"If, for the sake of illustration, the fertility of countries is kept constant at 1995-2000 levels, the world population soars to 244 billion by 2150 and 134 trillion in 2300, a definitely impossible outcome. All of this increase occurs in the less developed regions, whose population rises from 4.9 billion today to 134 trillion in 2300. In sharp contrast, the population of the more developed regions declines from 1.2 billion in 2000 to 0.6 billion in 2300 were its fertility to remain constant at current levels. Among the less developed regions, Africa, with its very high current fertility levels, grows most rapidly, passing from 0.8 billion in 2000 to 115 trillion in 2300 in the illustrative constant-fertility scenario."
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Long_range_report.pdf
http://www.worldmapper.org/posters/worldmapper_map12_ver5.pdf
If this unlikely scenario somehow came to pass (just use your imagination), it would mean that Europeans would make up 0.00008% of the world population...not quite enough to accept a trillion refugees from here and there at will. Or, they could, and in a year or two become minorities making up about 1% of the population in a nation in which they made up the majority the year before. Certainly, this scenario will not happen (due to die-offs if not fertility rate reduction), but it does bring up an excellent point, namely, why are shrinking populations thought of as dangerous, and growth is thought of as beneficial? I will not go into the obvious answer in much detail, but suffice it to say that our world economy is based on a Ponzi scheme.
What I worry about is not that fertility rates will remain the same, but rather that they will take much longer to fall than is expected, and most worryingly, that some rates will never fall to replacement level. If rates come down close to replacement level but never reach it, then that still brings us to an exponential increase. It's just that the closer to replacement level the fertility rates get, the longer the doubling time. So populations might double in 100 years instead of 50 years. But they will double nonetheless.
We already have societies (like much of East Asia and Europe) reproducing under replacement level, which I support. Yet we also have societies with extremely high fertility rates far above replacement level. Even in UN scenarios where the total population levels out at "only" 9 billion people in 2050, you can see that whereas Africa's population only surpassed Europe's population in the late 20th century, its population would be roughly 3 times Europe's population by the year 2050. That is still a huge increase, and that is a moderate prediction, which is most likely hugely underestimating fertility rate reductions.
This has led some people to claim that the 21st Century will be the "Century of Africa". Many people confuse population growth and large populations with improvement, but this is a huge mistake. There has been shown to be a very high correlation between low fertility rates and economic well-being.
http://www.vhemt.org/tfrgdp.jpg
If the 21st Century is the "Century of Africa" just because of the large and growing population there, then the 19th Century was the "Century of India and China", as even then, they were the most populous places in the world. But was the 19th Century their century? In 1900, India had 280 million people, and China had 415 million people. The United Kingdom had 38 million people, yet had control over India. Meanwhile, China was just starting to recover from its opium addiction of the past century and had foreign (Western and soon Japanese) enclaves sprouting up (which were admittedly quite beautiful...I've been to some). At any rate, India and China, while the most populous places on earth, had very little power to speak of, and much smaller countries/areas did far better.
I think that one way to think of things is in terms of resources per person. Admittedly, the entire earth should not be thought of in terms of what it can bestow upon humans...yet this is still a good illustration. If there are fewer people, there are more resources per person. If there are more people, there are fewer resources per person. We can "reduce, reuse, and recycle", but that is not enough. We are already stretching past carrying capacity, but remember that if we all cut our usage of resources and waste by 50% but the population doubled, then there would be no change. If instead, the population halved, then keeping the amount of usage and pollution the same would mean that people would be able to use double the resources per capita that they currently do. Certainly, if the population remained the same and we cut down on our consumption, or if our population fell and our consumption remained the same, then we would be using less and we would have more available.
Lots of formerly abundant species, which numbered in the millions or even tens of millions in ancient times are now 99% wiped out. Soon, the only place many species will exist will be in zoos or special wildlife preserves which are fenced off. The environment is nothing like it used to be. (However, I am happy that this past Wednesday, I was able to see/notice the Milky Way for the first time in my entire life.) If we have such bad environmental problems after just reaching 7 billion people, what will things be like not only continuing with 7 billion people, but increasing it past 9 billion people, and perhaps a continually growing number until population collapse? We will call our polluted environment now "pristine" by comparison.
Also, seeing as how not all societies are lowering population growth at the same pace, it appears to me that there will be many countries perpetually in crisis which need to export their people and problems to richer countries. But there is only so much that richer countries can take before they become like the countries that people are and will be escaping from. As I said, even if Africa puts the brakes on population growth as the moderate growth model of the UN predicts, it will still have tripled its population over the next half century (while Europe's native population will decrease over that same time period). In America, we can see that a paper written in the early 1990s is correct and things are going as he foresaw, namely that the current growth in the USA is nearly completely due to migrants from after 1970 and their descendants.
http://dieoff.org/page54.htm
By the year 2060, it appears that the majority of Americans will be those who migrated after 1970 or are descendants of migrants who came after 1970. (And this is the case even though Mexicans and other large migrant groups in America generally have much lower fertility rates than groups in many other "developing" societies.) So we know that migration contributes to population growth pretty much forever.
http://www.cairco.org/issues/mass-immigration-driving-us-population-double
This post has mostly been about population growth. in other posts, I have already talked about cultural conflict due to massive immigration of cultures that have completely different social mores compared to their host cultures. Thankfully, most people migrating to the United States at least seem to share general ideas like the benefits of freedom of speech and women's rights. Europe will face a harder time taking in cultures that often do not even believe in those things and have (in many cases) a higher fertility rate to boot.
The solution, as far as I can see it, is to promote birth control as strongly as possible. If I had complete control, I would even institute a Chinese-like policy to limit childbirth and harshly dissuade families from having families larger than replacement level (instead of promoting it). I would also think of my country not as a dumping ground for anyone who wants a better life, but rather have standards like a university does for its admissions. At Ivy League universities, you may find many professors and students saying that we should all open our borders. Yet when asked if the university should open its borders to anyone who feels like attending or teaching there, I am sure that we would get a 180 degree shift in opinion. "Not just anyone can come to Harvard! Harvard would lose its prestige and get dumbed down if we just took in anybody!", they'd probably say. Yet they can't apply that same reasoning on the societal level.
One thing is for sure...the 21st century is going to be very interesting, and if we play our cards wrong, it could be the last prosperous century for many societies, and the century in which the Earth shows what Malthusian horrors it has up its sleeve.
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