Chas, Peak People will be in 2037. I predicted that years ago. It has been obvious for decades that there is a vast cultural paradigm shift happening in demographics.
Africa and mush of the Moslem zone are still in the old population wars in which tribes. expand flat out, conquer neighbours if they can and live by Malthusian rules. But the rest of the world has entered an era of children by choice and the choice has been below population replacement.
Women in Japan and Italy and Germany have for decades not been replacing themselves. China joined in on a compulsory basis but the trend is so established that even if they allow anyone to have as many as they like, they are too late to avoid the plunge.
Over the last few years in New Zealand there has been an echo of the echo Baby Boom. There are babies and young children everywhere. But they are still only having none, 1 or 2, with just a few having 3. They are doing it later too, not when they turn 16 followed by a fast marriage as happened a few decades ago. Now women are getting fertility treatment in their 30s to beat the biological clock.
Eugenics is the name of the game now, not mass production followed by tribal genocidal war. Women are eliminating genes by sexual discrimination on a grand scale. In China, there are swarms of males whose genes are going to be thrown on the scrap heap as women reject them in droves [there are far too many men for the supply of women - thanks to female abortion which was amusingly denied by TJ years ago].
The planet can easily sustain 20 billion people. Not in the manner to which the average obese SUV driving freeway dweller has become accustomed, but happiness doesn't come from roaring around roads in tons of steel and hurtling through the stratosphere in aluminium tubes while heating the Arctic with furnaces and cooling the tropics with air conditioners. New York T bone giant steaks are not an essential ingredient of life either. Hordes are happily vegetarian which makes for much more efficient food production. Not that there is a shortage of land for growing food.
Look were ElM is laying fibre - vast acreages of wilderness. It could be covered with crops if needs be.
By 2100, the people population will be not much more than it is now. Vicious rumour has it that I won't be here. 5 billion others who are alive now won't be either. That leaves a couple of billion who will have to hurry and replace themselves. What if they'd rather just relax and play Angry Birds and cerf cyberspace, with robots growing genetically enhanced crops? Already machines growing vast acreages of wheat, soy and other crops with a few people tending them.
Peak People 2037. That's even if we don't get an H5N1 or other decimation of the population. Reglaciation in 2020 could be a big problem too. People will be too busy moving house and adapting to bother with the fun of reproduction.
In 1967, I had a maths lecturer who made the interesting observation that God was quite cunning. To ensure population, God didn't just leave the joys of little feet running around to be the reward for reproduction, he also made the production process highly enjoyable. That amused me then. At about the same time, the contraceptive pill and other simple contraceptive means were becoming easily available. So it's now just the joys of little children.
Since then, there has been another development - the failure of marriage and other long term stable sexual relationships as people seek self-satisfaction and personal power over subsuming themselves in family.
Japan's population is already on the way down. Italy is being invaded by Moslems as are other European countries, so they might be over-run which will delay the decline, then accelerate it as it implodes economically as civilized productive people flee. Welfare is already an unmanageable burden. Greece is in the process of collapse. Wisconsin too.
Mqurice |
