Oh, China, no!

China is considering allowing couples to have more than one child, due to demographic panic over an aging population and labor shortages – as well as wanting more consumers. This would result in 9.5 million additional births in an already very overpopulated
and polluted country. It will be an environmental disaster, considering that the country is already plundering other continents for resources (Australia and Africa being some).

As soon as a country’s birth rate goes into decline, its government seems to go into panic mode and do everything to encourage more births, no matter how this may negatively impact them in the future (see Iran). Those from a baby boom will one day be old too, and the cycle repeats itself.

Humanity as a species just can’t seem to commit to sustained long-term planning for the future – looking decades or even hundreds of years ahead. The type of society that is dominant now – a capitalist consumer economy – seems to preclude this. All that is heard as a policy in Australia’s upcoming Federal election is the mindless mantra of growth, growth and more growth. Any other way of thinking is heretical.

African apocalypse

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan showed recently that he realized overpopulation was a timebomb when saying that his country’s citizens should limit the number of children they have. Unfortunately, most of the religious leaders there castigated him on this issue, and having large families is an embedded part of the culture.

Two articles from April also looked at the social and environmental devastation that population growth is causing in Africa (as it is everywhere).

Across sub-Saharan Africa, alarmed governments have begun to act, often reversing longstanding policies that encouraged or accepted large families. Nigeria made contraceptives free last year, and officials are promoting smaller families as a key to economic salvation, holding up the financial gains in nations like Thailand as inspiration.

Nigeria, already the world’s sixth most populous nation with 167 million people, is a crucial test case, since its success or failure at bringing down birthrates will have outsize influence on the world’s population. If this large nation rich with oil cannot control its growth, what hope is there for the many smaller, poorer countries?

“Population is key,” said Peter Ogunjuyigbe, a demographer at Obafemi Awolowo University in the small central city of Ile-Ife. “If you don’t take care of population, schools can’t cope, hospitals can’t cope, there’s not enough housing – there’s nothing you can do to have economic development.”

– “Nigeria Tested by Rapid Rise in Population”, NYT 14/4

If Africa’s population increases according to the UN’s medium prediction, the continent will have about 3.6 billion people by the end of the century – raising its current share of global population from 12 per cent to about one-third. Nevertheless, its population could reach 5.2 billion or 2.4 billion by 2100, depending on whether fertility is 0.5 children above or below the UN’s medium estimate.

The population of the Sahel – those semi-arid countries bordering the Sahara – will double or more by 2050 at exactly the time that global warming is likely to have the harshest effects. As population growth and global warming coincide, the hunger and refugee problems in the Horn of Africa, and type of resource battles seen in Darfur or South Sudan, will multiply.

Worldwide, the UN predicts 15.8 billion humans by the end of the century if average family size remains around 2.6 children per woman, but 6.2 billion if it stabilises at 1.6 children. If fertility levels drop to the replacement level of 2.1, then there will be 10 billion people. (NS)

“How to defuse sub-Saharan Africa’s population bomb”, New Scientist 26/4

Wildlife there is already under serious threat; a lot of animal species are increasingly being corralled into wildlife parks that are surrounded by farmland, unable to traverse their ancient migratory routes. It is depressing to contemplate that the continent where humans first evolved – our ancient first homeland – may ultimately be turned into a wasteland by our species because we won’t or can’t restrict our numbers.

1/7:

Birth control key

MATT Wade’s report (“Children near starvation in world’s largest refugee camp”, 17/7) on the tragedy in Africa’s Dadaab refugee camp is heart-breaking. The clue to the cause of the problem is also in Wade’s report: overpopulation. One of the refugees has nine children, another has six children below the age of eight. The drought has dramatically exacerbated an untenable situation.

The only solution to poverty in countries such as Somalia is birth control. Developed countries give hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the economic development of poor countries. Any progress they make is swallowed up by the increasing population and the end result is increasing poverty.

It is time for us to reassess our options.

– Bill Mathew, Parkville

As always, the trinity of health care, family planning and education for women is the only long-term way to break the poverty and famine cycle in developing countries. Aid should be given only if these will be implemented also, otherwise such humanitarian disasters will continue.

“The Other Arab Spring”, NYT, 7/4. This opinion piece by Thomas L. Friedman notes that the revolutions that have shaken the Middle East since 2011 can be attrituted to the high population growth in the region, especially a high and unemployable youth population.

