Kansas City Star, February 25, 2006
With 6.5 billion, it’s hardly a lonely planet
Author: Scott Canon
Of course, it might have happened a week ago, a year ago. It might come next month.
But by the reckoning of the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Clock, the planet will pass the population milestone of 6.5 billion people sometime this evening.
Yet our world growth is leveling off — in some places, already dropping. And whether imploding or exploding, population changes are shaking societies.
Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich created a sensation in 1968 with his book The Population Bomb.. It sounded an alarm that the world’s fast-doubling population doomed the planet to suffocating pollution and mass starvation.
“At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he wrote. Without radical changes, Ehrlich predicted, “mankind will breed itself into oblivion.”
The world, he said, was on a path to a population of 5 billion by the Orwellian date of 1984 (off by six years). We would zip past 7 billion before the turn of the century (now demographers see that coming around 2013).
He was off, as well, in the bad news that would accompany the big numbers. The Population Bomb predicted, for instance, that we could never feed India, where grain production had topped out at 93 million tons a year. Yet in 2005, that country grew 209 million tons.
“Lots of things changed as a result of the attention paid to the issue,” said Brian Dixon, a lobbyist for the Population Connection, an advocate of international family-planning programs.
Ehrlich was part of a movement that launched a global effort for population control. The pill took hold. The Third World, as developing countries were known then, began practicing contraception. Abortion became more common.
And the so-called Green Revolution — the use of hybrid crops to significantly increase the yields of rice, wheat, corn and other staples — churned out a great bounty.
Although our population increase is gradually leveling off, the planet is still struggling through a growth spurt. And the poorer the location, the faster the population rise.
In Africa and much of Latin America, the average woman gives birth to six or seven children in her lifetime. Even with steep mortality rates, that’s a prescription for a continual bloom in population, and an anchor in poverty.
American women average two children, a fit for zero population growth. But immigrants continue to come into the country (an estimated 11 million here illegally today), and their birth rates tend to run much higher.
In Europe, the numbers are all about decline. The birth rate today is 1.4 children per woman. Experts say that population decline there is but a few years away.
The median age — at which half of all people are older, half younger – is 28.1 worldwide. In Japan, Italy and Germany, the median age is 42 and older. In Uganda, Mali and Niger, it’s 16 or less. Americans’ median age was less than 24 in the 1950s. It’s over 28 now. It’s due to hit the 40s in less than 50 years.
“Neither situation” — too many births or too few — “is sustainable over the long term,” said Thomas Buettner, chief of the estimates and projection section in the population division of the United Nations.
In his book How Many People Can the Earth Support?, Joel Cohen found that overpopulation concern dates back centuries. In 1679, the Dutch inventor of the microscope, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, estimated the world could support 13.4 billion. In 1690, French military engineer Sebastien Le Prestre settled on 5.5 billion.
Cohen concluded that the maximum is unknowable. Will climate change mean the demise or salvation of millions? Will an oil shortage create worldwide depression and famine? Will scientists be pushed to find a clean new source of energy?
Setting technological changes aside, the United Nations looked ahead to the year 2300. Factoring in development patterns, the demographers predicted a peak late this century of 9.2 billion people and saw a mostly stable population three centuries down the road of 8.4 billion — and that’s just considering current technologies.
To reach Scott Canon, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com.
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