<While Asia's share of world population may continue to hover around 55 percent through the next century, Europe's portion has declined sharply and could drop even more during the 21st century. Africa and Latin America each would gain part of Europe's portion. By 2100, Africa is expected to capture the greatest share >
Shades, such predictions are silly. A decade ago, I was raving that populations would implode because women around the world were choosing not to have children, but nearly everyone was still going on about the catastrophic human population explosion leading to Malthusian poverty, starvation and environmental destruction.
Predictions such as Africa's population in 2100 are similarly badly based.
For a start, women there will probably decide not to have children too. Plus there is an AIDS catastrophe underway. 100 years from now is a longgg time away and a LOT can go wrong. Avian flu or the like could kill off a third of the world's population. The four horses of the apocalypse are not old and retired, just resting.
The developed world has got lots of people. The transition underway is to quality, not quantity. One quality person can do a million times as much as 1000 low quality people. Irwin Jacobs and a bunch of his QUALCOMM buddies can invent CDMA and change the world's communication system, creating mobile cyberspace out of thin air. I could spend 1000 years on it and wouldn't come up with the goods and at least I've heard of Fourier Transforms and even done some. People who can barely count simply cannot make it happen, no matter how many of them there are.
There is currently a bit of an obsession with democracy and the old Christian idea of human universality, as though humans are fungible state serfs. They are not. One billion Africans are qualitatively different from one billion Asians.
The name of the game now is quality, not quantity. Quantity was great for political and military power when territory, wealth and power were acquired by lining up the most young men in serried rank and file with sword, spear and bow and arrow.
Mqurice |
