Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

In a recent posting I noted the surprise I often feel on encountering some of the conversations about propagatin' and populatin' that I run across online. My example there was the debate between breeders and nonbreeders. Hoo-eee, do some people get heated about that one.

Another propagatin'-and-populatin' conversation that often startles me is the one about growth. It turns out -- to my intense surprise -- that there are people out there who think that growth in raw human numbers is always and everywhere a good thing. Who knew?

Unlike the breeding-quarrel, the raw-numbers conversation doesn't usually take the form of a debate. (People who would make the opposing case seldom take on the growth-is-always-good crowd. They keep to their own pastures instead.) The growth-is-always-good crowd is out there fretting passionately about population sizes -- positing nightmare scenarios, and moving quickly from overblown worries into big-picture policy advocacy. Perhaps people drawn to this topic are more prone to monologue than to debate. I wonder why that should be.

As in the previous posting, I'm going to let myself be impressionistic -- apologies for my failure to collect links to illustrate my points. I'll assume that you've bumped into the same kind of postings, personalities, rants, and articles that I have. If in fact you haven't, well, please come back in a day or two. Da Blowhards will be gabbing about some other topic soon, you can count on that.

MBlowhard description: Germany's birth rate is down! California is going to need millions of immigrants to pay for its retirees! Europe is in a state of demographic freefall!

There's often a "the West vs. the Rest" subtext to these shrieks of concern, of course. But not always. Check out this Frank Furedi article in Spiked Online. Memorable sentence: "How can there be too many people?" My response: Easy!

Fascinatin' too, the way that Furedi labels those who wince at the idea of a standing-room-only earth as humanity-haters. They're "strident and misanthrophic"; they're "anti-humanist"; they're "pessimistic"; they're "inhumane." "They harbour a powerful sense of loathing against the human species itself," roars Furedi, who apparently had one too many capuccinos the morning he wrote his piece. I guess the possibility that the people who disagree with him might wish humanity well isn't something Furedi cares to wrestle with.

MBlowhard reactions and musings: Let me respond first with a visual.

(I lifted the above from this place, but hundreds of versions of it can be found online.)

I don't know about you, but when I eyeball that graphic what I most emphatically don't think is, "Wow, humanity has been running the risk of allowing itself to go extinct recently! We really gotta pump those numbers up!"

Here's one way of looking at it: By 2050, there will be ten times the number of living humans as there were in 1800. Here's another: If I live to a ripe old age, the world will be home to three times the number of people it contained when I was born. Hey, growth-nuts: The earth's human population is going up by 70-80 million people a year. That ain't enough for you?

(By the way, I know that my reaction to the above visual isn't the only one possible. I offer it up not as an argument-to-be-debated-over but instead as an example of one particular, understandable response.)

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of people who applaud and advocate population-growth-without-end. What kind of future do they envision, after all? Colonizing outer space perhaps? OK, let's see ... Rocket ships transporting people to Mars ... Hmmm. With world population going up 80 million every year ... If we were able to launch 300 people per rocket ... Carry the three .... OK, if I'm dividing right -- and please doublecheck me here -- it would take something like 250,000 launchings a year -- or around 750 successful rocket launches per day -- to rid the earth of just one year's worth of extra people. That scenario seems to me a wee bit farfetched. Call me a cultural pessimist, I don't care.

A third thing I feel when I eyeball this chart is -- I admit it -- a sense of worry. Laugh at me for being a Fretful Frederica, but I look at this chart and think: "Trouble ahead!"

A primitive response, perhaps, but there it is. What can I say? Runaway growth doesn't usually spell "good things" to me. What it usually means to me is "everything I love and care about will be run roughshod-over, if not completely destroyed."

For support here I'll turn to a lesson from conservation biology: A species that has occupied an ecological niche will tend to expand within that niche as much as possible. If and when it passes certain limits, though -- boom, suddenly the whole ecosystem collapses around it. There is such a thing as a carrying capacity, after all. "It is possible for a species to exceed its carrying capacity temporarily," says Wikipedia, "until mass fatalities occur as shortages in food and water take effect."

Seems to me that we can and maybe even should do better than to let mass die-offs regulate our numbers. Perhaps some fretting over matters such as clean water, clean air, adequate biodiversity, etc. -- perhaps even wild places -- wouldn't go completely amiss.

Where raw population numbers go, I'm sympathetic to the concerns of scientists like Edward O. Wilson, who -- when asked about his Number One Worry -- responded this way:

It is difficult to see how science and technology can see us through the difficulties created by population growth and environmental change. The great task of the 21st century is going to be to use as much of our ingenuity and resources in science and technology to get us through the bottleneck to the other side, where populations will have leveled off and begun to decline worldwide, without wrecking the planet in the process.

