Friday is World Population Day, so the GrowthBusters team (which is down to me right now while Lynsey is on what I hope will be a temporary leave of absence) has been very focused on the overpopulation issue. I’ll share some good resources with you here.
Noteworthy World Population Day Items
I’ll Have What She’s Having
Dave Gardner’s newest essay
Starting a Family? Think Small
by Dave Gardner
What Does a Word of 7 Billion Feel Like to You?
Share a photo with your feelings about life on a crowded planet with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Sign the Sustainable Population Pledge
Thanks to our friends at World Population Balance
Test Your Population Knowledge
(I got 100%, but had to guess on a couple)
New World Population Day InfoVideo
Overpopulation Videos We Like – 94 great videos
Your suggestions for additions are welcome.
Are You One of the Cool Ones?
Show how cool you are by proudly displaying a new small-family sticker from GrowthBusters. Choose the one that’s right for you.
Share Your “Think Small” Story
Our Think Small Campaign is in full swing. If you chose a small family, please request your Think Small Family Sticker here. If we get enough of these showing up on car windows around the world, we can make choosing a small family “cool.”
Share your reasons for planning a small family with us. See what others are saying and learn how you can share your story at our Think Small page.
For more information click here.
One Response
With respect, after reading several of the articles I find this group is a little out of touch with reality. The ‘stop at two’ campaign to encourage young couples not have more than two children is way behind the curve on this issue. Couples in developed countries stopped an average having two children over half a century ago and we have been having way below that rate since then. At that may be the ticking time bomb. The replace birth rate is 2.11. Anything below that and the population shrinks.
The UN’s world population projection for 2050 is 9.3 Billion, that it is the peak figure and the figure is actually expected to decline afterwards. Most of the population increase will come not from new children being born but rather that people are living longer. The fact is that every developed country in the world has a non-replacement birth rate which is rate less than 2.11 children/woman and has a non-replacement rate for decades. Canada’s rate is currently about 1.46. and has had a non-replacement rate for over 40 years. Japan suffers from the same non-replacement birth rate but does not have immigration pattern and its population is aging and shrinking so much so that they now sell more adult diapers than baby diapers. There are sound underlying reasons why this has occurred and will continue to occur even in third world countries as standards of living rise, which for the sake of brevity I will not get into here save to say it has nothing to do with government policies to control the population. While there will be stresses on resources in developing countries where there is still growth, these population shifts will have dramatic effects in developed countries on socio economic structures including employment, longer working lives, social security, health care costs, housing demands, consumerism and ethnic make-up.
You can check the raw data on . This is a very comprehensive data base on socio economic data on countries around the world. On Page 4, row 6 is the fertility rate of children per woman by country and year, from 1755 and projected to 2100. A no-growth economy may come about naturally. As the population will not be growing in the traditional sense, we will radically have to overhaul our concepts about economic growth and GDP. We will not be able to base economic models (many of which are effectively Ponzi schemes based on increasing new members entering the system) on traditional growth models.
For a group who’s raison etre is ecological economics, perhaps there should be a focus on adaption to this new condition