Too many? 4

Earth now supports more than double its population--at a higher standard of living--compared to what it did back in the 1970's, when the overpopulation panic started. 

After decades of alarmist warnings that the world can't support any more of us, actual evidence--cited in the last three posts--is piling up in favor of the opposite view. We earthlings are better off with more people, and in more danger long term from falling birth rates.

But the global trend today is a birth rate so low that some countries will never be able to recover from it. 

To exactly replace their population total, a country needs an average birth rate per woman of 2.1. Only one region of the world still has births above that rate. Check out birth rates for over 200 countries here. A few examples: Italy 1.26, Germany 1.46, USA 1.84, Paraguay 1.88, Congo 5.49, Japan 1.4. Generally, the poorest countries have the most births. Europe, long term, may be in trouble (image).

Before the end of this century, global population will start its relentless decline and will never stop, according to one social researcher. Result? The end of human progress in solving difficult problems.

from Stream

Too many? 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Re-post from 2013

Thomas Malthus in 1798 predicted that humans would multiply on the earth until the earth could no longer sustain them.  Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1970 published The Population Bomb which predicted, on the basis of Malthus, a future of massive global starvations.  What did happen was the opposite of that (yesterday's post).

What did they miss, since this does happen among animals? The vole population (a sort of mouse) can multiply to the point of outpacing their food supply.  

But people are "More Than Voles," as Eric Metaxas put it.  Created by their own Creator to create, humans can create their own niche to support themselves.  Homo sapiens are not utterly dependent on the natural environment like animals but rather can create wealth.  

According to the materialist (there is no supernatural) worldview, humans are just animals. According to the Christian worldview, humans bear the likeness of their Creator.  

God gave humans "the intelligence to complete the work of creation . . for their own good and that of their neighbors."

Too many? 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

In yesterday's video you saw that mainline media, elites, the president at that time, were all persuaded that a population crisis had erupted because about 3.5 billion humans lived on this planet. You saw Ehrlich unapologetically maintaining his panicky tone years later.

Today our global population has more than doubled at 8+ billion. Did that result in more suffering in terms of life expectancy, food supply, child mortality, air quality, etc? 

No. As it turned out, life on Earth is actually better by these metrics despite huge population growth.

1. Across the world, people are living longer
2. Food supply has not declined in the last fifty years, but has grown to a new level 
3. Child mortality has dropped across all income levels
4. "In many countries, people breathe the cleanest air in centuries"

But how can that be? What's the explanation?

(cont'd tomorrow)

Too many?

Many people have the impression that we urgently need to reduce the number of people making their home on this planet. They may argue that it would be best for human beings now living and for those on Earth in the future. Or, they may argue that nature deserves to have Earth to itself with no human population.

Why would declining numbers be better for people? Mostly because they believe that our human population is unsustainably using the planet's resources; that is, consuming too much with the result that there won't be enough for future generations.

Some call it "overshoot." In other words, they foresee coming deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil erosion yielding insufficient food, pollution and reduction of fresh water--all coming because our global population uses natural resources at a faster rate than Earth can keep generating.

A very short summary of this view that there are too many human beings was made by David Attenborough, saying that humans have "overrun the planet." 

Author of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, persuaded much of America that we had to quit producing so many people:

from The Stream

Europe burns 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Another immigrant to Ireland (since 2013) added fuel to the fire when he killed a young teacher jogging after work. A "Slovakian national" was found guilty of the murder last September. 

photo

The woman's fiance said it sickens him that “someone can come to this country, be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years…never hold down a legitimate job, and never once contribute to society” before committing “such a horrendous evil act of incomprehensible violence”.

For this he was called "far-right." But he is not a lunatic for questioning immigration policy.

In a tolerant and democratic society, citizens would be listened to and answered when they object. What their leaders would not do in a respectful, democratic society is what they did do: insult them, shut them down, call them names, cancel or silence them, and ignore their concerns.

from "Ireland's pro-immigration elites are driving the country to the brink."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Europe burns 1

Ireland's population as of 2024 is 5.2 million (for comparison, U.S. population is 336 million). Their government imported 140,000 immigrants into Ireland over the year ending April 2023. For comparison, that would be, percentage-wise, as if the U.S. government imported 9 million into our country in just one year. It took the last three years for that number to come across our borders.

