“Because of the one child per family rule in China, for 35 years, its trial in Singapore and the drop in the fertility rate in much of Europe the rate of growth in the world is slowing, but it is not yet reversing. It’s still growing at almost 1½% a year. But there are some bright spots.
By 2050 the UN predicts that 25 European nations will have populations below what they are now. Russia will lose 31 million, Italy over 7 million, Poland almost 7 million, and Germany almost 4 million. But the effect is minimized as they take in more refugees. It is predicted that if the current low fertility rate in Japan continues there would be no Japanese left by the middle of the fourth millennium.”
“Ya, Japan is really in for some major changes. I did a report on my news program a few months ago. Because of its low birthrate its population has decreased by a couple of million in the last few years. Now in 2025 it’s down to 126 million, but 30% of its citizens are over 65. Its median age is 50 years which is 20 years higher than the world average. And in the next thirty years it will lose a quarter of its population. They could bring in foreign workers but the traditional culture of Japan has not been particularly open to people from other cultures and the Japanese written and spoken language is difficult to learn. Unless robotics start doing the work of people, the third strongest economy in the world may drop a few notches. But then Japan leads the world in robotics, so they may not need more workers.”
“But if we are to be concerned with the future of the planet, Japan is showing the way. “We should have seen this problem coming. The agricultural surplus allowed more
people to leave the farm since fewer were needed to produce the food needed to sustain a technological society, fewer and fewer people were needed to supply all of our physical needs. Factory built housing, advanced construction tools, mass produced autos, clothes and appliances, all reduced the need for hand labor and increased the efficiency of every worker.
"Children became economic drains on their families. Japan and Western Europe are cases in point. In the short term, the next 50 to 100 years, countries’ economies will be pinched to deliver pension and health benefits for the increasingly elderly population. Either the fewer workers must pay higher taxes to provide for their elders or the elders must be required to work more years before retiring. General Motors is already in trouble with only one worker for every three retirees.”
“Those of us in interesting jobs often don’t want to retire. I love my job of researching, interviewing and reporting. But brilliant legislators often force us into an unwanted retirement
to make room for the younger workers. So experience is sacrificed for inexperience—hardly a blueprint for efficiency.”
“I’ve enjoyed my life too, Chet. But short sighted people call for more babies to take up the slack. This merely compounds the problem in the long run. Population reduction will obviously have some economic effects. General Motors will sell fewer cars and trucks.
Telephone companies will bill for fewer calls. Airlines will probably fly fewer passengers and oil companies will sell less gasoline. But since the world will have fewer people the standard of living will go up. So there would be economic problems for a few generations while the population stabilizes. It seems to take about 70 years before a population reduction plan is implemented and the society’s population actually starts to reduce.
“The longer we continue in this population explosion, the more economically difficult the adjustment will be when we reverse it. But without that major adjustment it will soon be ‘sayonara’ for our species.
“People who I admire for their ability to think and their concern for the future agree that the world has major problems. Like my old buddy Arnold Toynbee said ‘We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.’ Any growth is bad for the planet but the greatest growth is in the poorer countries. So we have more babies starving to death and fewer children in school. This keeps the poor down and reduces any chance of reducing their poverty. It also fuels their anger and increases civil wars and religious hatreds.”
“Wreck, why do you think it fuels religious hate?”
“Well Con, the lack of education limits people’s views of options for conflict resolution. If they see the ultimate truth of their lives only in the very limited view of their own tradition; if they understand as truth only what a local religious leader says; if they are not aware that a government based on the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people may be a better way to go—we will have uneducated prejudices and hatreds. But if they realize that there are highly probable theories in economics and the social sciences that may make them capable of developing economically satisfying lives—then they have a much better chance of seeing the big picture.
“My old professor, Dr. Woellner, said that ‘God and one man is a majority.’ Certainly truth is not determined by a democratic vote or a Supreme Court decision. De Tocqueville warned us over 150 years ago about the possible tyranny of the majority in America. (4) And ‘certainty’ is not determined by a single person at the head of a state or a religion. Look at how popes, along with the huge majority of the human race, believed that the earth was flat and that the sun went around the earth. Now the popes, and all educated people, believe just the opposite.
“While Copernicus was admittedly not the first to propose a heliocentric theory of the movement of the sun and Earth, he probably incurred more wrath from his religion than did Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, the thirteenth century Persian Shi’ite when he proposed his theory of planetary motion. Of course at that time Islam was more accepting of science, which is why
they were so far ahead of the Christians. And when the Greek Philolaus proposed his heliocentric theory in the fourth century BC he might have drawn a few snickers of disbelief, but the Olympian gods didn’t strike him down.
“So how do we approach the religious and state leaders, how do we approach the common people, how do we convince the world’s population of the severity of the situation? How do we reduce population while increasing the opportunities for every baby born?
