The Intelligent Optimist's Guide to Life by Jurriaan Kamp

Author:Jurriaan Kamp [Kamp, Jurriaan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2014-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

OVERPOPULATION IS A MYTH

We keep hearing it again and again: There’s no way our world can become a healthier and better place because there are just too many of us. Overpopulation is seen as a major threat to the future of humanity.

Let’s run the numbers for the 7 billion we are today. Let’s assume that we all live in an average four-person family and we all have our own house with a small private garden on, say, a one-tenth of an acre lot. How much space do we need for that?

7,000,000,000 / 4 = 1,750,000,000 homes

× 1/10 acre = 175,000,000 acres

= 273,438 square miles

To put that in perspective: The state of Texas measures 268,820 square miles. So we can basically fit the whole current world population in just the second-largest state of the United States. Granted these people need food, water, freeways, and work, not just homes. But we can set up another state with offices. And we still have the rest of the United States for food farms. You get the idea … contrary to what you keep hearing, space is really not an issue on our planet.

And population growth?

That’s not a problem either. Advanced countries like Italy and Japan face negative population growth. Their populations decline. That would also be the case in Germany were it not for net migration from other countries (which means that there are fewer people in these countries). The trend is the same around the globe: Where there’s more wealth there are fewer births. Take India, the country that is predicted to overtake China as the country with the largest population. In 1950 Indian women had on average six children. Today that average is now 2.6—still a high number, but the trend is clearly downward and will continue in that direction with increasing wealth.

According to the most recent UN report on population, the world’s population will stabilize during this century, or, at the latest, early next century, after which it will begin to decline. On average women across the globe give birth to 2.5 babies today—it was almost five in 1950. So the trend is downward. But even if the average woman has 0.5 more babies than the current rate in the next ninety years, the world population will peak at almost 16 billion in 2100. However, if the birth rate declines, with an average of 0.5 baby per woman, than we get to a world population of just over 6 billion in 2100. That’s fewer people on the planet than we have today! With the current trend in world population growth leader India, that last outcome is not unimaginable at all.

So, worst case, we may need another Texas. But that’s not the likeliest outcome. To put the numbers in yet another perspective: In 2011 the world celebrated the arrival of the 7 billionth person. If all of us would have come to the baby shower the state of Maryland would have offered plenty of space for everyone to dance.2

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