Overpopulation - The Global Challenge

The Population Explosion

Overpopulation is the root cause of famine, civil wars - and refugees. "When the manger is empty, the horses will bite each other", is an old danish saying.

Overpopulation will create revolutions and civil wars, which in turn will produce a constant flow of refugees.

In modern times, Earth's population has grown enormously, and it has made us vulnerable to even minor climate changes.

Climate changes appear apparently from natural causes due to sunspot activity, lack of same, or similar causes, which are difficult to see through. Nor in any way it can be denied that greenhouse gases and other man created changes also have an effect.

But whatever the reasons, the nations overpopulation make them particularly sensitive to even small changes in the climate. Just one bad harvest can cause that outer localized peasants must leave their homes and their land, and millions must go to sleep hungry.

Overpopulation is the planet's leading problem, the root of the evils, so to speak.

Demography is the science about population, its size, composition by sex, age, marital status and so on.

Scientists in this discipline predict that in 2013, the population of the World will reach seven billion, in 2028 we will be eight billion, nine billion in 2054, and in the year 2200 we are expected to reach the ten billion people on this planet.

The graph shows that by far the largest population growth will take place in the developing countries.

Some experts say, it will not be a problem. Human ingenuity, that has served us so well so far, will find ways of solving the problems. Others predict severe consequences for the environment and human health.

When the World in 1918 were licking its wounds after the First World War and the Spanish flu, we were around 1.8 billion people on the planet. Today we are close to 6.8 billion. This corresponds to a near fourfold increase during hundred years. When we see this in a the long historical perspective, one can safely say that the population has exploded.

Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern society. Seventy percent of the oil is used for transportation. Enormous quantities are used as energy source in the manufacture of fertilizers and pesticides and as raw material for plastics. Basically, our modern economy can be described as a gigantic process that converts hydrocarbon into energy and calories.

It is the aim of all nations to develop into a similar economic and technical level as the USA, Japan and the European nations.

But when we will be seven to ten billion people on the planet and they all must have a lifestyle and consumption near western level, it will be an enormous strain on the world environment.

Countless fish, animals and plants will become extinct. We will suffer from all kinds of pollution, and the climate could be worser than ever. The world's fossil reserves will disappear probably in a few generations, swallowed up in one huge suck.

Therefore, it is not right to remain silent about the population growth and just talk about the climate.

Population growth is greatest in developing countries.

The world's nations can be ranked after fertility rate, i.e. the number of children per woman. The List is headed by Niger, Mali, Uganda, Afghanistan and Somalia, all of which performs six to seven children each woman. The Palestinian Teritories have also a high ranking with 5.6 children each woman.

The highest scoring European country is the Faroe Islands, which occupies number 101 on the rankings list with 2.44 children per woman. Denmark is number 165 closely follows by Finland with about 1.7 children per woman on average.

14 million of Ethiopia's 85 million inhabitants in this years must have help to survive. Program employee of the UN Food Program, WFP, Fithanegest Gebru, who himself is an Ethiopian, do not feel doubt why:

"In my life, the population has grown from 25 million to 85 million. We have simply become too many people. "

Abby Maxman, country director of the aid organization, Care, in Ethiopia, believes that the population problem is underestimated.

"In 2025 there will be 120 million people in Ethiopia. What does it mean for the food supply? "(quote from the article of JP - see link below)

In December 2009, the world's leaders will gather in Copenhagen to discuss the world's climate problem. But the fundamental problem is the overpopulation, and this they will not talk about, in any case they will only mention it in passing.

Man exploits the resources of the World to something near the last square meter arable land and the last drop of clean freshwater. That is precisely why it can be disastrous with a few degrees increase in temperature and a few meters rise of the sea level.

Apparently, the World leaders do not want looking the real problem in the face, and they do not want to attack it directly. Only the leaders of China has tackled the problem with their one-child policy.

The Demographic Transition Model

In the science of economy, we cheer in the Western countries, we have the law of supply and demand and the theory of the self-regulating market forces. This theory allows the West's political leaders by and large to leave the economy to the business men and allow it develop "naturally", they think.

