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For many years the UN has been promoting figures which are unsupported by math. This was detailed in several books including Empty Planet; Fewer; The Next 100 Years; and Accidental Superpower, all written by different analysts at different times.
The Worldometer, which just clocked the 8 millionth baby, is an extension of a UN department and does not actually count population - it just assumes a straight line projection from data previously entered.
The exact date of the beginning of population decline cannot be known. It will start at some point, though, and once it does it will - get ready - never cease declining. That seemingly "over the top" assessment is what drives discussions like this.
The discussion is not whether or when the world population will begin declining; it will. Some non-UN affiliated experts believe it may have already started declining. And as a result, my great grandaughter, age 2, may live in a very different world when she is 80. I am mostly curious as to what that world will look like.
Without immigration and plenty of it, population will certainly decrease in America. Senator Schumer didn't say that, but his words indicate he knows it. A lot of other people do too - and they are a little worried. Population decrease means an older, less productive population will form up. That means fewer taxes provided to the government and a bigger tax load for the workers, which will be expected to carry the weight of the burgeoning elderly class.
The U.S. is one of the few countries, perhaps even the only country, that will continue to grow in population. Most everywhere else will peak and begin to shrink, as has already begun in the east Asian rim countries and western Europe and Russia.
A common excuse given for having few or no children is the cost; South Koreans cite economic hardship as their biggest problem, as do young Japanese of child rearing age.
Here in the U.S., certainly you can spend a lot on children but in my opinion, Americans have simply forgotten how to be thrifty.
What's more, it's not the poor who are choosing to forego childrearing, but the affluent. How does it add up that a couple, each earning $75K salaries, are somehow unable to afford children? They each have a car, they own a condo or a house, they travel, eat out, buy nice clothes for themselves.
Meanwhile, single mothers in rundown ghetto areas are having 4, 5, and 6 kids, obviously not because they said "I'm going to have 6 kids and raise them by myself in poverty conditions!" but simply out of hapless ignorance. These same people are eating quite well and tend to be overweight; many own cars and $1000 smartphones and seem to find enough money to do $200 nail jobs and $400 hair styling.
I'm a bit on a soap box here but still, something's just wrong with this picture. Now I do agree, the cities and 'burbs are overcrowded and the roads are too busy. But if you drive out across the great Southwest -- west Texas, into New Mexico and Arizona, then north into Utah, Idaho, Montana etc. -- there is so much land that it boggles the mind. I've driven a couple of times between Arizona and New England and the amount of land out west is simply staggering. You can drive for hundreds of miles out there and not see anything but wilderness.
My point is that, if you could supply the water, you could build glistening new cities out West that could house millions, even hundreds of millions, of people and not even make a dent. There's plenty of solar energy out West that you could put on every rooftop, bringing electric requirements down to a tiny fraction of a traditional city, so long as each house also has battery storage (e.g. a Tesla Powerwall) for nighttime use.
Where would the water come from? Desalination plants along the coast would pump it inland. However, there are currently 10-12 applications for plants in California that are unable to get permits because of environmental concerns.
Since the Colorado River is already overused and likely to run low by 2040, the main viable alternative is to pull water from the air. A rooftop device can generate 5 liters a day of drinking water when humidity is at least 30%, using solar energy. A system of industrial sized water capture machines could generate thousands of gallons, sufficient for a city where each home generates its own power, captures its own water, and recycles water as is done in Las Vegas.
So in short, we could and should be allocating vast lands out West to build massive new cities of very affordable houses and the latest technology to power them and supply essential resources like water and food. Keep the prices under $100K, and build neighborhood schools that are well run, provide competent policing to keep the neighborhoods safe, and these new cities will fill up rapidly, both with Americans and with immigrants from abroad, attracted by the appealing lifestyle. And will produce fresh new populations of young people to keep our economy and society humming well into the future.
I can point to one concern with your idea there, blisterpeanuts.
Look at a map of Arizona sometime. Google Maps will do fine, make sure it's the "street map" layer and not a satellite image. Zoom out until you can see the southern half of CA on the left, all of NM and some of TX on the right, Las Vegas above and a chunk of Mexico below. The only roads you should be able to see at this zoom level are the interstates. Then, look around at what is there.
Note the areas shaded a very light beige-green.
