Dana Mathewson

When I was a kid, everyone was worried about the "population explosion.”Paul Ehrlich’s book, "The Population Bomb,” was a runaway bestseller.

This led to a lot of dystopian science fiction, like Harry Harrison’s novel, "Make Room, Make Room,” which became the famous movie "Soylent Green.” It also led to a lot of policy changes, from China’s disastrous one-child policy to many policies in industrialized nations aimed at people having fewer children later in life.

The culture also changed.My mother reports that when she was married, even married couples weren’t considered fully adult until they had children. Raising kids was seen as one of the most important things people did.Now, it’s seen as a distraction from the pleasures and opportunities of adult life, things like promotion at work or dating.

The looming population explosion never happened. Instead, we’ve now got something closer to a population implosion, as birth rates fall below replacement levels around the globe. Philip Longman worried about this nearly 20 years ago in a Foreign Affairs article, "The Global Baby Bust,” and now it’s happening for real.

People of the Paul Ehrlich era would no doubt see today’s problems as beneficial:Fewer people means more stuff to go around, right?Not exactly.

Demographer and futurist Joel Kotkin writes:"On the contrary, we need to worry about the potential ill-effects of depopulation, including a declining workforce, torpid economic growth, and brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and their more hard-pressed successors.”

Shrinking populations tend to do poorly, economically, socially and militarily.One need only look to China, where the one-child policy is producing a huge overhang of pensioners with not enough people to support them, or to Japan, where the average age keeps climbing while young people seem to lack direction and confidence, to see what lies in our future.

As Kotkin notes, "John Maynard Keynes warned that ‘chaining up of the one devil [of overpopulation] may, if we are careless, only serve to loose another still fiercer and more intractable.’”

Well, that’s where we are now. And it will be hard to change. The baby bust isn’t taking place just in the United States or the industrialized nations, but all over the globe. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where birth rates are still comparatively high, they’re falling sharply. Having kids involves short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, and people are less and less willing to make short-term sacrifices.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:58 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 465 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Well, subduction of tectonic plates does occur. The Juan de Fuca plate is being subducted under the North American plate.

That doesn't mean that the Earth is not expanding. It just means that plate movement created by that expansion is complicated.

In fact subduction sort of proves expansion, because directly across the Pacific from the Juan de Fuca plate, the Plillipine Sea plate is being subducted under the Asian plate, which is what caused the Fukushima earthquake.

So the Juan de Fuca plate and the Philipine Sea plate are moving away from each other.

Posted by: Bill H at August 27, 2022 03:22 PM (Q7br2)

2 Bill, you're correct about subduction, etc., but that wasn't the point of the article. The article is about how underpopulation of the Earth is going to cause problems.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at August 27, 2022 09:45 PM (TisyG)

3 And the World Economic Forum and the rest are still planning for the disastrous overpopulation and will promote a "great depop" to eliminate all the hoi poloi. And that means the likes of us.

We are going to see the split between the Elites and the People and it will probably break out into violence. The question is, who will win? It depends on when this happens and who holds the cards at that point. But it will be triggered in no small part by the pseudo-Malthusianism that has been promoted since the '70's.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 28, 2022 04:55 PM (H1tIF)

4 My friend Richard Cronin - a geophysicist - would agree with your point Bill.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 28, 2022 04:56 PM (H1tIF)

5 Somehow that comment wound up in the wrong article. I posted it in a different place and was wondering why it didn't show up. I didn't think you were censoring me, but... Your site is getting a little weird.

Posted by: Bill H at August 28, 2022 06:28 PM (Q7br2)

6 I've had a couple of comments go astray, Bill... wonder if you drink as much as I do when I'm on the site?

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at August 28, 2022 09:34 PM (TisyG)

7 That's what I figured Bill.

I've never had that happen but it could.

I often open more than one window at a time and have on occasion misposted my comment, too. I don't know if you do that but I do. Or you do a little drinking and blogging, something I don't usually do as I'm a morning blogger but I know Dana works the night shift, as it were...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 30, 2022 08:15 AM (KzOUO)

8 Well I haven't had a drink in a few months over 40 years, and I pretty much never have more than one window open. That's not to say it wasn't my error. I can do some pretty amazing things.

Posted by: Bill H at August 30, 2022 11:22 PM (Q7br2)

9 Impressive Bill; good for you!  Dana and I are both men who enjoy our cocktails, but if you don't like them or figure you are better off without them than that's a good thing indeed. Wish I had all the money I spent on liquor over the years! But no use crying over spilled bourbon.

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