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World Population Day – is there a problem?

By Julian Harris
July 13th, 2009 at 12:35 pm | 4 Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

crowd The weekend marked World Population Day, one of the many days the UN dedicates to telling us how awful everything is. But are global population levels really a problem? This question is posed by the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, which presents a new study on both sides of the argument – go take a butcher’s, it makes for good reading.

Population doom-mongers have existed for millennia, along with people who moan that the next generation are heading for moral degradation. In fact, there’s probably a large cross-over between the two groups. Thomas Malthus is famed for being of the former, and in the 20th century has been joined by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, who present their arguments in the EJSD.

I’d like to focus, however, on the following argument from scientist Indur Goklany:

As wealth increases, enabled by free trade, more efficient technologies actually allow us to consume less from the environment to get the same, or greater, results. Furthermore, as wealth increases, population growth slows.

Hence rather than heading towards an apocalypse, we’re still enjoying an upward curve of improvements.

Sound unrealistic? Then consider these facts:

  • While the population has quadrupled since 1900, technology and trade have seen the price of food plummet, so that hunger is constantly reduced. In the early 1970s, 37% of the developing world’s people suffered from chronic hunger but it is now down to 17%.
  • In real terms, the price of food and metals in India are now eight times cheaper than in 1900.
  • As a consequence, health improvements are enormous. The global average life expectancy in 1900 was just 31 years; it rose to 47 years in the 1950s, and now stands at 67 years.
  • Agricultural technologies have saved vast amounts of land and therefore natural resources (forests etc.). In the USA, for example, technology has saved 1,300 million hectares while consumption has increased.
  • Even the CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP have peaked, and are now falling rapidly in many places.
  • The global population growth rate is not increasing exponentially – but instead has fallen considerably since the 1960s.

Constantly under siege from scaremongering tabloid headlines, it’s no wonder we lose sight of the considerable advances we’re making. Goklany’s arguments provide a rational perspective of the advantages of human progress that we continue to enjoy, no matter how many of us there are.

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