So...there's that. And then there are places where you won't be building a damn thing because of the terrain and what there is to work with. Rugged mountains, even smallish ones, aren't all that conducive to building cities on top. And although vast tracts of desert may look "tameable" to the casual eye, two or three feet under the sand is rock so hard you can't get through without blasting it, it's really hard to lay foundations to build things, especially really tall buildings. That's before you even get to the question of water. And some of that land is also used for agriculture. Thirsty business but arguably necessary.
Like I get what you're saying, but things are just more complicated than you are making them here.
Another problem, too, is an economic one. Using tech to render resources more abundant harms those who profit only on scarcity of resources and control of supply. And those interests have a lot of power in this country. Getting their buy-in isn't always easy.
As for why the affluent avoid having kids and the poor have loads of them... I have had a theory about that. If you'll pardon my foray into evolutionary psychology (which I often scoff at to be honest) I think I know why the relatively poor seem to exercise bafflingly bad judgment in allowing lots of kids and pets into their lives that they can't really afford.
Because the period of our existence as a species in which animals and offspring were a liability rather than an asset, has been an eyeblink compared to the timeframe where it was the opposite.
Think about a more primitive and non-capitalist lifestyle. Animals served utilitarian purposes as livestock and beasts of burden and working creatures. Children only had to grow up enough to walk and talk, and could then be put to work...laboring on the farm, learning craft, caring for the household and their younger siblings... Hell, even I was put to work taking care of my baby brother when I was 9 years old. Nowadays this is considered this awful hardship, that I had to get up in the night with a crying baby, when I was only a child myself and had to go to school in the morning. Where was my childhood? Gone, caring for other people... But for most of human history, that was actually the more normal thing.
More and more now we have this societal expectation that kids should have this magical golden era of wonder...which usually means buying them lots of stuff, taking them on trips, providing them with tons of happiness and joy... Which is simply glorious for the profits of tons of industries! When my sons were growing up, the worst thing I could imagine being, was a "bad mother." Which meant that whatever they needed and most of what they wanted had to happen, no matter the cost, I had to find a way. How very fortuitous that so many lenders were there to help! (/sarcasm)
But our lizards brains don't understand any of this. They take time to catch up. And feelings of resource-stress are a huge driver of behavior not only in humans but in most creatures. If for the vast majority of our existence, the appropriate reaction to scarcity was to have lots of animals and children (livestock and laborers)...there will be an impulse still present that pushes in that direction.
Of course the more surface level and correct logic is also that those who are well off, have more ability to plan their own lives and take more control of them. More and easier access from a younger age, to things like birth control and health care. More feeling of entitlement to boundaries and agency, and less traumatizing life experiences to muddle our ability to exercise them. And then there's the strong messages in society in my lifetime of "abstinence only" (not that I listened to that) and "don't have kids if you can't afford them" (or that either)...I can see though how those messages would have some effect on people's choices.
Anyways. To close I will speak to your last paragraph about these utopian cities you envision...if it's that easy to make them so wonderful to live in, then why have we not already rendered the existing cities so marvelous and safe and resource rich?
I can point to one concern with your idea there, blisterpeanuts.
Look at a map of Arizona sometime. Google Maps will do fine, make sure it's the "street map" layer and not a satellite image. Zoom out until you can see the southern half of CA on the left, all of NM and some of TX on the right, Las Vegas above and a chunk of Mexico below. The only roads you should be able to see at this zoom level are the interstates. Then, look around at what is there.
Note the areas shaded a very light beige-green.
So...there's that. And then there are places where you won't be building a damn thing because of the terrain and what there is to work with. Rugged mountains, even smallish ones, aren't all that conducive to building cities on top. And although vast tracts of desert may look "tameable" to the casual eye, two or three feet under the sand is rock so hard you can't get through without blasting it, it's really hard to lay foundations to build things, especially really tall buildings. That's before you even get to the question of water. And some of that land is also used for agriculture. Thirsty business but arguably necessary.
Like I get what you're saying, but things are just more complicated than you are making them here.
Another problem, too, is an economic one. Using tech to render resources more abundant harms those who profit only on scarcity of resources and control of supply. And those interests have a lot of power in this country. Getting their buy-in isn't always easy.
As for why the affluent avoid having kids and the poor have loads of them... I have had a theory about that. If you'll pardon my foray into evolutionary psychology (which I often scoff at to be honest) I think I know why the relatively poor seem to exercise bafflingly bad judgment in allowing lots of kids and pets into their lives that they can't really afford.
Because the period of our existence as a species in which animals and offspring were a liability rather than an asset, has been an eyeblink compared to the timeframe where it was the opposite.