All these tensions over land, water and food are telling us something: The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies. […]

If you ask “what are the real threats to our security today,” said Brown, “at the top of the list would be climate change, population growth, water shortages, rising food prices and the number of failing states in the world. As that list grows, how many failed states before we have a failing global civilization, and everything begins to unravel?”

Battery-hen living

“Hong Kong’s High-Density Housing & Cramped Living Conditions”, ChinaSMACK.com, 23/5 (via Kotaku). These are a series of photos showing the incredibly cramped living conditions that are normal for that city. To my view it looks rather hellish, though I suppose someone who grew up there would regard it as normal. I guess such cramped apartments are preferable to being homeless, but it seems a very Nature-deprived way of living – humans did not evolve to live like termites. I can’t imagine such conditions as being good for their long-term health. Many regard such dense living as desirable for its supposed reduced “ecological footprint”, but the people in the buildings still need all their supplies brought in from elsewhere. I would hate to have to climb up and down hundreds of stairs, or rely on lifts, just to go outside! If a fire took hold in one of those apartments, it would be a major disaster if the residents could not access fire escapes.

A recent Daily Mail article shows the even more nightmarish-looking Kowloon Walled City in China before its (thankful) demolition, an unplanned, unregulated and claustrophobic rabbit warren housing 50,000 or so residents. I don’t envy the children growing up there! They would undoubtedly have many health problems, given China’s pollution, and be very Nature-deprived if they never went outside its walls. The io9 sci-fi site mentioned the place a few times – a few commenters there seem to have romanticized views of the place as it resembled a science fiction dystopia.

Families are squeezed together in tiny apartments, with all their possessions crowding the rooms. (I have to admit that my increasingly cluttered bedroom does not look too different! But at least I can go outside into the backyard or for a walk around the streets.)

“No room for a view”, The Age, 14/5. Melbourne CBD residents are increasingly facing a problem with overshadowing from the many tall apartments being erected, though on a much smaller scale than Hong Kong. Planning here is generally poorly-thought out, with developers given far too many concessions. Problem is that most cities have not been planned properly from their inception and have grown in a messy organic fashion over the decades or centuries – Kowloon was an extreme example of this – so new developments are shoehorned in as best city planners can.

“Population clock shows Japan faces extinction in 1000 years”, 13/5. Yet another alarmist article concerning Japan’s ageing and declining population! It seems to have become a favorite trope. Given their advances in technology (somewhat exaggerated in a satirical Onion article from 2007, “Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147”), perhaps they will have robot helpers by then, and people won’t stop having children altogether, so the article is just silly. A couple of letters in response, 16/5:

Falling population

ANYONE who has battled crowds on Tokyo’s trains will welcome the news that Japan’s population is declining (“Population clock shows Japan faces extinction in 1000 years”, theage.com.au, 13/5). Japan is an overcrowded country with few natural resources, and its population needs to decline.

As for disappearing altogether, it’s not going to happen. When the population gets close to what is deemed ecologically sustainable, all the government needs to do is introduce baby bonuses to boost the fertility rate. After the baby bonus was introduced here, our fertility rate went from 1.7 to 1.9.

As for ageing, look at the Okinawans. They live to a ripe old age and are largely independent as they age. Other Japanese can do the same once they are given a bit of space and fresh air – splendid side effects of a lower population.

– Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW

Act on East Timor

IT’S good to see the “urgent” matter of the extrapolated extinction of the Japanese race in 1000 years being raised.

But we never hear about the doubling of the population of East Timor (an infertile and seasonally dry country already food-insecure) within 25 years due to unwanted and preventable births happening now.

The Japanese may well decide to have more children – for example, when an average couple can afford a home with more than one bedroom. In the meantime, they have everything to gain from population shrinkage. The East Timorese, on the other hand …

– Jane O’Sullivan, Chelmer, Queensland

Addendum: Letter from MP Kelvin Thompson regarding Melbourne’s sorry excuse for high-rise planning, 27/5:

THE article “Chasing the sun among high-rises a heated issue” (20/5) raises very important issues about Melbourne’s headlong rush to high-rise.

The loss of sunlight is a very important point. As is the fact that high-density high-rise buildings have big carbon footprints, consume more energy, generate more pollution and detract public amenity through the large shadows they cast. The proliferation of high-rise development is threatening not only our environment, but also our social fabric.

I am a fan of the suburban backyard. I believe children who grow up in concrete jungles are subject to more bullying and are more vulnerable to traps such as crime and drugs. What do you call a kid in a backyard? A free range kid. I think free range kids have a better time of it than battery kids. The more high-rise developments that are shoved down the throats of local communities, the more our communities will be suffocated.