Within the subject of demography the World leaders also bring forward a formula that allows them to leave the population development to itself. It's called "The Demographic Transitions Model (DTM). It is a model from 1940, which was formulated under the impression of the historical development of Europe and America.

The DTM model explains how a country's population naturally evolves through four stages.

The Declining Birth-rate in the West

Fertility rate among European women has declined dramatically over the past few decades. Worst is the situation in Eastern and Southern Europe, where women almost have stopped giving birth.

This weird demographic suicide takes place right before our eyes. This mysterious riddle will haunt the corridors of historical research in the centuries to come.

Why did the European peoples end their excistence? They were the world's leading nations culturally, technically and economically. They were rich, as never before. They were not conquered by foreign nations or plagued by fatal diseases.

They simply chosed to stop having children, and thus they quietly disappeared from history.

There is little doubt that the low European fertility rate is associated with such cultural phenomena and concepts as "women's liberation" and "Women's right to determine over their own bodies".

Modern young women (and men) must first have their education in place. After three tough years in high school, they simply must travel out to see the world, meeting new friends and have different experiences.
Then come many years at the University or similar education places, where it also would be distracting - also for the social life - being married and having children. Once the education is in place and they have found jobs, they would like to get married and have children - if they can find the right one. But some will never find that special someone, even after many years of strenuous searching.

But it is one of nature's whims, that women's ability to become pregnant is greatest when they are teen-agers or in their early twenties. When a woman becomes more than thirty years old, it may be difficult to become pregnant, even if she has a good motivation.

Moreover, many women - but not all - of such age have a career position, and they find it often inconvenient to have more than one child.

In the EU a fertility rate of 2.1 is considered to exactly correspond to a stable population size. All European nations except the Faroe Islands are far below. For example Ukraine has a rate of 1.26, Russia 1.41, Italy 1.31 and women, who are registered as Danish citizens have around 1.74 children per woman in average.

"In a country there would no longer be people, who could enjoy a daily glass of wine and a beef steak for dinner" Thomas Malthus

Now one can argue that it is not the end of the world, that a single generation will not have as many children, as previous generations had. Our parents and grandparents' generation in the first half of the twentieth century had many children. Five or six children per Women were very common, and there were also many families with more than ten children. It was a great expansion of population and a less numerous modern generation will simply create a little relief.

It is not an end in itself, as soon as possible to fill every square meter of land up with people and utilize every single liter of pure water.

Life is more interesting and romantic, when there are fish in the water, birds in the air and deer in the forest.

But the fact is that the Danes are not alone in Denmark. The politicians have invited a vast quantity of Muslims to live in the country, and they want to fill it up with their own kind as soon as possible. Each square meter, we do not reserve for ourselves, they will take in possession. When they become many enough, they will take over the entire country.

Muslim immigrants and their children from the Middle East and Africa give birth to 3-5 times as many children as ethnic Danes and Europeans in general. Therefore, this population will be the largest in the country, when the ethnic Danes with mathematical certainty will become a minority by the year of 2050, if immigration continues as now. If it ended tomorrow and continued at zero without expulsion of other immigrants than once refused, there must be added 10-12 years to the forecast before the final change of power will take place.

However this forecast assumes, that the Muslims are democrats, what Islam certainly is not at all. Contrarery they bring forward, that their god, Allah, gives the laws, and the humans obey.

Long before the year 2050 they will constitute a majority within the police and military. They will only give a tough smile to the silver-haired old-Danish naive notions about democracy.

Thus is the situation all over Europe.

The Vice President of the German "Statistischen Bundesamtes", Walter Radermacher, said at a press conference in Berlin: "The decline in the population (ethnic Germans) can no longer be stopped, it will be a Muslim state by 2050."

The average fertility rate for an ethnic English woman is 1.1 children each woman, while the fertility rate for a Muslim woman in Britain is 4.1 children per woman. The English press wrote recently, that the most popular name for newborn boys, "Jack", in the near future will soon be overtaken by "Mohammed". It indicates that England, in a not too distant future, will be a Muslim nation.

