Science Seer
Well, it’s official. The world’s population has hit eight billion (Prospect 2022). Sources project this will increase to between 9.4 billion and 10.7 billion before it plateaus later this century and then begins to decline. What does this mean for Canadians? And what does this mean for humanity? The big questions are: How will we feed 10 billion people? How will 10 billion people impact climate change? And how should we manage migration as parts of the world become uninhabitable due to climate change?
Thomas Malthus first warned us about overpopulation in 1798, before Darwin and long before we had good knowledge of population ecology. Malthus pointed out that while populations grew exponentially, food supplies only increased linearly, such that human populations would overrun food supplies (which they have more or less done throughout history). Eventually, Paul and Anne Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) put a modern twist on Malthus’ work. The theses of both Malthus and the Ehrlichs remain controversial.
Note that there are currently more than 800 million people near starvation globally, and this is unlikely to improve much. Although the world has the capacity to feed more than the 10 billion inhabitants projected to inhabit it in the next century, food waste and inequitable distribution lead to a high level of suffering.
The distribution of humans is not consistent worldwide. Asia has significantly more people per square kilometer than North America. Population age distribution is also significantly different both between countries and over time. And these are the issues we need to remain focused on.
Demographic pyramids are interesting. The age dependency ratio is the ratio between dependents (people under 15 and those over 64) and working aged people (between 15 and 64 years of age). Generally, a large working population compared with the number of dependents creates economic and social stability. Over time the world population has become older. In Canada this ratio has declined from 71% in 1962 to a low of just under 44% in 2008.
One way that countries, including Canada, are managing the decrease in their dependency ratio is through immigration. Recently the federal government announced a goal of half a million immigrants this coming year. With this solution comes a variety of opinions about the cost, benefit, and impact of immigration on economic growth, global warming, and global equity.
Economists, business people, and politicians purport that continual economic growth is both necessary and good. But this viewpoint needs to be examined with a focus on quality of life (both in the countries people are emigrating from and those they are immigrating to) and on future issues. It needs to be explored from the context of total human suffering, distribution of wealth, and sustainability.
There are many arguments against immigration. People argue that immigrants from poorer countries rapidly adopt the lifestyles of the countries they migrate to, including increasing their carbon footprint. It appears that immigration assists less impoverished individuals. Most migration does not happen from the poorest countries to the wealthiest. People living in extreme poverty and less skilled individuals are less likely to migrate, or they immigrate to places that are similar to the places they emigrate from. But is this a good reason to exclude these “less poor” individuals from the increase in standard of living Canada offers?
From an equity standpoint, perhaps one of the biggest arguments against immigration is that migration strips poorer nations of the human capital they require to create economic growth. It is also theorized that the promise of migration encourages people from impoverished countries to acquire an education. Many of these individuals return home after they have acquired knowledge from their temporary home.
While we often have a self-congratulatory reaction to permitting people to relocate to Canada as part of the solution to the global refugee crisis, we must also look at the immigrants coming to Canada. Are they in fact poor refugees? Or are they professionals and people with other economic skills and money? Are we moving poor people from impoverished, overcrowded nations? Or are we stripping those nations of future leaders? Of healthcare professionals? Of teachers and creators?
One of the most compelling arguments for migration is that climate change is making parts of the world uninhabitable. Our human-made political boundaries are forcing people to remain in places that are on fire or under water. Are we content to allow people to burn to death? To starve to death? To drown? What are the alternatives for our newest group of refugees, and perhaps, soon to be our largest group — climate refugees?
We have all heard the doom and gloom of climate change. We know that parts of the world where people currently live will soon be covered by water, or be too hot or too dry for habitation. However, this same climate change promises to create farmable land that is currently under ice. It promises to open up regions of the world for habitation. This map demonstrates that Canada (and Russia) are posed to be net winners in the climate change game. How do we best make use of the gains to help the world?
Throughout history, humans have migrated. Our artificially created borders keep people in places they don’t wish to be (think Afghanistan or Iran, for women). They force people to live in places that are difficult (think of the Middle-East). And they create wars over those boundaries (think of Ukraine/Russia).
There are no easy solutions to population increase. However, it appears that we are nearing peak population and that there may be ways to manage it. Surely we must focus our efforts on defining solutions.
Interesting article, but the current population is 8 billion.
Ummmm … I think your link to this article and its second sentence are off by a billion. We’re only at eight billion, not nine.
“It needs to be explored from the context of total human suffering, distribution of wealth, and sustainability. ”
Absolutely! But historically up to now, who gets fed and who lives a quality life are determined by politics and economics. If we ever want to get serious about feeding each and every one of Earth’s inhabitants, we need to act as if we are all one country, united in our belief that every one of us is equal in all respects.
Here is an interesting article from the Population Institute of Canada on the puzzling response of the U.N. to the world’s eighth-billion birth…
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Oh, No! Has the United Nations Population Fund Gone ‘Woke’?
It seems numbers don’t matter as long as we keep our “xenophobia and hatred of the other” in check.
What’s gotten into the United Nations Population Fund? It used to worry about population growth. Now, as we officially reach 8 billion on November 15, its executive director, Dr. Natalia Kanem, warns us against “population alarmism.”
“Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated, with far too many people and insufficient resources to sustain their lives.” You don’t say, Dr. Kanem! The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) used to be among those warning us about exactly that. But now, Dr. Kanem says, “I am here to say clearly that the sheer number of humans is not a cause for fear.”
