For those old enough (over 40 or so) to remember every terrible scare that has come through the media doomsday mill, this in fact is just a recycled version of an earlier one . I post this because a large portion of the global warming nonsense is predicated on an unsustainable global population and of course their carbon footprint. To show how sick this movement is, watch the short video I have posted after this article-this is a mentality we do not need determining policy in this world. Also read the brief article on one of the greatest unknown men the world has ever not really known.
from IBD
Population Alarmists
Demography: The great British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become the latest in a long line of illustrious people to say we need to cut population growth sharply or face a grim future. Is he right?
We have nothing against Attenborough, but in supporting Britain's Optimum Population Trust, a group that advocates reducing human numbers, he's put himself on the wrong side of one of the great questions of our time.
Today's world population is about 6.8 billion, give or take a hundred million or so. By 2050, most estimates show the population will be about 9 billion — roughly a 35% or so increase. That's the equivalent, population-wise, of adding seven new countries the size of the U.S. to the world population. When you say it that way, it does sound dramatic and, as Attenborough put it, "frightening."
The problem is, numbers lie. Past estimates of population growth have virtually always overestimated world fertility rates, and underestimated social trends that led to fewer babies.
This time will be no different. If fertility rates decline just a little more than predicted (and the decline in fertility rates over the past four decades has been faster than almost any estimate out there), the population actually begins to shrink in 2040.
By 2050, at the low end of fertility expectations, U.N. forecasts show just 7.96 billion people in 2050. And by the end of the century, the population will actually drop below its current levels.
Worrying about population is an old preoccupation. Ever since the Rev. Thomas Malthus warned in the early 19th century that population growth would surely outstrip our ability to feed people, gloomy population prognosticators have been consistently wrong.
The late, great U.S. economist Julian Simon had it exactly right: Human beings aren't a "cost" to the planet, or to human society. They are in fact its only real asset. Their intelligence, creativity and ability to learn make the Earth a beautiful place. Those things helps us to use fewer resources to create more wealth. That's why the environmentally cleanest nations on earth are also the richest.
Thanks to the Green Revolution wrought by Nobel Peace Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug — who is responsible for saving more lives than any person who ever lived — no child needs to go hungry today. The only reason for hunger today is political.
Pushing for population decline is a fool's errand. Our biggest problems in the next 100 years won't be too many people; it will be figuring out how a shrinking base of younger workers will be able to pay for our fast-expanding population of elderly retirees.
To do this, we'll need to have more babies, not fewer. Attenborough is wrong, but then so are all those who want to shrink humanity.
Norman Borlaug
The Dinkytown Man Who Saved a Billion Lives
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