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Epilogue
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
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230 Epilogue Since peaking in the late 1960s, the growth rate of the world’s population has dropped steadily. In 1987, the number of people added each year to the population reached its greatest point, and each year since then the population has grown by a smaller and smaller number. In 2003, the median woman worldwide reached replacement fertility, another sign that population will eventually, perhaps not too long from now, begin decreasing. Two other demographic developments from the last decade began to steal the spotlight: globally, older people began to outnumber young people, and urban residents to outnumber rural residents. Both of these changes are remaking societies around the world, just as rapid population growth had previously.1 And yet, the world’s population continues to climb each day. Because the base population is so large—the highest ever—even adding a smaller percentage still amounts to a tremendous number of people. Population growth won’t peak for another twenty to forty years. The world may be adding fewer people each year, but it is still adding people. Exactly how high the population will reach, no one can say. The largest generation in world history—a global baby boom of sorts—is now coming of age. Whether we land softly with a population of just over eight billion or reach between ten and eleven billion will depend on their reproductive decisions in the next decade or so. No one can say exactly what the social, political, and environmental consequences of this greater population will be. Will we reach the planet’s ecological breaking point? Since the 1960s, despite spotty progress made by environmental groups around the world, environmental problems from biodiversity loss to water shortages to climate change continue to grow, especially as more and more countries reach the stage of “high mass consumption ” that Walt Rostow hoped for in the 1960s. Reflecting on these trends, population scholar Laurie Mazur concludes, “We are living in a pivotal moment.”2 In discussing the future, it’s hard not to talk about the past, especially the history of predictions about the future. Malthusians in particular have to contend with a long history of predictions. Revisiting The Population Bomb in a 2009 article, Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne have acknowledged some mistakes. The population, both globally but especially in the United States, has not grown as fast as anticipated in 1968. And since then, fewer people have died of hunger— a total of 300 million—than the billions they predicted. True, the number of malnourished was higher than in 1968, but not enough to account for the difference . In pointing to these mistakes, Ehrlich and Ehrlich said nothing about the calls for coercion that appear in The Population Bomb in several places. Instead, they emphasized what they say the book got right: its critique of overconsumption , its prediction about declining oceans, and the attention given to climate change. They were also right, they claim, about the serious ecological problems of the green revolution—the overreliance on chemicals and monocultures . Since 1968, additional concerns have emerged about hybrid seeds, especially about the overdraft of groundwater they require. The green revolution may have raised food production, but its medium-term success was “bought at a high price of environmental destruction.” Indeed, the Ehrlichs argue that the book’s fundamental point—that “the capacity of Earth to produce food and support people is finite”—is still “self-evidently correct.” Its message is “even more important today.” Signs of potential collapse—both environmental and political—are growing, they say.3 Not everyone, however, finds the Ehrlichs’ argument self-evident, including some sympathetic to environmental concerns. Among the most outspoken recent critics is British journalist Fred Pearce. In a recent overview of population history called The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet’s Surprising Future, Pearce chose to emphasize the positive, although he, too, warned of potential environmental problems. He pointed out that, because of the green revolution, humans over the last half century have brought only 10 percent more land in cultivation, yet more than doubled their food production. He acknowledged that the green revolution has stumbled in the last decade, with a slowing in the rate of increase in food production, and that water shortages are getting so severe that they could result in “billions of hungry people.” But, he stresses, food shortages are not inevitable; the numbers are no worse than in the 1960s and great possibilities exist for technological improvements. Relatively simple...