"There are signs that Allah will bestow victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquest." Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Ethnic Belgian women have in average 1.7 children per woman, while the Muslim immigrant women from Morocco living in Belgium, give birth to 3.25 children per woman in average.

In France, women registered as French citizens have an average fertility rate of 1.98, which immediately sounds pretty reasonable. But it is influenced by a very large number of muslim women from Northern Africa, which is said to have a fertility rate of around 8.1. So the ethnic French women have most likely a rate of around 1.0 children each woman.

In Holland it is said that half of all newborns are born to Muslim mothers, and thus one could continue with the European peoples one by one. Israel have the problem, and in a relatively few years the Palestinian women will have realized the Arab dream. Also in India's the Muslim population has a significantly higher fertility than the Hindus.

Also in relation to this problem the politicans have a formula that allows them to do nothing, and let history take its course. Namely, the politicans feel themselves as true democrats and anti-racists, they are uncompromising supporters of personal freedom and especially freedom of religion. They believe firmly that the decision on how many children the free citizens want and what God they believe in, so most definately be a personal matter, which do not concern the politicians and the government.

And so goes the European peoples meek and humble against their fate, a little uneasy about what awaits them at journey's end, but without any real resistance.

Thomas Malthus - Essay of Population In 1798 Thomas Malthus published, anonymously, his sensationel work "An Essay on the Principle of Population. "He showed, that the population will always have a tendency to grow faster than the production of food. This will make the individuals standard of living become less and less, and eventually extensive famine will break out. He demonstrated that in the "natural" human society is a contradiction between the sexual drive, the desire to have descendants, and the desire for increased living standards and more food. A contradiction, he believed, which was overlooked by Rousseau and other contemporary philosophers, who would liberate the individuals from the chains of the organized communities and create social conditions in accordance with the free nature of man. Rousseau was a great inspiration to the French Revolution, and thus the liberal capitalist society, we know today. Thomas Malthus argued that food production was limited by the existing arable area, the weather and the skills of the farmers. The population, however, would have a propensity to develop much more rapidly because of man's natural propensity for sex and family. Hunger and disease will therefore necessarily reduce the number of people to a sustainable level. Any increase in the food production would only allow that many more people would be able to drag a life filled with hunger and poverty. Malthus did not argue for contraception or forced child limitation. But following his arguments it is clear that birth control will be necessary in the really long run. It is quite obvious, that he did not believe that one can leave the growth of population to the "natural" inclinations of humans. Contra Malthus is often regarded as an extremely pessimistic doomsday prophet. The Malthusian population catastrophe will not occur, because all peoples of the Earth naturaly will reduce their numbers, his opponents say. Just as it is described by "The Demographic Transitions Model". The effect of DTM is clearly seen in Europe today, they say. Thanks to the welfare state and pensions arrangements parents do not have to rely on their children in old age. Therefore, it is no more necessary for them to get many children. Women's liberation has made a career possible also for women, and therefore they are not interested in having many children. Europe is just ahead in the development and a similar reduction in fertility of the very same causes will definitely happen all over the World, claim Malthus opponents. Malthus has also been contradicted by the "Adaption-theory", which says that people will adjust to the new form of life in huge cities, surrounded by countless millions of other humans. It will be a quite natural feeling to stay in man made surroundings only and never experience a forest or a green landscape. The singing of birds will never again be heard, and rap music will replace melancholy folk tunes.

Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb The message of Paul Ehrlich's book "The Population Bomb" from 1972 is based on the same logic as that of Malthus's theory about the final catastrophic famine. The planet has a well-defined size and contain final resources, whereas humans have drives and motivation to multiply themselves in endless quantities. Therefore, there will come a time in the future, where the quantity of food, clean water and other resources, which will be available for each individual, will be so small, that it will lead to famine and mass deaths. Overpopulation will be the cause of wars and environmental disasters, he predicted. The essence of his book is illustrated with the following quote: "A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies - -often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival" As far as the author knows, Paul Ehrlich is still alive. It would be interesting to hear what he thinks about the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Does he think that it is useless symptom treatment? Unlike Malthus, Erhlich stretched pretty much his neck forward with quite unambiguous predictions about, when these events would happen to occur. He began his "The Population Bomb" in 1968 with the following line: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and the 1980's hundred millions will starve to death in spite of any crash program embarked upon now -" The book's ending was also a rather unique prediction: "A general prediction can I do with certainty: The cost to feed yourself and your family will continue to rise. There may be slight variations in food prices, but the general trend will be upward." Contra Some see Paul Ehrlich as an alarmist and apocalyptic prophet. He predicted really many disasters in the near future, both in his books and in various articles and interviews; disasters and misfortunes, that did not occur, as he predicted. He has been blamed much for this. The famine, which he wrote would break out in the 1970s, failed to materialize. Ehrlich had not imagined the "Green Revolution", which apparently has pushed the final famine far into an uncertain future. Skilled farmers multiplied the yield per hectare by using new types of crops, fertilizers, insecticides, mechanization and irrigation. Instead of famine, foods became cheaper and more plentiful than ever before. In the 1980s, even occured an obesity "epidemic", especially in the US. Long before Malthus's and Erlich's final famine occurs, human ingenuity will have invented something new, their opponents optimistic claim , as we have always have done throughout history.

A Defense of Malthus and Ehrlich Human history is thousands, yes, millions of years old. That means really not so much that Malthus and Erlich missed the target with a few centuries. "It happens always later, than we think", as Alan Greenspan said. They have namely the logic on their side. Our planet is just so big, and its resources are final. The population increases incessantly, as never before seen in human history. Sooner or later we will run our heads up against the ceiling, and it will hurt. It is a very basic logic that Julian Simon and Bjørn Lomborg can not evade, no matter how much they struggle and wriggle in the network of logic. The future looks bleak, and even a vaste amount of television hours with optimistic statements about alternative energy and energy saving devices can not change this. Overpopulation is the biggest threat to the future of mankind. The exploding population in the world - doubled just since 1960 - has increased the effects of other problems such as global warming, the shrinking ozone layer, acid rain and so forth.

The Growing World Population

The forty top seats in the ranking of the Worlds nations top fertility rates are all occupied by Muslim and Christian sub-Saharan countries, supplemented by some Muslim nations in Asia.

The muslim desert countries Niger, Mali and Somalia top the list, along with Uganda with about seven children each woman.

Afganistans problems with civil war and poverty are certainly connected with the overpopulation, nevertheless, every Afghan women gives birth to more than six children in average. So there is nothing to suggest that the peace will come soon.

In the already very crowded Palestinian Gaza Strip each Women on average gives birth to more than five children. The Palestinian women on the West Bank however, restrict themselves to just 3.2 children per woman.

The nation with the highest fertility rate, which is not from Africa and not Muslim, is Laos, ranking as number 42 on the list with a rate of 4.41 children each woman.

Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world that a climate change will affect hardest. The 156 million Muslim residents live allready very crowded in the small low-lying country, where 35% of the population is under 14 years. Here each woman settles for giving birth to 2.74 children only in average.

The top-ranking country from the American continent is Haiti with 3.81 children per woman, fiercely contended by Paraguay, where each woman gives birth to 3.75 children.

The Faroe Islands have the highest fertility rate in Europe with 2.44 children per woman, followed by Albania, with 2.01 children per woman.

It has been estimated that with 2.1 children per woman, the population of a country remain constant, there will be born just as many as who are dying.

Only four Muslim nations are below this figure, namely Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Brunei and Tunesia.

The world's average fertility rate is 2.58 children per woman.

Besides fertility, representing children per woman, another very important factor has great importance for population growth, namely the birth rate, representing how quickly the women get their children. A typical Danish women will be in late twenties or early thirties, when she delivers her first baby. A typical Muslim woman any place in the world, Denmark or the Sudan, will deliver her first child in her early twenties, or even earlier. Her children will again typically have babies at the same early age, and so forth.

