Ignore the Bluster of Demographic Winter Alarmists
(written by Joe Bish, Population Outreach Manager for Population Media Center)
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Can you visualize 850 jumbo jets landing at your local airport today and each deplaning 250 people? If so, you will have a good grasp of daily, real-time global population growth.
Indeed, human numbers increase by over 200,000 every 24 hours. Every minute, 150 additional people need energy, water, food, and space to inhabit. By year’s end, that results in a 78 million person increase. It also creates demand for a significant amount of new resources the Earth must yield.
Illustration by Angel Boligan – Cagle Cartoons (click to purchase)
Arguably, on a planet already showing troublesome effects of a degraded, carelessly exploited environment, this extra passenger load is not good news. It was just in 1999 that we surpassed 6 billion humans, and in less than 2 years, we will pass 7 billion. In light of these trends, many respectable, hard-working environmental advocacy organizations argue that voluntary human population stabilization should be central to our efforts at sustainable development.
Others argue that the current size and growth of human population are only secondary environmental considerations. Most of the resources dedicated to fighting for the health of our planet, they say, should be focused on reducing total carbon emissions, preserving habitat and lowering overall resource consumption. This argument is probably wrong – after all, population stabilization can only help meet all these other goals – but at least it is not based in denial of the true demographic situation of our species.
Incredibly, there are organizations that consistently peddle irresponsible alarm about falling human population. A case in point is the Washington DC based Population Research Institute. Obsessed with the fact that global growth rates have come down from 2.2 percent in 1963 to the current 1.1 percent this organization, with the proverbial straight face, trumpets the imminent onset of a so called global “demographic winter.”
Subscribers to the idea of demographic winter believe – contrary to every shred of evidence –that our species is doomed to disaster because of an imminent and radical population decline. They conveniently forget that in just the past decade, the United Nations has raised its medium population projection for 2050 from 8.9 to 9.2 billion. They also overlook that out of 230 nations listed by the U.N., 129 of them are growing so fast that their populations will double within 70 years. Only 24 show population stabilization or contraction.
Clearly, reports of a demographic winter are just plain wrong.
Some might value Population Research Institute’s one reasonable population position: coercive measures that force women to relinquish control of their own bodies to state interests, (like China’s infamous one-child policy), are morally wrong. Unfortunately, this concern for the welfare of women extends only as far as their interests in never ending population growth do.
Though their homepage makes the euphemistic claim that “every family should have the right to choose the timing and spacing of their children,” one of the featured actions for visitors is to sign the “Stop the Freedom of Choice Act” petition. This proves their real concern for families is that they act as reliable demographic factories.
Such duplicity mirrors ridiculous warnings of imminent global population collapse. Steven Mosher, President of Population Research Institute, should acknowledge that during a 60 minute seminar on demographic winter theory, global population increases by 9000 people, the equivalent of 36 jumbo jets packed full.
No matter what your position on the environmental costs and benefits of population growth, you should at least be working from a fact based perspective. Global population continues to grow. When you hear claims of an approaching demographic winter, take them for what they really are: blustery and wrong.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:13 pm
I agree with this post. While specializing in demographic trends, I don’t think the Population Research Institute (PRI) has a good understanding of ecology and ecosystems. A few weeks ago I watched an interview of Steven Mosher (Prez of PRI) on the Catholic station EWTN, where he sang a familiar tune: “You can fit the entire world population into the state of Texas, with enough space for each of the 6+ billion people to have their own single-family home with ample front and back yard space. The world is not overcrowded but nearly barren with open space…”
Now, not even considering the quality of life of 6+ billion people crammed into the state of Texas, I think there is a serious flaw with this line of thinking. Any undergrad ecology student would understand that the true “footprint” of one family living in a detached suburban-style home is much greater than the space and resources existing on that one small parcel of land. Even little children can understand this concept if taught properly.
If Mosher, as president of the PRI, can fail to grasp this simple concept, we should be skeptical of groups like PRI and by extension, claims of “demographic winter”.
October 26th, 2010 at 5:31 am
World population as a total are growing, however, several nations are decreasing and those nations have a problem. I don’t know exactly what organization it is talked about here and what they stand for, but I do know that when a country has a nativity that every woman give birth to 1.3 children, then it is impossible to reverse the trend and that nation will seize to be within a few generations.
Actually, most of the developed world has a negative population growth, while the poor countries have a population growth. It is the poor countries that makes the world’s total poulation grow. The US is apparently quite stable. The only thing that will stop some nations from becoming extinct is immigration, which in turn means that they will go through a very radical change of their character.
February 3rd, 2012 at 4:15 pm
I do not agree with Mr. Bish. While he rightly and factually states that real time population is increasing by 200,000 every 24 hours, he fails to acknowledge that human population is also decreasing daily through mortality. Couple the death rate with a less than 2 person replacement figure in most of the western world, it only makes sense that a demographic winter is possibly on the horizon. The film Demographic Winter takes into account the human mortality rate and factors in the aging population of Baby Boomers, myself being one of them. What about the countries like India and Africa whose populations seem to be increasing through births? Has anyone taken a census of how many of these babies are born to die because they are HIV positive? I believe that for anyone to be a credible reporter one should be fair and present both sides of the demographic issue. (Editorial note: human population increases by approximately 227,000 per day. This increase is a net gain resulting from roughly 382,000 births and 155,000 deaths. See: http://www.prb.org/ )
February 10th, 2012 at 6:41 am
Perhaps the human community is about to confront the worst of both worlds: the results of a human population explosion and a human population crash. The leviathan-like size of the human population in our time puts Earth’s finite resources and its frangible environs at risk because the exploding human population worldwide dissipates resources and pollutes the environment faster than the Earth can replenish itself for human benefit. As a consequence of the population explosion, many too many human beings are invited to engage in rapacious per capita consumption and unconscionable individual hoarding of Earth’s body, and to recklessly degrade its ecology with pollutants. Such soon to become patently unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by the human species appear to be fast approaching a point in human history when the monstrous size of the human population so overspreads the Earth that humankind ends up being the precipitant of an unimaginable sort of global ecological wreckage and a human population crash?
February 11th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Representatives in governments and international organizations as well as the mass media are in denial. There is conscious, deliberate and widespread institutional avoidance of a fulminating global situation, the effects of which could be profound and earth-shaking. People are not being prepared for recognizable dangers and dramatic changes that could occur in the not too distant future both in the global political economy and Earth’s ecology.
March 11th, 2012 at 2:31 am
Very misleading article. Yes, overall human population is growing, mostly in Africa and Middle Easter Nations. This article totally ignores the statistically well established fact (and frightening fact too, for that matter) that Western Europe is facing an alarming population decrease – Italy, France, and Russia to name a few. Yes there is mass, compensatory immigration in places such as France…people will still live in these places due to state sponsored immigration to stabilize housing and monetary markets. But the fact is clear: entire cultures are on the verge of becoming extinct in the next 50 to 75 years. Remember, history is not written by who is “right” but who is “left.” Get your facts straight! [Editors note: the fact is that global population is growing by 228,000 per day and is now projected to exceed 10 billion by 2100.]