It's too much to assimilate and too fast. The "powder keg" that is the immigration issue blew up in November when an Algerian immigrant who had been supported at public expense for 23 years stabbed 4-5 people including kids in front of a school. Frustration and anger broke out in violent riots on the streets of Dublin.

photo

Native Irish don't like being replaced with non-benevolent foreigners whom they must support, but they are told by the people in power that they are lunatics. "Police blamed 'a lunatic faction driven by a right-wing ideology' for the riot in Dublin."

from "Ireland's pro-immigration elites are driving the country to the brink."

(cont'd tomorrow)

End is not near

Does good news sell? If you were in charge of social media for your company and you had to  get clicks on your website, would you feature good news, or fear and bad news?

Fear and bad news has been driving Paul Ehrlich for decades with a message of inevitable disaster. It started with his book Population Bomb about fifty years ago, when he said there were already way too many people for earth to support. But he was so wrong: the people of earth have more food and resources than ever -- and today global population is about double what it was then.

He's still treated like an expert for some reason. But the average material well-being of people on earth is so much better today. If you're not convinced yet, watch this.

Welcoming

Our world's population went over the eight billion mark yesterday. 

To some, it's ominous - which makes sense if you believe people are nothing but troublesome eaters whom we must figure out how to feed.

But the Ruth Institute sees it differently. In fact, they published a "welcome" card to all the baby newcomers this month:

"Dear Baby Number 8 Billion,

"We’re glad you’re here. In fact, we’re so happy, we want to thank your mother and father . . . We’ll always consider you a gift to the world.

"God made you in his image and likeness. No one will ever reflect the image of God in exactly the same way as you. Isn’t that amazing? God wants you to be here. That’s good enough for us!"

photo Emerald Interior Design

Enough 4

Follow-up to this post

There's a page for "myth of superabundance" on Wikipedia, but it doesn't refer to the book Super Abundance. It's not even the same concept. It's a myth saying that we will never run out any resource, no matter how reckless we are in using it--resources like trees, water, animal species, minerals. Nobody should be careless in the management of earth's resources.

What the book does say is that, over the ages, resources and solutions have kept pace with growing populations - and surpassed them. Instead of famine and lack, highly increased populations have food and enough resources for an elevated living standard.

As Steven Pinker says: “People . . depend on ideas—formulas, algorithms, knowledge—which allow stuff, useless by itself, to satisfy our wants. In this lucid and illuminating book, Tupy and Pooley lucidly use this insight to explain a fact that, surprisingly, surprises people: over the centuries, our increasing knowledge has made more stuff available to us.”

As Michael Shermer says: “In a tsunami of bad news . . emerges Superabundance, a data-fueled corrective to the doom and gloom the media daily heaps upon us. Tupy and Pooley have done the world a service with this fact-filled reminder of how good our lives are compared to ages past, and how much more human flourishing is in store if we unleash human innovation.”

from Super Abundance

Enough 3

(cont'd from last Friday's post)

How poor were people in the past, compared to our standard of living today? Dr. Jordan Peterson says that it's very hard for today's students to picture it. Economist and co-author of Superabundance, Dr. Gale Pooley agrees and likes to use the example of sugar with his students:

For the same amount of time that an average worker would work to buy one pound of sugar in 1850, how many pounds of sugar would that labor buy today? His students suggest 2-4 pounds. But actually that work time today would buy 227 pounds!

from Discovery

Enough 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

His new book, Superabundance, is a counter-narrative to a commonly held impression:

"Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, “The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . . [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true?"

Tupy and his co-author Gale Pooley analyzed centuries of the prices of goods, compared to how long people of the time had to work for them. They found that the abundance of resources - over history - grew faster than the population grew. On average, the human person produces more value than he/she consumes. Amazing, counterintuitive.

Why is this? Human ingenuity. It's true that unproductive people only consume (by choice or inability) but it's also true that many people are extremely productive. The Christian view of humanity says that our Creator designed us with the ability - if we're free - to creatively solve problems.

Enough

It was predicted long ago that the earth would run out of resources to support rising populations. Famine would kill hundreds of millions and take us back to bare subsistence.

But what actually happened is that the number of humans on earth grew by billions since then, and there is food to feed them all. Not only that, but we have enough resources to live at a much higher standard of living than ever.

Marian Tupy of Human Progress says "we'll have enough" for the future.

Losses 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Russia is far from alone in its demographic winter. The rate at which babies are born now is generally below replacement rate (2.1 per woman) in the West. Because relatively high birth rates in the rest of the world will persist for a while, the world's population will keep growing until around 2050 and then decline.

