Population Growth Made Simple-Minded

The "Population Bomb" is back. Progressives, including the climate change crowd, have recently rediscovered the looming global population crisis. Burgeoning humanity is the root cause of famine, pollution, resource depletion, stagnating wages, increasing inequality, decreasing dignity, and many other affronts to the liberal intellect, not least global warming. Indeed, human fertility is the greenhouse gas (GHG) of population growth, absorbing the earth's resources as CO₂ molecules absorb heat. We must now brace ourselves for a relentless torrent of drivel — articulated with the silliest alarmist buzzwords, teased from the pious liberal vernacular of condescension and hyperbole — to support the simple-minded liberal idea that the world would be a better place without so many of us. It is a goal that is achievable, we are told, only through the simple-minded liberal solution of empowering women to have fewer children.

To this end, it is said, a strong global family planning program is needed for the many tens of millions of women who would voluntarily limit their childbearing, if only they had access to free, or affordable, contraceptives. In a population debate held by The Economist, advocates of the "earth would be better off with fewer people" position won, 80% to 20%. To achieve a world "with better choices and better outcomes," declared the winning side, "family planning represents a relatively small and very wise investment." For Catholics — following the admonition of Pope Francis, that it is irresponsible to breed like rabbits — the cost is minute, as they are advised to employ natural family planning methods. So that people canlearn the precise family size, education, it is presumed, must be provided for everyone. The total cost to investors (i.e., taxpayers residing in Western industrialized countries) has yet to be determined.

Such an investment is needed for both the developed and the developing world. After all, "rapid population growth is leading to the destruction of forests, the spread of deserts, and the pollution and overfishing of waterways and oceans. In addition, it is one of the leading drivers of climate change." Besides, unintended pregnancies plague even the industrialized world (e.g., more than a third of US births are said to be unintended).

At current fertility rates, world population could reach 11 billion by 2050, an increase of more than 4 billion. Essentially all of the added population (97%) would be born in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where economic depression, social unrest, and political instability are common. Most of this inordinate growth would occur in countries having a disproportionate percentage of young, so-called "youth bulges." Here are impoverished countries that are unable to meet the basic needs of their existing populations. According to the Council on Foreign Relations (The New Population Bomb),

most of the world's expected population growth will increasingly be concentrated in today's poorest, youngest, and most heavily Muslim countries, which have a dangerous lack of quality education, capital, and employment opportunities; and, for the first time in history, most of the world's population will become urbanized, with the largest urban centers being in the world's poorest countries, where policing, sanitation, and health care are often scarce.

In a five-part LA Times series (Beyond Seven Billion), Kenneth Weiss cites the "arc of instability" that spans Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, with special note on the "youth bulges [that] have emerged in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and the Palestinian territories." The hope is that free condoms and birth control pills, tossed into the grateful clutches of childbearing women, will reduce this growth by 2 billion, shrinking mid-century population to a meager 9 billion, "the equivalent of adding another India and China to the world."

But the benign and altruistic image of the Progressive family planning scheme may become tarnished, in practice. It won't be global; it can't help but be intended for the childbearing women of the youth bulges. Nor is it likely to be voluntary. Some experts (mainly from the eco-socialist faction of Progressivism) believe that any meaningful reduction will involve mandatory abortion and sterilization — what they call "green racism," aka, eugenics disguised as environmentalism.

Yet even if the concern — that voluntary global family planning is a euphemism for Third World population control — is not raised, the challenges are formidable. Family planners from the developed world (home of the most egregious climate polluters) must explain to ordinary people in the developing world (home of the most egregious population breeders) that their sexual behavior is bad for the planet. Alternatively, family planners from wealthy, white-majority countries must explain to impoverished people of color that the world would be a better place with fewer of them.

The trick to quickly reducing population growth is to provide education and modern contraceptives to those beginning their reproductive years — just in time to plan a small family. For developing countries, this means a one-billion-strong youth bulge of "adolescents" who can find themselves in the throes of marital bliss by age ten, and whose ideas as to appropriate family size are largely shaped by parents and grandparents, who want large families to take care of them as they age. There are also significant religious and cultural pressures behind the tradition of large families. Moreover, to the leaders of many developing countries, high birthrate is thought to engender such benefits as economic, military, and political power.

Most developing countries have no plans to reduce fertility rate. India, for example, boasts of its "ample human resources," happy with its poor, rapidly growing, working-age population, whose cheap labor provides a competitive edge. Why not? The US, through its immigration policy, is frantically enlarging its supply of poor, uneducated, low-wage labor. In 1970, its immigrant population was 9.6 million (4.7% of 200 million). Today, that number has grown to 40.3 million (13.1% of 318 million). Recent statistics show that, compared with existing American residents, immigrants are significantly less educated, have a significantly higher poverty rate and duration, and are significantly more dependent on welfare. And this ample human resource is more fertile.

According to Pew Research, US population will leap to 438 million by 2050, with 82% of that growth from recent immigrants and their descendents. Environmental ethicist Philip Cafaro wonders "what climate change mitigation measures . . . could possibly equal the increased greenhouse gas emissions" produced by such an influx. The sentiment among enlightened liberals such as Cafaro is that America can no longer afford massive immigration; it contradicts progressive ideals.

If world population increases to 11 billion by 2050, it will be "akin to adding three Chinas," says Weiss. What renowned biologist E.O. Wilson called “the raging monster upon the Earth”has already pushed earth beyond its carrying capacity. The Global Footprint Network tells us that "humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste" and that at current population and consumption rates, two earths will be required as early as 2030. For uneducated youth bulge readers, the authors took care to explain, "And of course, we only have one."

