What Population Explosion?

Many in the past have predicted mass starvation due to catastrophic population growth outpacing food production. This has not happened.

The main drivers of population growth are death and birth rates. Lifespan has lengthened due to medical miracles, while fertility has dropped across the board due to birth controls and family planning because of the education and empowerment of women.

While population growth rates have declined, the total population has continued to grow due to the initial size of the population, referred to as population momentum. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs projected in 2017 that Earth’s population would surpass 11 billion by 2100, despite these fertility and population growth rate trends. The UN expects that nearly 70 percent of the world’s population for the latter half of the 21st century would be made up of a population with fertility rates below-replacement (less than 2.1 births per woman). And yet, there still has been a steady call for population reduction.

Now it is situated within the context of emission targets developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to meet global warming goals. The concern with overpopulation, now often dovetails with concerns about climate change. Won’t higher population devastate the environment? All developed countries have a high environmental footprint and no developing country can achieve higher standards of living without increasing its per capita consumption. The consumption patterns of humans show no hint of slowing down. Both in developed and developing countries.

It is evident that a growing population puts an enormous burden on natural resources, energy sources, habitats for all other species, and on land use change. Birthrates across the globe have been declining. One complication is that fertility decline tends to increase GDP per capita, as families invest more in human capital for each child. While the educated and empowered women have fewer children, the main motivation for that is to provide more resources to each child. Per capita consumptions continue to grow when each child is given more resources or wealth. Per capita consumption shows no decline anywhere on the planet. Even in countries like China and India, where the per capita emissions are half and one eighth, respectively, of those in the U.S., the wealthy denizens of these developing countries tend to have a similar per capita emission to the US. The averages are thus not an indication of lower consumption across the board but just an indication of poverty. Even if the developing world accomplishes miraculously high reductions in populations, the total emissions will not come down unless per capita consumptions are reduced even faster. 

However, unintended consequences cannot be ignored. The developed world has a narrow base of younger population with a nearly even distribution up to the aging population. Japan stands as a stark example of an ever growing aging population due to stagnating birth rates. 

 Developing countries, on the other hand, display a pyramidal age structure with a large base of population under 25. This offers a golden opportunity to educate and empower girls and young women. Nothing has proven more effective as a contraception than educating and empowering women. Population is a problem that is solving itself. Our penchant for high-energy lifestyle shows no signs of diminishing. Our energies are best focused on evolving into carbon-neutral sapiens who will naturally settle into a healthy population level.

Blaming over-population is misanthropic. Humanity will be the source of the solutions we need to the problems that humanity has created for itself. As an argument, it is often inherently racist - it is directed at those populations growing fastest, which happen to be mostly black and brown.  It is intended to excuse what is the real culprit: CAPITALISM

There is only one way to effectively prevent, alleviate, or reverse dangerous climate change: SOCIALISM. Population has little to do with it   

 Consider that the European Union has approximately 300 people per square mile, making it as dense as the ninth-densest US state (that is, similar to Pennsylvania or Florida). The continental United States, on the whole, has about 110 people per square mile (excluding Alaska), making the US less than one-third as densely peopled as the EU.  If the continental United States were as heavily settled as the EU, the US would have nearly a billion people living in it. If just the states east of the Mississippi had European-style population density, and the other states maintained current population, then the United States would still have more than 400 million people. 

Adapted from here

https://www.newsweek.com/global-human-population-explosion-carbon-emissions-consumption-1138996