Think about a more primitive and non-capitalist lifestyle. Animals served utilitarian purposes as livestock and beasts of burden and working creatures. Children only had to grow up enough to walk and talk, and could then be put to work...laboring on the farm, learning craft, caring for the household and their younger siblings... Hell, even I was put to work taking care of my baby brother when I was 9 years old. Nowadays this is considered this awful hardship, that I had to get up in the night with a crying baby, when I was only a child myself and had to go to school in the morning. Where was my childhood? Gone, caring for other people... But for most of human history, that was actually the more normal thing.
More and more now we have this societal expectation that kids should have this magical golden era of wonder...which usually means buying them lots of stuff, taking them on trips, providing them with tons of happiness and joy... Which is simply glorious for the profits of tons of industries! When my sons were growing up, the worst thing I could imagine being, was a "bad mother." Which meant that whatever they needed and most of what they wanted had to happen, no matter the cost, I had to find a way. How very fortuitous that so many lenders were there to help! (/sarcasm)
But our lizards brains don't understand any of this. They take time to catch up. And feelings of resource-stress are a huge driver of behavior not only in humans but in most creatures. If for the vast majority of our existence, the appropriate reaction to scarcity was to have lots of animals and children (livestock and laborers)...there will be an impulse still present that pushes in that direction.
Of course the more surface level and correct logic is also that those who are well off, have more ability to plan their own lives and take more control of them. More and easier access from a younger age, to things like birth control and health care. More feeling of entitlement to boundaries and agency, and less traumatizing life experiences to muddle our ability to exercise them. And then there's the strong messages in society in my lifetime of "abstinence only" (not that I listened to that) and "don't have kids if you can't afford them" (or that either)...I can see though how those messages would have some effect on people's choices.
Anyways. To close I will speak to your last paragraph about these utopian cities you envision...if it's that easy to make them so wonderful to live in, then why have we not already rendered the existing cities so marvelous and safe and resource rich?
It’s easier and cheaper to build fresh than to tear down existing infrastructure. Just think about the obstacles to refurbishing the subways in New York City… the regulatory brambles, the unions, the necessity to keep the system in operation during renovations. This is one reason that Germany and Japan did so well after the War; they basically had to start all over.
Small town America in the 1880s-1920s was a golden era for children, possibly the peak of civilization in some ways. Boys and girls were free to explore and develop, minus the stress of crime and violence that came later. I wonder if we could possibly recreate that environment for future generations.
Article in the NY Times this day on a man in Oregon who wants the human population to decline to zero in order to save the planet from ourselves.
Excerpts: "For the sake of the planet, Les Knight, founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, has spent decades pushing one message: “May we live long and die out.†His movement is "...a loose consortium of people who believe that the best thing humans can do to help the Earth is to stop having children...." "Their ethos is echoed in their motto, “May we live long and die out,†and in another one of their slogans, which Mr. Knight hangs at various conventions and street fairs: “Thank you for not breeding.†"One of the most effective ways to combat global warming, say both climate activists and those concerned about overpopulation, is to expand access to education for girls around the world, in addition to birth control and family planning. Nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide, some 121 million a year, are unintended."
I'm on board with lots of education for girls around the world and access to birth control info and products to prevent as many unintended pregnancies as we can. Beyond education, girls need to be fully enfranchised as full and equal citizens, no matter what nation they live within. Boys also need expanded education on sexual matters, to include ethics of personal involvements as the old nonsense of "boys will be boys" and "men are going to sow their oats" is a big part of the problem.
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...His movement is "...a loose consortium of people who believe that the best thing humans can do to help the Earth is to stop having children...." "Their ethos is echoed in their motto, “May we live long and die out,†and in another one of their slogans, which Mr. Knight hangs at various conventions and street fairs: “Thank you for not breeding.†...
The environment isn't itself a sentient being, capable of self-reflection or of feeling pain. We preserve the environment not for its own sake, but for that of future humans.
But setting aside the environmental pathos, another reason for "voluntary human extinction" is that human life itself isn't all that pleasant or fulfilling, even in relatively safe and prosperous circumstances, such as what most of us in the West currently experience. If playing in a thought experiment such as that of the philosopher John Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance", I may or may not have chosen wisely regarding Mankind and the sort of society that ought to be created... but I'd assuredly have chosen, if given the option, to myself not have been born... and I'd have advised my colleagues on the Panel, or whatever it is, to have chosen likewise.