By 2050, three earths will be required, unless we "begin to make ecological limits central to our decision-making and use human ingenuity to find new ways to live, within the Earth’s bounds." This is the kind of thinking that excites Progressive family planners, for it leads to the "Double Whammy" of population growth. First, there is what demographers call population momentum. Then there is what cynics might call the "prosperity bulge" paradox. Both, naturally, demand additional, much more advanced, family planning, available only through a large, highly paid bureaucracy.

Even when youth bulge females choose smaller family sizes (smaller still, after impoverished and illiterate females factor ecological limits into their decisions), the monster will rage on, because of the huge number of people still in their reproductive years. In China, for example, despite the remarkable success of family planning (forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide) that has eliminated over a half billion children, a current population of 1.3 billion continues to heave forward. As Reiss explains, "Think of population growth as a speeding train. When the engineer applies the brakes, the train doesn't stop immediately."

To date, not even China's mountains of garbage have slowed the population train. Nor have India's rivers of sewage, a "ticking health bomb," impeded its travel. Nevertheless, Progressives are optimistic that the smaller family sizes engendered by their program of education and contraception will eventually stop the train – one hopes before Mount Everest's "fecal time bomb" explodes.

As Third World fertility declines, however, smaller families will consume more of earth's resources, not to mention the additional pollution, waste, and GHG emissions that they will produce. And they will do so with wealth accumulated through becoming, in accordance with the Progressive family plan, happier, healthier, and more productive members of the global economy. Empowering women to have fewer children will turn youth bulges into prosperity bulges. Family planning in China alone has already helped lift more than 300 million from poverty to the middle class.

The earth, says Scientific American's David Biello, which annually supplies humanity with "60 billion metric tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and plant materials, such as crop plants and trees for timber or paper," will then have "to find more than 140 billion metric tons of such materials." Imagine the land area needed for sprawling new industrial parks and shopping malls — possibly the equivalent of an extra Alaska. And, as Weiss points out, "hundreds of millions of newly affluent people, mostly in Asia, will want to add dairy products and grain-fed beef and pork to their diets." Could cattle ranches the size of Texas be in the cards?

Such a paradox has already been encountered by climate change experts, who thought that only industrialized countries needed to cut GHG emissions to thwart global warming — that developing countries would not increase their consumption of fossil fuels, in an effort to become, well, industrialized. Population experts will face the vastly greater problem of persuading middle-class arrivals from developing countries that they should not consume humanity's production (from food and energy to luxury items such as household appliances and indoor plumbing) at the same rates as do industrialized countries.

If technological advance ensures an abundant supply of cheap resources (as it has done exceedingly well since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution), then consumption by prosperity bulge families will increase. Thanks to family planning, they will have more money; thanks to technological innovation, prices will be less; more will be consumed. This prospect — an ever increasing demand for resources, at an ever increasing disregard for the environment — horrifies Progressives, to the point where they simply rule out its possibility.

Current Progressive thinking is that since humanity is already consuming 1.5 earths worth of resources (recall that we only have one earth), scientists and engineers (even our brightest) will be unable to figure out ways of boosting production from the 60 billion metric tons of resources that we currently consume to the 140 billion metric tons that will be needed. In this case, there will be rampant resource scarcity, which will cause dramatic price increases, which in turn will steal away the income gains of prosperity bulge families, thrusting them back into poverty — back to where it all started: a world in which billions of people live in squalor, except that they will be members of smaller families. Oops! Deeper liberal thought may be required here.

In summary, youth bulges and population momentum in the world's poorest and most uneducated countries will exacerbate the already raging monster upon the earth, a speeding runaway train overloaded with desperately hungry passengers who breed like rabbits, especially in the arcs of instability and double whammy regions that, by 2050, will add to the world’s population the equivalent of an India and a China, possibly the equivalent of three Chinas, which, for the most part, will be crammed into wretched, filthy, crime-ridden cities, and require for its support resources that are equivalent to three planet earths, unless Third World adolescent females are either cajoled with free fertility education and modern contraceptives or coerced through green racism to have smaller families.

At 7 billion people, humanity has already pushed earth beyond its carrying capacity, currently consuming 1.5 earths worth of resources. So it's not clear why the goal of Progressive family planners is to slow world population growth to only 9 billion by mid-century. Shouldn't they be shooting for 4.7 billion (the one planet resource equivalent)? What is clear, however, is that liberal population experts now believe that rampant population growth urgently needs a strong, global family planning program. And to be consistent with Progressive ideals, immigration into industrialized countries should be drastically reduced, or eliminated. Says Cafaro, “Immigrants are not coming to the United States to remain poor. Those hundreds of millions of new citizens will want to live as well and consume energy at the same rates as other Americans."

Also consistent with Progressive ideals, liberal populationists will want a new government agency to implement their grand family planning policy. Let's call it the Department of Population Engineering (DOPE). DOPE professionals will begin by empowering youth bulge women to have smaller families, thereby slowing the growth of a population that is polluting the planet, raising its temperature, and exhausting its resources. Next, they will concoct policies to keep the prosperity bulge from polluting the planet, raising its temperature, and exhausting its resources.

By 2050, DOPE will grow to a size akin to three EPAs, and each DOPE family planner will require a brain three times the size of a climate scientist's.