As you hear media start to cover total fertility rate issues in the future, try to pick up which point of view they're coming from.

I can't speak for Rosling, but we know there's a divide between some who consider human beings a "plague" and those who see human beings as creative and exceptional - different in kind from the material world and not just another consuming mouth to feed.  I thank God that The Population Bomb was incorrect, and that the world is considerably better off than its author expected.

No comments:

Post a Comment