Incomes are high and continue to rise in Germany and Japan where people are older and populations are declining. Increasing productivity increases production with fewer workers. Spend proportionately more on research and development. Need more innovative young people? Try sending everybody to college. The problems of an aging population can be solved by maintaining a steady savings and older people working longer and/or part-time. As population falls, land per capita increases, commodity prices decline, and damage to the planet decreases. An economy can actually get smaller with a falling population, even while allowing individuals to enjoy higher incomes and quality of life. Yet plenty of data show that fewer numbers offer our best chances for universal prosperity. The authors focus their discussion on fears of slower economic growth (fewer consumers buying fewer sofas and refrigerators) and the burdens of supporting higher percentages of older people. A less optimistic scenario has low-fertility groups dying out and high-fertility groups inheriting an overpopulated, damaged planet. The UN’s 11.2 billion scenario in 2100 (compared to 7.8 billion now) remains contingent on fertility rates falling significantly in countries where high fertility rates have been persistent so far.
If current world fertility rates persisted unchanged, and the planet could handle such growth, the result would be a population of 24 billion by 2100.
The title Empty Planet might sell books, but Overpopulated Planet seems closer to reality. Continuing population growth is taking us from three billion people in 1960 to a UN projection of 10 billion by 2055. They don’t emphasize “carrying capacity” or “limits to growth” warnings from scientists.Ī more realistic forecast would emphasize contingency-future population paths depend on yet-to-be enacted policies and family planning decisions. The authors are two Canadians: a newspaperman and an opinion researcher. Wilson and Elizabeth Kolbert’s work on Earth’s sixth extinction event might expect the “empty planet” title to refer to a world with radically fewer birds, insects, polar bears, giraffes, whales, fish, and forests a world less habitable for humans due to soil erosion, ocean acidification, and loss of millions of species and a hot planet where people’s numbers collapse. Women with more access to education, careers, and family planning have lower rates of childbearing in many developed countries. The authors build a plausible case that fertility rates could fall more than currently projected by the United Nations (UN) as the world modernizes and urbanizes. Growth still totals 80 million more of us per year. The reversal of population growth is not a done deal. World population will probably rise to over 10 billion before the slow decline would begin. Note that their title is a bit misleading. Women in education contribute to falling fertility rates.
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