UN population projection: 2010 update

The UN recently released its 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects (press release, access to data). The update projects that the current world population of close to 7 billion will reach 9.3 billion by the middle of this century and 10.1 billion by 2100. Stated another way, global population is expected to increase by 1/3 in the next 40 years.



Not surprisingly, the news has precipitated another round of quasi-Malthusian musings: Can the planet support 10 billion people? This is certainly a legitimate question, but the focus on the global picture -- which really hasn't been significantly affected by the update -- obscures the real news in the update.

As the Economist notes:

The most dramatic changes are national, not global. America's population, now 310m, is likely to rise to 400m in 2050 and 478m in 2100. China's is forecast to fall by 400m between now and 2100. Russia’s population is now 142m; Afghanistan’s slightly more than a fifth of that; Niger’s barely a tenth. But by 2100, Afghanistan is forecast to have the same population as Russia (111m) and Niger will be larger. Such forecasts need to be taken with a bucketload of salt: tiny shifts in today’s birth rate extrapolated over 90 years produce huge changes. But the general picture is probably right. Sub-Saharan Africa’s current population, at 856m, is little more than Europe’s and a fifth of Asia’s. By 2050 it could be almost three times Europe’s and by 2100 might even be three-quarters of the size of Asia. By any measure, Africa is by far the fastest-growing continent.

The most eye popping element is the rapid decline in China's population -- the result of the one child policy playing itself out over time. Two major lessons come to mind: 1) major transformations to social systems can be consciously planned and implemented when there is the political will but 2) successful implementation plays itself out in a span of decades rather months. In other words, such transformations are much harder in social systems dominated by quarterly-returns and the horse race politics of seemingly constant elections.

Can you control the Population of Malthusians when Ideas have Sex?

Brendan O’Neill recently posted "The definitive guide to modern-day Malthusians"

Malthusians are multiplying like rabbits. They’re everywhere. In respectable Western society you can’t swing a bat without hitting a Malthus-inspired misery guts. Yet while many of them are happy to talk openly about the plague of people making Gaia sick, some don’t consider themselves Malthusians at all. There are old-style Malthusians who doom-monger about frenzied fecundity in the dusty Over There, and newer Malthusians-in-denial who never, ever use the words ‘population’ and ‘control’ in succession, yet who still claim that humanity’s consumption habits threaten to bring about eco-doom.

Either way, the Malthusian attitude – the idea that every problem we face is a product of our temerity to try to live beyond nature’s means – is rampant today, whether it labels itself Malthusianism or something less likely to get people’s backs up. So to help you spot Malthusian thinking in its many guises in the year ahead, as we welcome the seven billionth human being, spiked offers this guide to the myriad of modern-day Malthusians.

The article then goes on to describe a variety of different flavors of Malthusianism: Unreconstructed, celebrity, psycho, feminist and green (complete with cute photos caricaturing the various categories).

Andrew Revkin, in Deconstructing a Bestiary of Malthusian ‘Miserabilists’, delivers an email Q and A which reveals to O'Neil to be considerably more sensible than the populist characterization one constructs from the article. More interesting, to me, however, was Revkin's take on the significance of a particular type of person -- an educated and networked individual -- over population in general in recasting the cornucopian viewpoint.

Q.

What’s your take on my recent dissection of Julian Simon’s “ultimate resource” thesis?

I don’t argue against more minds = more innovation and a faster route out of poverty.

But I also see no implicit “need” for more people (again, I’m not a Malthusian, just noting a potentially extraneous element of the “cornucopian” argument).

What’s needed is more minds that are educated and — in the sense Matt Ridley describes so well — networked.

I’m cheering for more education and access to information, not more (or less) babies except by choices made ideally by informed, educated [couples].
A.

Well, I am not pro-natalist; I don’t think the Earth needs a certain number of people. I am simply opposed to any controls or coercion whatsoever in the realm of reproductive choice. Often the flip side to Malthusianism is natalism, the idea that we need more people in order to do A, B and C. Both of these outlooks are based on a demographic obsession, and my belief is that we should move away from understanding our problems as demographic towards appreciating that they are social.

For those interested, here is Matt Ridley's TED Talk 'When Ideas have Sex'

Hans Rosling at TED

I'm a big fan of the TED talks and, in particular, Hans Rosling's presentations based on the software (Gapminder) he developed to display and analyze global change through time. In his most recent talk, Rosling makes the paradoxical observation that the world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth.

I like this talk for two reasons. First, Rosling's earlier presentations tended to focus on changes associated with the emergence of Asian economies and underemphasized the lack of change in Africa. This talk directly addresses that omission. Second, most current discussions of the planet's future focus on the dual challenges of climate change and energy. While these are certainly real issues, they overlook the continuing importance of population growth as a source of environmental strain. Rosling's talk makes the provocative point that the ecological footprint of the least developed nations will necessarily increase through time -- either because of increased numbers or because of the increased levels of economic development necessary for them to transition to a condition of reduced child mortality and, hence, reduced pressure for large families.

However, I'm not as optimistic as Rosling. At the end of the talk he presents the west as becoming the foundation of a new, more equitable, global economic distribution. I'm not convinced that the dominant western nations (read the US) are as willing to embrace that vision as is Rosling's native Sweden. Given that continued global economic growth is environmentally unsustainable, America's two chickens in every pot, two cars in every garage philosophy, coupled with the country's military might, could just as easily be used to insure that the US continues to get more than its share.