Over time, populations with a high birth rate will increase their numbers much faster than other groups.

Suppose we have two populations that have exactly the same fertility. Let's say 4.0 children per woman. We can call the two nations "Sandy Desert" and "High North". In the country "Sandy Desert", the women give birth to their first child as 20 year old, and in the country "High North" the women deliver their first baby as average 33.3 years old.

Over a hundred years, the population of "Sandy Desert" will produce about 5 generations multiplying their numbers for each generation by a factor determined by fertility. The population of the "High North" will however only run through 3 generations over the same hundred years, and they will only multiply their numbers 3 times with the same factor.

So despite the fact, that the fertility of the two countries, is assumed exactly the same, the population of the "Sandy Desert" will increase about twice as much as the people of the "High North".

Soylent Green "Soylent Green" is a science fiction film from 1973. It is loosely based on the science fiction novel, "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison. It describes a future dominated by huge overpopulation, unemployment, poverty and lack of all natural resources. All people look gray and unhealthy out. In the year 2022 the population of New York alone has grown to forty million. Real food, as we know it today, is hardly eaten anymore. Genuine fruit, vegetables and meat are very difficult to find and very expensive. The huge population survives on various syntetic foods, including a product called Soylent Green. The new product, Soylent Green, is marketed as a high-energy plankton product, far more nutrious than other syntetic food products. Charles Heston plays the part of the Detective Robert Thorn, who lives in a small crowded apartment, which he shares with his friend, Sol Roth, an aging scientist and police investigator. They produce their own electricity with a pedal-driven generator. Sol is so old that he can remember and tell about the time before the big environmental catastrophe, when people ate real food, real vegetables and real meat. His friend, however, regards all these stories from old the days as too imaginative. Thorn is given the task to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman. When he arrives in the victim's apartment, he immediately starts to search it. The rich man's house is full of all sorts of valuable things, such as real whiskey and real food. The apartment is equipped with something so as exclusive as hot water and soap, a luxury that the underpaid Detective, Robert Thorn, immediately takes advantage of. He interrogates the murdered man's body guard and mistress, an attractive young prostitute of twenty-four years, named Shirl. They both explain that the body guard escorted Shirl on a shopping excursion at the time of murder. He finds a report, "Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019", which he brings home to his friend, Sol, for closer study. As he interrogates the prostitute, Shirl, once again, he notes that she eats a glass with real strawberry jam. Such luxury is almost worth its weight in gold, and it indicates that the murdered man was a really extraordinary rich man. Shirl says that in the days before the murder her friend had been deeply concerned about something. He had even visited a priest. Thorn seeks out the priest, who initially denies any knowledge of the murdered man, but later admits that he has spoken with him. The priest finds it however, impossible to describe, what he said. Shortly after the priest is found murdered, apparently to prevent him from talking. Under a street riots somebody also try to kill Thorn, but with no succees, contrary Thorn kills his pursuer. In the meantime Thorn's friend Sol has read the report from the "Soylent" group. The report reveals a terrible truth that Sol Roth is not able to live with. He decides to end his life and signs in at one of the governments suicide clinics, intended for the countless miserables, who do not find life worth living in this overcrowded World. Thorn finds Sun's farewell letter. He hurries to the clinic, where the Sol's suicide process is in process. He persuades the staff to let him talk to his friend in his last minutes. He pleads Sol to tell him the truth about the murdered man and the "Soylent" group. After his friend's death the detective Thorn sneaks down in the basement of the suicide clinic, where he observes, how the staff load corpses on renovations trucks. He hide himself in a truck, and in this way he obtains access to a heavily guarded destruction facility. He discovers that the seemingly destruction facility really is a fully automated process plant, which converts an endless stream of corpses to "Soylent Green" biscuits. However the armed guards discover Thorn. He escapes after a gun fight, but gets seriously wounded. He seeks refuge in a cathedral filled with ragged, skinny and pale, homeless people with sallow skin. When the wounded and desperate detective makes his way through the gray and disheartened crowd, he shouts: "Soylent Green is people! We must stop them in some way. "