I have spent my entire adult life worried about overpopulation. What is the carrying capacity of Earth? At what point will we have a massive die-off? Will there be anything like wilderness left by the time that happens? Enough biodiversity left to adapt to climate change in a way that will be tolerable for humans? Etc etc. Just look at a chart of human population growth and it’s clear that we are in the upswing of a human version of the algae bloom/die-off.
And maybe we are, but I just listened to two Seminars for Long-Term Thinking focused on population, Stewart Brand’s “Cities and Time” and Philip Longman’s “The Depopulation Problem” and I’m thinking differently about it now. It’s looking very likely that our population has doubled for the last time, and most of the rest of our population growth is going to be in old people, not babies. People are living longer and having way fewer kids.
There are a few reasons for the radical shift in population-growth rate. First is urbanization. People are flocking to cities in massive numbers, and in the city, kids are no longer an economic asset like they are on the farm. In economic terms, if you are in the city, you are probably better off without them. Second is feminism, or at least it is a phenomenon feminists are in favor of. Women are getting educated, working, and more in control of their reproduction, so they are having fewer babies. (This is arguably another result of urbanization–if you’re on the farm, women are most economically valuable for making babies. If you are in the city and kids don’t matter so much, why not have that second income?) Third is television. Philip Longman called this phenomenon “TV taking the bandwidth out of the bedroom.” Birth rates are inversely proportional to hours of TV watched. This may be because it is urban, small families that are idealized in TV shows.
Stewart Brand’s version of the story is the more optimistic: Perhaps this means we humans have a shot at long-term survival after all. City living is greener than country living–way smaller ecological footprint per person. We still have to weather the population peak without ruining the planet as a habitat for ourselves, which will be no small feat, but at least there might be light at the end of the tunnel!
Philip Longman’s version is pretty depressing: The only population group able to withstand this small family trend are those who are highly principled, anti-materialistic, and dogmatically in favor of big families: religious fundamentalists. Liberals are a dying breed. Fundamentalist populations are burgeoning. The future looks very conservative and patriarchal. And, since we can now tell the sex of our kids before they are born, it means we will have fewer and fewer women–that is to say, more and more females will be aborted. This is already happening in China, where the sex ratio has reached 6 men for every 5 women. With women a scarce resource plus a highly patriarchal society, and the outlook for women’s freedom does not look good. On top of that are the economic problems that come along with an aging population with fewer and fewer workers to sustain it. We are about to get a small taste of that with the retirement of the Baby Boomers. Over the next 100 years that situation will be global and on a much bigger scale. The poverty and desperation that will produce will put ecological concerns on the sidelines, making Stewart’s version of the story unlikely. He advocates governments giving incentives to have kids, but says that it hasn’t worked at all in countries that have tried it.
March 20, 2010 at 12:08 pm
As a big city dweller for the last 16 years, I’ve often found myself arguing that there is a built in efficiency in concentrated living that could qualify as a kind of environmentalism. When I find myself yearning for the pastoral, I’ve noticed that at it’s root, the feeling is not so much the crowds as it is their stuff (architecture and vehicles in particular) that bothers me. Cities built on a human scale that I’ve seen in Japan (after the introduction of cars) and Europe(before cars) seemed so livable! Also, I remember reading something about the birthrate decline in Japan being evidence of some deep social cue that occurs in reaction to crowding, as opposed to economic factors alone. I wonder if there is some kind of social biology in animals or insect colonies capable of moderating population concentrations in a way that algae don’t.
March 21, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Thanks for the comment, city dweller!
I like the economic/cultural hypothesis more than the evolutionary-population-control one because it seems unlikely that humans ever experienced overcrowding in our prehistory. It is possible, though, especially if you think about “us” on a super-long-term scale, like millions of years.
And if it is true, we are lucky to have it.
Nathen
March 21, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I’m not sure why “urbanized” must be “liberal”. I know plenty of liberals here in Eugene who value time with family more than t.v. time, and have one parent who enjoys raising their kids more than earning a second income.
Similarly, it seems false in my experience that materialism and fundamentalism are opposites.
Perhaps I just know atypical people?
March 24, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Interesting! Have you found that the reverse is true or that there is no correlation?
Nathen
March 29, 2010 at 1:37 pm
No correlation, in my experience.
In theory fundamentalists (of nearly every faith) should be finding contentment from spiritual sources and be less materialistic. But that is in theory, not practice…
Since World War II the U.S. has seen several generations who were notably conservative or liberal, but whose children “reacted” and chose the opposite. This trend is contrary to Longman’s prediction in which conservative parents of large families always create conservative offspring.
March 29, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Good point, David! It is also in line with Stauss & Howe’s theory of generation cycles. Would you agree, however, that there has been a general trend towards liberal humanism–that today’s conservatives are not as conservative as, say a conservative generation at in 1900 or during the Civil War? Familial belief systems do tend to replicate themselves in their children, even if the tone of the generation swings back and forth. What do you think about the prospect of reversing the general trend towards liberal humanism?
Nathen
April 12, 2010 at 5:07 pm
I’m not sure that is a meaningful question.
For example, most nationally prominent religious and political figures would name abortion as a “conservative” stance. However, only in comparatively recent history has any church firmly believed that ending a very early pregnancy is murder, let along brought this claim into the political arena.
Also, historically the two dominant political parties have usually but not always had small versus big government as their main division. (Today this is obviously not the case, as both parties spend like crazy.)
The big issues that define “liberal” and “conservative” keep changing. There might be a historically meaningful axis to measure along, but if so I am ignorant of it.