– KELVIN THOMSON, MP, Federal Member for Wills

Miserable Melbourne

The 7:30 Report for 27/4 featured an infuriating interview with Planning Minister Matthew Guy. Dismayingly but predictably, the only message he emphasized is finding ways to “accommodate” the increasing population, not try to reduce growth. Increasing population by immigration and birthrate is “sustainable” – yeah, right (not!) He and others in government and business are clearly trying to brainwash citizens into regarding growth as inevitable. Marvelous Melbourne is fast becoming Miserable Melbourne. An earlier article, “Make room: state population set to soar”, The Age, 24/4, gives no good news.

Please go away

This is my reaction to yet another series of articles in today’s The Age that almost celebrate Melbourne’s extensive and excessive population growth.

“It’s my kind of town, say 666,000 new Melburnians”. That’s how many people have been added in the last decade. No wonder transport and infrastructure are near collapse. This growth has been deliberately encouraged by politicians and businessmen in the name of profit. Melbourne used to be a fairly pleasant place to live – at least, in comparison to many other cities – but this livability is being increasingly eroded. I am angry and fed up with the situation, but I am not in a position to move, and there is nowhere else to go in any case.

“Melbourne struggling as population booms to more than five million by 2025 and 6.5 million by 2050”, H-S, 25/3. A similar article from last week (the Google search page links get around the annoying recently-introduced paywall for now). Here are the alarming statistics:

A future timebomb

“Sir Bob Geldof calls for women to have fewer children”, The National (UAE), 16/3. The musician and activist made these remarks during a visit to the United Arab Emirates, but the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, rejected this suggestion:

“It’s not entirely clear to me that the way to succeed is to stop having children,” said Sheikh Nahyan, also at the forum. “They are the future.”

He said it would be better to focus on food production and consumption, as well as energy, water, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity, urbanisation and disease.

Sheikh Nahyan also quoted the UN as saying “we should not ask whether we are too many, but what can we do to make the world better”.

A foolish and short-sighted response. The Middle East generally has a large and growing population of young people, many of whom are impoverished, and even some of those educated have little in the way of job opportunities. This has been one unpublicized motivation behind the “Arab Spring” – venting anger and frustration at their situation.

Like China, Middle Eastern countries are facing a “perfect storm” of rising populations and dwindling resources, and are scouring the world to alleviate this, mainly by buying up farmland in countries such as Australia and Africa, something which understandably meets with resentment from many citizens there. Something has to give.

But Geldof called on the UAE to accept the harsh reality now and avoid disastrous consequences later.

“They either find a cultural way to make this acceptable or they’re going to have an anthropogenic critical event,” he said.

Global consumption is also expected to increase by 1,600 per cent in the next 90 years.

“I think the tipping point has been reached,” Geldof said. “There can’t be more people on the Earth than we can feed.”

They can’t say that they haven’t been warned.

Speaking of celebrities, “Cherryl Barassi on hoons, suicide pills and ratbags in sport”, H-S, 3/3. The wife of a well-known former Australian footballer had a few incisive things to say, including opinions on population growth. In the print article this was also included in a sidebar:

“Overpopulation and rabid consumerism are destroying our one and only beautiful little planet. Even the one-percenters who run the show can’t be happy in this climate of greed and denial. We are the ka-ching dynasty.

“How about we cancel public funding of the IVF program, and any other breeding incentives, and make it easier to adopt around the world?

“I’m tired of hearing about rights, the right to have 12 children, 12 cars and 12 televisions in one household. I’d like to hear more about responsibility.”

Collected articles

I have a backlog of various articles from the last 4 months that I meant to comment on, so much linkage follows!

A broken society

The madness of last week’s London riots appears to be mostly contained, but the many issues that provoked it are unlikely to be resolved soon (if ever). Some of the rioting was simple criminal opportunism, but a lot of it was a venting of frustration from people who have few prospects and no say in their society. Is overpopulation one of the contributing factors? I would argue, yes – in my 18/7/2009 entry I said that crowding thousands of people together leads to more stress and thus violence, as humans are not evolutionarily adapted to live this way. This was the opinion given in the article “London’s a rat hole” (21/1/2009 entry).

It is hardly surprising that many rioters seem to live in the ugly, inhuman, modernist housing projects that afflict London like the plague.