Many people have the impression that population is growing out of control, as Elon Musk mentioned. It's the zombie myth that should die. Inevitable, massive famines were predicted many years ago, based on the belief that earth couldn't produce enough food. But they were wildly off base. Human beings are creative and inventive - they are not eating machines. We found effective ways to increase productivity.

Today the West has a robust system to finance the lives of the retired elderly. But that probably can't last if there are far fewer workers in the declining society to support the system and far more elderly. 

By 2050, Japan, Germany, Italy and others are expected to have a ratio of 1.5 workers per one elderly retired person. There won't be a lot of luxuries for the retired unless they provide their own. Even in Thailand (not a nation of the West) the expected number in 2050 is 1.7 workers.

image

Losses

Here's a different take on Putin's despicable war against Ukraine: Russia's losses go beyond those caused by global sanctions (both financial loss and public revulsion). The loss of young lives will be felt.

photo

According to President Zelensky, 31,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. Even before the war, their population was declining by 100,000/year. They've been in that "demographic winter" for years. 

Twenty-thousand Russian villages have been abandoned Another 36,000 have fewer than ten  inhabitants. They will be next. 

"If the Russians turn out to have no stomach for this fight, it will probably be for the simple fact that the country does not have enough men to spare. The majority of those poor young men killed for Russia’s honour will be their mother’s only son, in many cases their only child . . ."

from Breakpoint

(cont'd tomorrow)

In/out of state

Lots of people have been moving in the last year, some to take new jobs and some because they can do their current job from a more appealing location.

So some states had a net loss and some a net gain. Vermont gained the most new people, and New Jersey lost the most.

Here are the rest.

photo

Not enough 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Falling birth rates in countries all over the world is well-established information that I've been posting for you since 2013. Elon Musk and Jack Ma have both talked about it.

Virtually all countries in the West have birth rates which are below replacement rate, and have been so for many years. A steady population requires an average of 2.1 babies per woman. Germany's rate of 1.6 births/woman is typical in the European Union. It's been said that 1.5 is the point of no return.

Unless this changes drastically and soon, society itself will change. There will be fewer children and then fewer young adults in the prime of life. There will be fewer working adults to support a larger number of retired folks who are no longer financially productive.

image

Global population will keep climbing for a while, though, because of African and Middle Eastern countries. Many of them still experience birth rates/woman of 3-6 babies.

from AEI

Not enough 1

Celebrities - often wrong, sometimes right! 

As always, the important question is not "who says this". . but rather "is it true?" Looks like Elon Musk got his information from a fact-based source, like Hans Rosling did. 

In a talk last week, Musk commented that  "so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It's completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers — if people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words."

from Yahoo

(cont'd tomorrow)

Less ignorant 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Hans made three points while surveying his audience in the TED talk regarding girls' education, natural disaster survival, and decline of abject poverty, all global in scope.  His fourth point was that people in general are ignorant of the good news about the first three points.

Here's an hour-long documentary demonstrating all of that. See the progress for one Mozambique family: "It's so great seeing Olivia and Andrea pedaling their way out of extreme poverty!" Their newly purchased bicycle eliminates hours of walking to sell their crops, bring water, and go to literacy class.

A vivid illustration shows why global population will decline after peaking in only a few decades. Global population is expected to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064. After that, it will decline. And there will be more old people than young people.

Less ignorant 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Hans started "Gapminder" to help people develop a view of the world that is based on facts, that is, information that represents reality.  I think it's a worthy labor. As he says in the talk, we need "to know about the present" in order to think clearly about the future. 

There's good news that should be told. About a billion people have risen out of abject poverty over the last ~30 years. Why don't people know it? Maybe because they get their news from the world of entertainment (you know the standard, "if it bleeds it leads").

We discover that, contrary to conventional wisdom,  most girls in the world are educated, natural disasters kill far fewer people, and there are far fewer in desperate poverty today than just a few years ago.

Perhaps the reporting of news is somewhat agenda-driven. Maybe it serves some ideology to emphasize the bad news and under-report the improvements, the good news.

Gapminder's bubble charts look like this:

Have fun with them here.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Less ignorant 1

 Here is that charismatic, number-crunching Swede, Hans Rosling, determined to make us all "less ignorant about the world." As usual, his audience loves it.

Apparently we have incorrect impressions about the world. Hans gives us data-based evidence so we can correct our impressions.

Answer his survey questions at the beginning of the video for yourself and see how you compare to other audiences including Swedes, Americans, and chimpanzees.