Who are we? What is Population Growth?

Of all ideas about who we are and why we’re here, I like best the idea that we are worthy creatures because we have consciously grown the benefits of our culture and civilisation and economy to cover our whole huge human population on earth, to include everyone in our good fortune and give everyone a healthy and happy life even as we grow into an enormous historically unimaginable population size. In the past 100 years we have reached a notion of equality and sharing of resources that has achieved population growth on earth to our present 7.7 billion people. In just over two hundred years we have grown from 1 billion people to 7.7 billion. 

Nothing shows our humanity, our success as cognizant caring living beings, so well as our planet’s present large population.  It proves in the sharpest possible way that Steven Pinker’s four pillars of our civilisation: Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress are driving us in the right direction. (See Blog 1)

Population growth rate had risen up to 1962 but is now falling rapidly  

Forecasts show we are continuing to raise our population to about 11.2 billion in 2100. But the growth rate is slowing. Our growth rate peaked at 2.1% growth per annum in 1962 and fell to 1.1% annual growth in 2015.  Projections estimate an annual rate of 0.1% growth for 2100. (See ourworldindata.org)  What this means is that we are stabilising our growth at 2100 and may even decline in population after that! That is conjecture because demographics is such a speculative science.  And of course life expectancy rates and fertility rates and disease eradication rates vary.

The ourworldindata.orgsite has some very interesting demographics which are inspirational. For a long time the world showed a very slow growth rate. From 10,000 BCE to the year 1700 it grew by 0.04%.  However from 1900 the growth rate grew from 0.05% to 2.1% per annum in 1962 growing our population from 1.65billion people to 3.5billion in 1960, doubling population in 60 years. It shows the power of compounding! However from there growth rates will decline to 0.1% in 2100 when the population will be 11.2billion. So from 1962 peak growth rates are going down naturally. This fall in growth rates is steep: a 75 degree angled fall to the year 2000 and then a fall of  45degrees to 2100. The fall is much steeper than the gradual rise to 1900. These growth and decline forecasts cannot be accurate  of course, but it is interesting that the science of demography is assuming continuing fall in growth rates as quality of life improves and also that will continue to improve our technologies to accommodate all our population increases from now just as we have up to now.  

Inventiveness of Homo Sapiens, our human species, is not accidental

In his book Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind,Yuval Noah Harari describes how 100,000 years ago at least six human species inhabited the earth but only one, Homo Sapiens species, ours, survived to take over the whole planet. Yuval surveys the whole of our history to explain that Sapiens grew to dominate through brainpower, socialisation and communication. Homo Sapiens humans connected to each other in ever increasing groups going beyond their tribes talking about and imagining  things they could see and things they couldn’t see: the abstract and distant, formulating mega- ideas about the ideas they discussed so they could anticipate, imagine and plan.  It was this brainpower that distinguished them over all the other Homo species and helped them overcome other species such as the bigger stronger Neanderthals who had moved into Europe and Asia before them.

Population growth has worked miracles for us

In the 12/13 January 2019 Australian  Weekend Financial Review, David Von Drehle from The Washington Post wrote a brilliant article Why the population catastrophists will always be wrong. It made me wildly excited to read what most of us know and believe but rarely see in writing: that population growth is goodand that whatever problems it brings to bear on us could be overcome. Von Drehlesays Earth’s greatestresource is the human brain “And it may also be among the least appreciated, judging from the doom and gloom, going back centuries, over the supposed menace of overpopulation.  Wishing for fewer human brains on Earth is like wishing for fewer diamonds or rubies”.  Past naysayers had forecast that our population would outstrip the food supply.  But Von Drehle says  “Measured by global average hourly income, the price of a representative basket of 50 key commodities  – food, energy, minerals and so forth- fell by nearly two-thirds between 1980 and 2017. Measured by the time it takes to buy the basket, the Earth’s resources became 380 per cent more abundant as the human population grew by 69 per cent…. We think we know the limits of our resources until human brains discover ways to burst those limits”

Von Drehle goes on to give examples of limits such as energy and water availability being overcome as new technologies emerge and solutions are found. These advances don’t occur by magic, he says, they happen through price signals. He mentions “Swashbuckling economist Paul Romer (who) recently received the Nobel prize for his work in measuring the beneficial impact of human thinking, creativity and rule-making on global abundance…From immigration, to climate to wealth creation…we see evidence (of it) ….. if we treasure and nurture the most precious of our renewable resources: ourselves and our fellow human beings”. 

 His article certainly expresses the reality in growing Australia which is riding a success wave produced by its natural resources, its educated population and its enlightened immigration policies. 

China catastrophists have been named and shamed  

An interesting proof of my belief that population growth is good and that population control is bad comes from China where its 1979 one-child policy produced a sex imbalance and a worrying future fall in workers to support the rapidly increasing older population. Male babies were preferred with the result that not enough females were available for partnering and bearing children. Population growth in China is now continuing mainly through life expectancy extensions and disease reduction until 2029 when the low birth rate will cause “unstoppable” population decline. China’s one-child policy was changed to a two child policy  in 2016. 

Now we recognise the need for sharing and spreading our good fortune

Up to now I have found it hard to reconcile that we progress with scientific discoveries to improve the quality of our lives higher and higher but we accept that people in Africa Asia and elsewhere can die from hunger, disease and war as if our civilisation doesn’t apply to them – or their problems are self-inflicted and therefore they shouldn’t be helped. Over the past 20 years however I have become more optimistic that we care and we will take action.

Motivations driving developed nations to help underdeveloped nations don’t matter. For example trade and commercial interests have been helpful as well as altruistic aid programs. World-wide aid organisations, all Western governments individually and in combinations such as the United Nations, rich individual philanthropists and individual charities are now firmly established in this mode of equalising health and education and well-being throughout the world. And the ironic twist to all this effort is that with the elimination of poverty and disease and with increased affluence, birth rates fall and head for population growth decline and stabilisation! We cannot and will not continue growing for ever but 11.2 billion in 2100 is achievable!

Extensive Data on Progress is available on website: ourworldindata.org

This website, created and managed by Oxford University, gives 15 chapters of statistics and interpretations of world-wide data under 15 headings:

global connections(tourism, trade and globablisation), war and peace(military spending, nuclear weapons, terrorism, peacekeeping)  politics(democracy, corruption)violence & rights(4 sub-headings) education(12 sub-headings),media(2)  environment(8)  technology(2),  growth and inequality(6), work & life(8), public sector(5),health(life expectancy, burden of disease, causes of death, mental health 14 other sub-headings) food(food per person, diet compositions, fertilizer and pesticides, human height, water use and sanitation, 10 other sub-headings)energy(4) and finally an optimism and pessimismchapter! 

I recognized well the last chapter’s statement that distortions in perception prevail. It reinforces Steven Pinker’s books The Better Angels of Our Nature & Enlightenment Now that the world is progressing well but we don’t realize it. (See my Blog 1) While people tend to be optimistic about their own future, they can at the same time be deeply pessimistic about the future of their nation or the world. The website graphs illustrating this phenomenon all show that people consider local problems less problematic than distant problems which they know less about and learn about from the media! Now that you can easily find out, don’t be fooled into being a pessimist.
Zrinka                    March 2019