– David Thomson, St Kilda, 16/8

A counter-argument might be that countries such as Japan are even more overcrowded and their populations do not riot, but their pathologies merely are expressed in different ways. Their culture insists on extreme self-control, necessary for living so closely, but the suicide rate has long been one of the highest in the world, and the hikikomori phenomenon amongst mostly young people – extreme withdrawal for years on end – is well-known. Anger is turned inward rather than outward.

Many of the rioters are unemployed, and there are little in the way of jobs for them. It is simply impossible to provide meaningful jobs for everyone in a growing population, especially as many businesses and industries are “downsizing” to become more efficient, and outsourcing a lot of work to cheap (slave) labor in developing countries. Such frustrations were also a factor in the “Arab spring” uprisings earlier this year (which are still ongoing), and the Israeli housing protests over the rising cost of living (Israel is very overcrowded). Too many people competing for dwindling resources, living space and jobs.

An article in Business Week from earlier this year, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb”, looks at the social consequences of having a large, unemployed and educated youth population, and the inevitable disorder this creates. The article, though, somewhat unhelpfully suggests that the solution is to create entrepreneurs – start one’s own company. But not all people have the aptitude for that (I don’t), and there are only so many products and services that can be created; the market is arguably saturated with “stuff”. The article does not address the basic issue: that there is simply a massive overpopulation of young people (who will one day become old).

So that’s the situation in this year of 7 billion – how much worse will things get if and when the population reaches 8, then 9 billion?

Cramped city

Tokyo’s population has reached an astonishing 13 million (13.1 million as of 1/4), packed into a dense urban area of 2000 km² (Victoria, in contrast, has 3.4 million people in nearly 9000 km²). I suppose some would say that such density is an efficient use of space, but to me it sounds nightmarish. Granted, Japan has a cultural mindset that allows people to mostly live civily in such crowded conditions (one can imagine how those from a relatively uncivilized and violent Australian culture would cope – namely, not at all!), but it is hardly a desirable way to live.

Some officials in China are pushing to ease the one-child limit, because of alarmism over an aging population. (However, the one-child limit does not apply to ethnic minorities and rural families.) The surfeit of younger people will supposedly slow down economic growth. But the population is still growing, expected to reach 1.4 billion in 2026 before shrinking – how do they expect to find employment and resources for such huge numbers? Some are opposed to relaxing the limit.

Still, not all experts agree the one-child rule should be dropped. Li Xiaoping, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, welcomes the coming population decline, saying it will ease food and water shortages and limit pollution. Writing in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Li said the government should stand firm on the one-child limit while finding ways to boost the earning power of a smaller work force.

“Taiwanese solution to soaring house prices: don’t have kids”, The Age, 27/4. Like Australia’s housing market, Taiwan’s is also out of control, no thanks to investors, and one inadvertent result has been a decline in fertility. Its population at over 23 million is only a little more than Australia’s, but crammed into a small island, so such a decline is a good thing – but not according to the writer, who raises the usual ageing population alarmism.

But not having children creates even bigger costs ahead. Right now, Taiwan has 6.8 people of working age for every retiree. But preschools are already closing for lack of children, and the population is set to shrink dramatically. By 2032, demographers project, Taiwan will have just 2.5 potential workers for every retiree – and by 2056, just 1.4. If nothing changes, Taiwan – like China, Japan and Korea – will slowly become economically unviable.

“The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age”, 8/4. This article states that an ageing population is not necessarily a bad thing, and even a positive thing in many respects – one being that the pathological social obsession with youth might abate. Society will need to make some adjustments, such as being prepared to employ older workers, but it won’t be the disaster many doomsayers predict. Another positive aspect not mentioned: with fewer young males around, violence should also lessen.

“Too many people packed into dirty, crowded cities”, Daily Telegraph, 11/2. An opinion piece by businessman Dick Smith, who has become an opponent of population growth (one of the good guys, in other words!). Australia should not seek to emulate the megacities of the world, which are horridly overcrowded.

Shrinking towns

A thread at MetaFilter, “Wolves, neo-Nazis and Germany’s population crash”, had links to articles about towns facing demographic collapse (in this case, parts of Detroit being bulldozed into farmland, and some towns in East Germany being deserted). I can’t see this as a bad thing (and bear in mind that the world’s population continues to increase inexorably). There’s a comment comparing population control to eugenics:

Exactly. More evil has been done in fear of a Malthusian crisis than has ever occurred from a Malthusian crisis. The Irish Potato Famine was partly a result of British policy that allowed it to occur – while millions died, the Brits exported food from Ireland – all those starving people were a “natural” purging of over-population, they thought, Malthus said so! Many other examples of self-fulfilling Malthusian prophecies. A lot of modern-day environmentalism is (uncomfortably) rooted in Malthus and Eugenics. One can see it even in some of the posts in this thread – it’s hard to touch Demographics without sounding like a colonial-era racists, so much of what we take as common truth is actually a holdover from 18th and 19th century racist and colonial mindsets.