"Certainly if every young person can have the opportunity to learn about the mysteries of science, the flow of history, the enduring questions of ethics—we have a better shot at developing a utopian world where we can live effective and enjoyable lives in a peaceful world.”
“You’re right Wreck. We don’t know how many potential Albert Einsteins, Bill Gateses, Thomas Edisons, Nelson Mandelas, Thomas Jeffersons and Colin Powells are living in huts in Columbia, India, Africa or Bangladesh. The world is really severely handicapping itself when its whole population is not being given the chance to be as well educated as their capabilities will allow. And with globalization and urbanization becoming the rule, working with your hands on a farm or in a factory is less and less likely to be an adequate pursuit for financial success or self fulfillment.
“When I hear of Islamic radicals, like the Taliban, burning down schools in Afghanistan where 70% of the people are illiterate and where millions of children are still not attending school (5), I cringe with pity for the deprived students and for their state that is trying to enter the modern world. I understand the need of some religious leaders to keep people ignorant of their world, and even of their religion so that they can be more easily manipulated. How can an illiterate read the Koran? And you certainly don’t want girls in school. The next thing you know they would find out that Muhammad actually liked women and held them in high esteem.
“I have always had the belief that the truly religious people are all climbing the same mountain. They are just climbing from different sides. But those ignorant of the message of the founders of their religions are all fighting at the bottom of the hill. They dig trenches and moats that bring them farther from the top. And their psychotic need to control others and to believe they are right takes them farther from the humility that is needed for sainthood, for union with the Brahman—
for Paradise. Just look at the inhumane deeds that have been done in the name of religion—the Crusades, fanatical terrorism, the Inquisition, suicide bombings. The mercy espoused by most great religious teachers is replaced by the most vile human motivation for power and vengeance—a vengeance for either real or imagined wrongs.
“Exactly Con, but we are caught in a Catch 22. The poor people are too uneducated to realize that their procreative profundity is pulling them further and further behind. In Europe we have more people realizing that their own lives will be better without spending their time and money on children. And they have the means of contraception and abortion readily available, so fewer children are being born. If their religious leaders protest, they ignore them.
“On the other hand, the poor are bound up in the tradition of having children and don’t have the means to prevent them if they wanted to. They can’t see a hope for a better future. But in Europe, Singapore and China—all countries that either have arrived at or are rushing to the gates of plenty, fertility rates are dropping. There is generally a freedom from want in these countries. And there is certainly a good deal of hope, a hope with a good chance of fruition.”
“I know that it takes 2.1 children per woman to keep the population stable and I recently read that over 60 countries are now below that level, how high are the rates in the undeveloped parts of the world?”
“They go to almost 6 children per woman in some countries, Lee. Zambia’s rate is 5.6. India is 3.1, but that should drop significantly as farming becomes more mechanized and the country becomes more industrialized. Rwanda has a fertility rate of 6 children per woman. The government is now considering recommending only three children per family. The more developed countries average about 1.6 children per woman. The less developed countries average over 3. China, with its one child policy, was still at 1.7 children per woman. And now that the internal pressure forced the rulers to relax the one child policy its rate will go back up. But in Europe, Spain is way down, just 1.15, with Italy not far behind at 1.18. It just goes to show that even in these supposedly Roman Catholic countries, family needs outweigh the commands of religion. By European standards Catholic Ireland has a high fertility rate of 1.9, but that is still a bit below the 2.1 repopulation rate. This naturally increases the percentage of elderly in the population. Europe and Japan are the only regions where the number of people aged 60 and over outnumber the children. Parts of Latin America and Asia are approaching that level. It will necessarily cause an economic hardship for some.”
“That 2.1 level is outdated. I know it’s used all the time, I heard that same number when I was in college and I understand that it had been around for decades before that. It probably made sense when people died at about 50 but today with the people living into their late 70s and into their 80s it really doesn’t apply. Look at this illustration. If we have two people reproducing themselves at 20 we now have four people. If those children reproduce by the time they are 20 we now have six people alive. If those children reproduced by the time they are 20 than by age 80 we would have 8 people, not the original two. If we assume that the original parents die at about 80 you’d actually have six of their descendants still living. If this were true today instead of having 8 billion people we would have three or four times that many.
“But reproducing yourself at the age of 20, while it might be common in the underdeveloped countries it is not common in the more developed nations. So let’s assume that the people reproduce themselves by the time they are 35. So now there are four people, the two parents and two children. Then let’s assume that those children reproduce themselves by the time they are 35. We now have six living people and the original parents are now 70 years old. So you can see that with today’s increasing lifespans that 2.1 fertility idea doesn’t work—certainly not for the near term.. But with far longer lifespans it is probably more like one child per couple to maintain the population. But maintaining our 8 billion people is not our objective. We need to reduce the population not maintain it.
"And Gulliver Returns" Book 1 Reversing Overpopulation--The Planet's Doomsday Threat Page 15
