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May 5, 2005

World Population In Decline And Other Environmental Heresies

Although most environmentalists still haven't got the word, worldwide, birthrates are in free fall, and that's not the only error in the environmental movement's predictions. That should be great news for environmentalists (or it will be when finally noticed), but according to Stewart Brand in his article "Environmental Heresies," the environmentalists need to recognize what caused the turnaround. The world population growth rate actually peaked at 2 percent way back in 1968, the very year that Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. But the world's women didn't suddenly have fewer kids because of his book, they had fewer kids because they moved to the cities. So what is anathema to the environmentalist aesthetic who loves the village and despises the city, actually may turn out to be the cause of a desired result, which, had the environmentalist had his/her wish, the opposite would have occurred.

Stewart Brand predicts that the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

(...) Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Nations already in a birth dearth crisis include Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia--whose population is now in absolute decline and is expected to be 30 percent lower by 2050. On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon), birthrates are headed down. They reach replacement level and keep on dropping. It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason. Any variation from the 2.1 rate compounds over time.

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Posted by Hyscience at May 5, 2005 11:51 AM

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