There hasn’t been 7 billion people in the world before, though, so such a crisis is only a matter of time. A more informed comment:

One of the worst consequences of the imminent population peak would be if we lost our nerve and started encouraging more reproduction.

We’re – that is to say, all of humanity in general – is poised to dodge a bullet, if we don’t (in some sense literally) fuck it up.

Population growth cannot continue forever. We’ve pulled a bunch of neat stunts to keep the unprecedented population boom triggered by the Industrial Revolution going, but they have come at extremely high ecological cost. Those bills are just starting to come due, in the form of anthropogenic climate change, topsoil depletion, salinification, aquifer and groundwater depletion, soil and ocean nitrification…it’s a long list.

It would be incredibly stupid to encourage people to breed in order to preserve economic systems that were stupidly premised on continual population growth, rather than fixing those economic systems to cope with decline. A growing population is nothing to brag about.

We’ve held off Mr. Malthus for centuries and in all likelihood we can probably do it for a few more, with sufficient cleverness: built a ton of nuclear reactors, bioengineer salt-tolerant crops, desalinate seawater when the groundwater runs out, learn to love carp. Climate change might require some desperate measures, since it seems doubtful we’ll resist the temptation of all that coal and shale oil…I wouldn’t want to own real estate in Bangladesh. But most of our current problems probably can be solved, at least individually.

But many of those “solutions” will inevitably create their own problems – just as the Haber-Bosch process, which saved first Europe and later Asia from famine in the 20th century has created a host of problems that we’re going to need to tackle in the 21st – and there will be other, completely new issues. More and more balls to juggle, and we only need to drop one to create a true disaster.

So the question is not whether we can keep the whole growth mess trucking along for another century or so, the question is why would we want to. Why, when we have it within our reach to go another route: let the population begin to slowly decrease, while using productivity gains to maintain and spread the standard of living that right now only a small minority of humanity can hope to have.

If there is one thing – one single thing – that Western civilization has figured out in the late 20th century, it seems to be a way to stop population expansion without going down the traditional, bloody paths of war or famine. Women’s rights, reliable contraception, secularism, environmental awareness, retirement systems – whatever the magic ingredients are, they seem to finally be working.

It absolutely floors me that there are people who, when faced with what looks to me like the triumph, the saving grace of high-impact technological civilization in the face of so many obvious downsides and failings, so much oppression and industrialized death, want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by encouraging people – paying them outright, in some cases – to have more babies. Insanity.

My suburb, and city, are experiencing just the opposite – a demographic explosion. Traffic is horrendous; we seem to live in a semi-permanent construction zone due to constant demolition of houses and gardens with big ugly crowded dwellings built to replace them; violent crime and vandalism are increasing drastically no thanks to a higher population of ill-disciplined youths. For me, all this is extremely unpleasant and stressful. I find myself fantasizing about much of humanity being decimated by some virus epidemic; or of waking up one day to find all other humans had disappeared. Of course I would not last long either, but at least my environment would be peaceful in the interim. I want this chaos to end, to be destroyed.

Letter, The Age, 22/3:

We all pay a high price for growth

Alan Davies called for a more evidence-based analysis of the issues associated with growth (“Problems with fringe-dwelling are peripheral”, The Age, 19/3). He failed to offer any evidence that growth, either by sprawl or infill, improves any aspect of our lives.

Although Davies regards it as trivial, urban development claims more arable land globally than desertification, salination and erosion put together. Ten per cent of all arable land was lost to development in the 15 years to 2000. Australia’s high-quality horticultural soils are scarce and mostly localised, not coincidentally, near (or now under) our major cities.

The only argument for population growth is economic, but it benefits few at the cost of the many. A Florida study found that every dollar of benefit generated by new development cost between $1.38 and $1.72 for required additional services.

Another Florida report found that the fastest growing counties had the highest growth in taxes — to pay for all the infrastructure. The costs of growth, in environment, lifestyle, climate change or even just cold, hard cash, are much greater than the costs of ageing.

– Jane O’Sullivan, Chelmer, Qld