#1 Population Control

In 1800, according to the History Database of the Global Environment, the world’s population stood at 980,851,296. We first cracked the billion mark around 1804. It took until 1927, 123 years later, for the world population to push two billion. In 1959, we hit three billion, and gentlemen, start your engines. 1974, four billion, 1987, five, 1999, six, and in almost exactly three years, in February of 2012, we can all break out the Siete Billones hats.

Not to belabor those basic numbers, but again, it took humanity somewhere around 11,800 years to pop the billionth cork. It took us just 123 years to double that. If the United Nations and the US Census Bureau know what they’re talking about, it will have taken us just under a hundred years to quadruple the population from two to eight billion. And according to Thomas Roberth Malthus, with each babbling bundle of joy we are barreling just a little faster towards an invisible line. He famously stated that since population growth is exponential (2, 4, 8, 16), while subsistence growth is arithmetical (2, 3, 4, 5), it was inevitable that one day humanity would exceed the Earth’s capacity for food, resulting in what later theorists would call a Malthusian Catastrophe.

I have no interest in hyperbole. Paul R. Ehrlich predicted in 1968 that the 70’s and 80’s would see the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, the result of horrific famine and starvation. He was, quite obviously, wrong. So any claims of doom and catastrophe I could make would be alarmist and premature. BUT, I am proposing population control. Strict population control. The American life expectancy has risen by 30 years in the last hundred years, while infant mortality has plummeted. The quality of life has likewise risen, but so has the value of life. We have three times as many people, and we expect them to be better off. And in America, by and large, we have been successful. Many economists would argue that the increased population density, made possible by agricultural innovation, also helped created the technological explosion that was the 20th century. Higher population density leads to increased specialization, which in turn leads to further innovation and an increase in quality of life. Most of the work I’m referencing is Julian Simon’s. He believed that due to market and societal innovation, mankind would be able to sustain any future population growth, and do so comfortably. I believe his exact quote was “we have the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy for an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years.” My simple response is: do we really want to?

Population increases create stress. They can force invention and ingenuity, but they can also put 35 children in a classroom and millions of our citizens on the streets. World energy consumption is projected to increase 50% in the next twenty years. Carbon emissions follow a fairly similar trajectory. The world’s oil production peak will probably be reached in the next twenty years, if it hasn’t been already, and if I live to 85 the American Petroleum Institute thinks there’s a decent chance I will get to see our planet run out of oil completely. Eleven million children are dying per year of diseases that are strictly preventable. One in four acres on this planet has been devoted to the consumption of food, along with one in three jobs, but the pressures put upon agriculture have led to the worldwide rise in convenience food, which in turn has led to a rise in childhood obesity (as high as 50% in some demographics). We can fatten our poorest people with the worst food possible, but our richest people stay skinny by running miles in place.

Change is possible. In fact, birth rates have been slowly declining for a few decades, but still too slowly to keep up with decreased mortality rates. Change can start in America. Our population growth is the highest of any industrial nation, as is our per capita energy consumption (many of these statistics are from Albert Bartlett’s articles “Scientists and the Secret Lie”, a wonderful read). One less American means the world to the world. And I’m not saying no children for anyone. I’m saying less. If a tax credit was given to families that stopped after two children (no negative penalty, just an incentive), or if the government paid for women to have their tubes tied and for men to have vasectomies, who does that hurt?

The answer to that question is, the economy (Bartlett mentions this, as well as reminding me of a great quote, “The chief source of problems is solutions” from Eric Sevareid). Our economy expects to grow every year. Which is a nice idea, but it assumes our population is growing as well. Why does it have to? Why can’t we slow down, instead of being stopped? Why can’t we show, in that most crucial of decisions, to have a child or not, a shade of restraint? A bad idea, perhaps. But what else is this blog for? And besides: in 1729 Jonathan Swift satirically published a population control theory of his own. It was called A Modest Proposal, and it outlined a plan to control Irish overpopulation and poverty: poor Irish could sell their children for food. Now there’s a bad idea.