The prophets of doom are at it again.
This time, it’s not climate change that’s going to wipe us off the map. Nor is it Iran, instead it’s… Population decline. Well, climate change is still going to wipe us out they say, so call it the ol double whammy!
In case you forgot, we are presently in the sixth mass extinction of earth.
Yep.
An extinction level event that has been raging for 500 years now. I tell you what. God sure made us human folk hardy. We’re just like those roaches that you can never seem to exterminate. To quote Freddy Krueger, ‘We just keep on ticking!’
So what am I talking about anyway?
Let me show you.
There she is.
The global population tally up to today, and the projection for the future.
Do you realize we are going to hit 8 billion people later this year?
Amazing!
When I was born, the population was around 4 billion. So the population has almost doubled in my short time on earth. You want to take note of that by the way. Other doomers will say the overloads of doom have been killing us off slowly.
Obviously, that’s not true either.
In fact, the truth is always more in the middle somewhere. Ahh, but that’s another subject for another time.
The the big scare today is population decline.
Ironic isn’t it?
I mean, for years they have been telling us overpopulation is going to kill us all. Now, they flipped the script. Around the year 2100, it’s expected the human population will peak to around 10.5 billion souls.
Then, it’s going to decline from there.
That’s where the doom comes in, before we cover the doom, let’s answer the why…
Why is the population going to decline?
A lack of births, a lack of a replacement population.
Check this out.
Around the year 2087, the amount of births and deaths per 1,000 people will invert.
So the latest prediction?
The doom of humanity.
In fact, I found an article titled, “The Unexpected Future” that talks about it. The reason for the shift, people are having less children these days. All around the world in fact, especially in first world nations. That’s right, instead of raising a family, we rather party like it’s 1999.
Roll the quotes.
We are well past the time when we need to concern ourselves with Paul Ehrlich’s long-standing prophecy that humanity will “breed ourselves to extinction.” On the contrary, we need to worry about the potential ill-effects of depopulation, including a declining workforce, torpid economic growth, and brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and their more hard-pressed successors. The preponderance of low fertility in wealthier countries also presages a growing conflict between the child-poor wealthy countries and the child-rich poor countries.
The Unexpected Future
Do you see how the doom always shifts?
Long ago, they said we will “breed ourselves to extinction”. Now they say the opposite. Sort of like the climate change nuts in the 70s said an ice age was coming. That changed too.
Secular society would love for you to believe only Christians can be doomers. However, the biggest doomers out there are the secularists. There is always some reason to be concerned about our pending doom. I suppose that’s a fear when you don’t have The Faith.
Hey, live today while it’s here.
We will concern ourselves with tomorrow when we get there, (Matthew 6:34).
The US population growth rate fell to 0.5 percent in 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year), which is the lowest at least since 1900. Based on the limited data available, the St. Louis Fed believes that this is the lowest rate in our nation’s peacetime history. It has been estimated that the white fertility rate in the United States during the first half of the 1800s was more than 7.0 but had dropped to a little over 3.5 by 1900. It remained over 2.0 as late as 2009, but it is now well below the replacement rate.
The Unexpected Future
The “replacement rate” as they call it is around 2.5 children per family in order to keep population flat. If you want to increase population, you need to have more than 2.5 children. I never saw half a kid before, so you need to pump out that third one.
I did my part.
Well, I didn’t pump the kid out, the wife did. You know, the female species.
Today, a majority of the world’s people live in countries with fertility rates well below replacement level. This number will grow to 75 percent by 2050, according to UN data. Even traditional sources of new population in the developing world are drying up.
The Unexpected Future
So the first world nations are going the way of the dodo bird. Meanwhile, third world nations will see their populations increase, though only slightly higher.
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Interestingly enough, don’t we see this today?
The United States and European nations have seen massive influxes of immigrants in their nations for decades now. As a former President once said, ‘we need more immigration to grow business profits’.
That’s about the size of it.
So as long as our first world nations keep importing more workers, the mega corps can keep reaping massive profits. So do they really care about our nations future, or the almighty dollar?
I’ll let you answer that one.
This discussion leads us right into the next quote.
The UN predicts that the world will see growth of 2.7 billion over the next 50 years compared to the previous half-century’s 4.1 billion. But all of that growth will be in the less developed world. Between 2022 and 2050, United Nations projections indicate that nearly 55 percent of world population growth will occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility rates are still relatively high.
The Unexpected Future
So while the rich nations decline in population, the poor nations will continue to grow. Again, you can expect more immigration in your first world nation. This comes at your expense, so someone higher up the ladder can reap more financial gain.
People in these poor nations continue to pro-create when they cannot afford to do so. Interestingly enough, I still remember my Mom saying when I was a wee lad,
“We keep sending those nations money, and they keep having more kids.”
She said that due to the commercials back in those days. All those poor starving kids and the commercial wanted you to send a buck or seven to save them. 30 years later, it’s the same ol song.
Only now, they come here.
Last quote, and you’re going to love this one.
Environmental groups will therefore often celebrate the notion of being “childfree,” and the young are encouraged to consider foregoing parenthood for the sake of the planet. This seems to be having an effect, as many young people do not see much future on Earth—at least not a pleasant one. Over half of all young people around the world, according to one survey, see the planet as essentially doomed by climate change. People with no faith in the future are unlikely to have children.
The Unexpected Future
So there we have it again.
As it turns out, the prophets of doom have actually helped create this new crisis. These doomers have scared the wits out of the common man to the point where he doesn’t want to have a child.
Why?
He fears the world will be a disastrous place in the future.
I have news for you, the world is a disastrous place.
It’s always been that way.
I tell you what, if you let another man lead you to the point that you stop living, you are a bigger fool than he is. It’s not just climate change hacks, but religious institutions that do the same darn thing to people. It’s welds power over the people and it’s sad to see.
The simple fact of the matter, the climate change nuts have always been dead wrong.
Look at this quote I found.
“‘The trouble with almost all environmental problems,’ says Paul R. Ehrlich, the population biologist, ‘is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead… We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.’”
The New York Times, 1969
The dude said we would be dead by 1989, but here we are, bigger than ever.
This is why you never listen to a man tell you this or that. Just go live your life already. Take anything someone says with a grain of salt. Personally, I find great entertainment value in these nutters.
By the way, here are some more climate change quotes that never materialized.
So let’s conclude with some closing thoughts.
Conclusion
I wanted to touch on some of the quotes I cited.
The first thing we should realize, humanity cannot continue to grow forever. If it did, we really would outgrow the earth. So population growth to infinity is just not practical. In fact, the major reason for such a massive global population is due to our technological advances.
Do you realize, throughout recorded human history, the average lifespan was just 30 years?
Today, it’s about 75 years.
Our modern world has completely altered the traditional course of human history.
As for the dwindling replacement rate, imagine if abortion was illegal. It would mean, every year another 73 million babies around the world would get to live and grow into adults. So the murder of the unborn is a major reason for such a low replacement rate in society.
The article also said population decline would have grave economic impacts. It certainly would along various lines. However, with less people, you need less products and services which means you need less people.
Moreover, today jobs are continually being replaced with technology. So the people who are concerned about the economic contraction are primarily the mega corps who can only see dollar bills.
The moral of the story…
Someone is always predicting imminent doom in order to advance some ideology. Just go live your life, and enjoy every minute of it.