Viewed thusly, the choice to not reproduce is a service to our future non-children: we saved them the trouble of every having to be alive. I wish that my parents had done that.
The empire (or maybe something else altogether) is trying to strike back.
Long piece discussing both positives and negatives of how some (think Musk etc.) are trying to offset falling birth rates. I shudder to think of what could happen if this became super popular.
Quote:
Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus, Torsten has unwittingly joined an audacious experiment. According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.
Quote:
Malcolm, 36, and his wife, Simone, 35, are "pronatalists," part of a quiet but growing movement taking hold in wealthy tech and venture-capitalist circles. People like the Collinses fear that falling birth rates in certain developed countries like the United States and most of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the breakdown of economies, and, ultimately, the collapse of civilization. It's a theory that Elon Musk has championed on his Twitter feed, that Ross Douthat has defended in The New York Times' opinion pages, and that Joe Rogan and the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen bantered about on "The Joe Rogan Experience." It's also, alarmingly, been used by some to justify white supremacy around the world, from the tiki-torch-carrying marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting "You will not replace us" to the mosque shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who opened his 2019 manifesto: "It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates."
Quote:
The logic behind the Collins Institute reflects their thinking at large: "If you want to make the future better for everyone and you could choose to dramatically increase the educational outcomes of the bottom 10% of people or the top 0.1% of people," the Collinses say to choose the 0.1%.
The UN estimates of the Chinese population in 2100 range between a high of 1.1B and a low of 488M. My own estimate is 819, 373, 622.5
Quote:
For comparison purposes, the U.S. population of 337 million in 2021 is expected to grow to 394 million by 2100 in the UN’s medium variant scenario. The UN’s high variant scenario projects a population of 543 million Americans by then, while in its low scenario, the U.S. population would shrink to 281 million.
Once you read some comments and books by actual demographers, you learn to dismiss the UN figures. I would be reluctant to announce a particular motive on the part of the UN, but they have, for years, been promoting figures unsupported by math. And if the math doesn't support it, it cannot happen.
Since men outnumber women in China, and in China only women can bear children () the replacement rate there is closer to 2.2 or even 2.3. Whatever it is, the Chinese population is expected to fall off the table very soon.
Once you read some comments and books by actual demographers, you learn to dismiss the UN figures. I would be reluctant to announce a particular motive on the part of the UN, but they have, for years, been promoting figures unsupported by math. And if the math doesn't support it, it cannot happen.
Since men outnumber women in China, and in China only women can bear children () the replacement rate there is closer to 2.2 or even 2.3. Whatever it is, the Chinese population is expected to fall off the table very soon.
Do you mean that the UN has no actual demographers?
Estimates are just that, and often turn out to be wrong.
Do you have examples of UN figures unsupported by math, not simply estimates that turned out wrong?
The UN lower estimate for China that I quoted, is 488M. Do you think that is too high?
Do you mean that the UN has no actual demographers?
Estimates are just that, and often turn out to be wrong.
Do you have examples of UN figures unsupported by math, not simply estimates that turned out wrong?
The UN lower estimate for China that I quoted, is 488M. Do you think that is too high?
The UN probably has actual demographers, but none of them would be allowed to print what they wish.
Unsupported examples are given in the book, Fewer, which contains the history of the UN Population Division. Only recently, after demographers began to release books and studies showing UN figures wrong, have the figures been adjusted for reality. Fewer was written in 2005.
I don't know about the figure 448M, but I do know that the UN's figure of 1.1 billion is way too high. Many people think China is already at 1.3 billion or thereabouts.
Demography is a science, but it depends upon accurate information and China has not provided that. In the long run China's population will not matter to the rest of the world other than to understand that China's demographic collapse will affect the supply chain for a great many items. The world's population will begin to shrink very soon if it has not already began. And once it begins to shrink it will virtually never stop shrinking.
Ben Wattenberg, the author of Fewer, has been associated with Presidents since the 1970's. So the question, "But don't policy makers know this?", is answered. They do. That is what the border crisis is actually all about.
The catalyst for nearly all of the recent interest is the recent release of "Empty Planet", which also exposes UN misconduct. It was only two years ago that Joe Average began to realize population explosion was no longer happening, and many people do not believe it still.
If the UN had its way, no one on earth would believe population decline is an issue.
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. That seemingly "over the top" assessment is what drives discussions like this.
) the replacement rate there is closer to 2.2 or even 2.3. Whatever it is, the Chinese population is expected to fall off the table very soon.