That must be a huge relief to the over 800 million people who another branch of the UN, its World Food Programme, warns us face “a year of unprecedented hunger.” But instead of focusing on mundane matters such as where their next meal is coming from, perhaps these hungry people should “look beyond the numbers” at the opportunities that a world of 8 billion presents. Indeed – just imagine all the great things that young people can do in their quest to find “transformative pathways” toward “greater equity and solidarity” as they compete with billions of others for food, employment and resources. It seems that the UNFPA has come to believe that if we just use the proper social justice jargon, a “just, prosperous, and sustainable world for all” is within our grasp.
A sober look at empirical realities, however, does little to alleviate the worries that the UNFPA tells us we shouldn’t have. Realities such as continuingly rapid population growth, deforestation, massive loss of biodiversity, depletion of aquifers, diversion, overuse and pollution of rivers, and erosion of soil and desertification, among other environmental catastrophes. Not to mention the untold human suffering caused by hunger, inadequate shelter, inadequate hygiene and medical care, unemployment or marginal employment, displacement, conflict and war.
Chances are that Baby 8 Billion will be born in a poor developing country, because that is where most births occur. There is a close correlation between rapid population growth and poverty. The arrival of Baby 8 Billion won’t change that.
The overall global total fertility rate (TFR) is 2.4 children per woman. In the more developed regions, it is 1.6, in the less developed regions it is 2.5, while in the least developed (i.e., poorest) countries it is 3.8. These data are from the UNFPA’s own State of World Population (SOWP) 2022 (table of Demographic Indicators, starting on p. 132.)
Countries with high total fertility rates are having trouble pulling themselves out of poverty. Much of Africa remains impoverished. Its current population of 1.3 billion is projected to reach over 2 billion by 2050 and 4 billion by 2100. Unemployment levels are high and food insecurity is rising. The boatloads of African migrants desperately trying to reach European shores reflects the hopelessness of many about making a living at home and belies the UNFPA’s blithe pronouncements of opportunity for 8 billion in a world of social justice solidarity.
The UNFPA would do better to remind us just how much population growth has contributed and continues to contribute to our current crises of environmental decline and increasing hunger. For example, regarding the ongoing food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, it could remind us that between 1970 and 2020, the populations of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya increased 4.05-, 4.61-, and 4.76-fold, respectively. It could point out that not only are such large increases in population the primary driver of food insecurity but also of environmental degradation in the form of deforestation, soil erosion, and water depletion.
The denial and inaction by our political and religious leaders and by global organizations such as the UNFPA are bringing us closer to a Malthusian future. Malthus’ very basic message was that poverty and hunger are destined to remain part of the human condition, because whenever humans manage to increase their food supply, they increase the population. So the gains of increased food production are eaten up by population growth. Malthus postulated that “this constantly subsisting cause of periodic misery” would “forever continue to exist, unless some decided change takes place in the physical constitution of our nature.”
Unfortunately, time has proven Malthus correct in his gloomy prognosis. When he published the first edition of “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798, the world population was about 800 million. Now, as we approach 8 billion, the number of hungry people is over 800 million, despite the spectacular increase we have achieved in food production.
The meteoric rise of the human population in the 20th century and beyond got its first boost through the Haber-Bosch process of synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer, and the second, even more spectacular one, through the “green revolution” which massively increased crop yields.
Norman Borlaug, the “father” of the green revolution, is credited with having averted a famine in India. But few seem to realize that Borlaug was very concerned that an increased food supply might, as Malthus predicted, simply lead to more population growth. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, he said, “There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.” Alas, as Borlaug feared, increased food production led to population growth. India’s population, under 560 million in 1970, is now at 1.4 billion. During the same period, the world population more than doubled from 3.7 billion to 8 billion.
Norman Borlaug would not be celebrating the fact that we are turning the Earth into a feedlot for humanity and a concrete jungle. In his Nobel Lecture, he praised Malthus for raising the alarm about food, while noting that Malthus could not “have foreseen the disturbing and destructive physical and mental consequences of the grotesque concentration of human beings into the poisoned and clangorous environment of pathologically hypertrophied megalopoles.” And it is into just such a world that Baby 8 Billion will be born: grotesque concentrations of slums and metastasizing megacities.
There is some good news. In addition to progress in food production, there has been progress in family planning methods. We can choose to have small families. Although some future growth is inevitable due to the “demographic momentum” of a large number of young people, we could reach a sustainable, much smaller population within several generations if small families were to become the universal norm. A planet with ever fewer humans but more humanity is a goal we can and must work toward.
It is nothing short of shameful for the UNFPA to disparage concerns about overpopulation as “population alarmism” and to insinuate that such concerns are inextricably linked to the implementation of abusive and coercive population control policies. How is it that the many success stories of governments that recognized population growth as a problem and implemented ethical, effective and non-coercive programs escaped the UNFPA’s notice?
The arrival of the eight billionth human on Earth could have served as a teachable moment for the United Nations Population Fund to make our leaders and the people of the world understand the threat that human overpopulation presents to ourselves and all life on Earth. But instead of giving humanity a wake-up call, the UNFPA chose to appease the ‘woke.’ However, Mother Nature doesn’t care how woke we are. Our current trajectory of “overshoot” is likely to condemn billions to a life of misery, deprivation, and in many cases violence, while destroying the ecosystems we all depend on.
Welcome Baby 8 Billion – and Good Luck, You’ll Need It!
Madeline Weld, Ph.D.
President, Population Institute Canada