In other words: Even given our ingenuity, it might pay to err on the side of respect for the contingent nature of life, and for the moody complexity of nature.

It's of course likely that much of my response to this population-growth graphic is an aesthetic and temperamental one. But what's trivial about the preferences-and-aesthetics side of things? Once mere survival has been assured, preferences and aesthetics become ever-stronger factors in life. Once middle-classness has been attained, preferences and aesthetics often seem to run the show.

So let's say that the earth could in fact sustain a population of 20 billion people. Is a world inhabited by 20 billion people one that you'd be enthusiastic about spending your life in?

In such a world, the U.S. would likely be approaching the population density of today's India. In a world inhabited by 20 billion humans, nearly the entirety of the world's surface would be under cultivation and / or management. Water-table worries, species extinctions, and fish-depletion alarms would be constant presences in the headlines. Nature-in-the-wild would be a dramatically-reduced thing. Negotiations over pollution, resource rights, and externalities would preoccupy many classes of bureaucrats. Most topsoil would be goosed with ever-more-potent fertilizers and pesticides; much of our food would be genetically-engineered (in the made-in-the-lab sense). Scads of ever-redoubled effort would be required to maintain the ever-more-tricky infrastructure we would be depending on. Day to day? Ever-rising real estate prices, new infections and viruses, ever-sprawlier sprawl, crazy ethnic overhauls and rivalries. Long stretches of land would blend Mexico City, "Blade Runner," and Tokyo in all kinds of unappealing new ways.

Not a picture I find very pretty.

An analogy: I could, in principle, pack my every waking moment with schedules, lists, chores and activities. With ever-renewed effort, I could then probably find ways to pack even more duties and appointments in. But why would I choose to lead such a life when I know in advance that I would find it a stress-ridden, exhausting nightmare?

Incidentally, I can't be alone in noticing that most of the 80 million people we're adding to the world's population-total annually are poor. That's ... hmmm ... 800 million per decade. (Check me on my math here.) Hey, Frank Furedi: Is creating vast waves of poor people a humane thing to do? I suppose Furedi might respond: "If we followed my preferred policies, they wouldn't be poor." Ah, the ol' "if I were emperor" defense ...

In any case, my contribution to this particular discussion is to say:

• Skyrocketing population growth obviously can't go on forever.
  
• Because of this, we're going to be shifting gears from a state of skyrocketing-growth to a state of no-population-growth, or perhaps even negative-population-growth, one of these days.
  
• We might as well start getting used to the idea now.
  
• Preference and taste deserve to play a role in the conversations we have about how crowded a planet we'd like to inhabit. Or should we let mass die-offs make our decisions for us instead?

In any case, I just don't like the idea of sharing the planet with 20 billion other people, y'know?

As for the West-vs-the-rest crowd ... I'm not sure what to make of them. I suppose if it should ever come to an apocalyptic race war I'd strap on a rifle and fight for my own kind. But brrr ... What a peculiar line of thought, eh?

A final, perhaps irresponsible, musing concerns the people who freak at the thought of non-skyrocketing population growth. It's interesting, the over-urgent way they carry on, isn't it? It's suspicious too. Usually when people act over-urgent they're up to something, after all. They want something; they're trying to force behaviors out of us that would suit them. So I confess that I find myself wondering: What in the world could they be up to? I mean, really up to?

My hunch is this: They're either people for whom population growth always works out (ie., richies), or they're propagandists and suckers for that crowd. More numbers equals more serfs, more cannon fodder, and more consumers -- and skyrocketing population numbers will always be economically good for the ruling classes, who can hide from the rabble and the mess behind walls, guards, and institutions. Skyrocketing numbers will also be supported by those desperate to make it into the ruling class.

This U.N. study takes a lot of variables into account and concludes that a stable world- population level will be reached at, oh, somewhere between 2.3 billion and 1.23 trillion people. Here's a well-done Guardian article that takes a look at some future population-total scenarios.

What world-population level would suit you?

Part three (of three) soon ...

Best,

Michael

Has anybody tried to envision what a dieback in human numbers (ecological collapse) might look like? If triggered by disease, it could be universal I suppose, but if lack of food and water are the triggers, then certainly it will happen in the poorest parts of the world. Africa is the obvious most likely place for something like this to happen. How would the survivers differe from the non-survivers? Likely smarter, richer, or in some cases more ruthless I suppose, or maybe more cooperative. I can't see how it would favor breeders necessarily however.

Posted by: Luke Lea on July 20, 2007 3:14 PM

Perhaps the graph you included needs a companion, semi-log graph. Semi-log graphs have the vertical dimension scaled in logarithmic form. The slope of the line in this format indicates the rate of change instead of amounts, as your graph does.

Neither graph is necessarily better than the other: they are just different ways of looking at the same thing.

But graphs can have psychological impact. The graph you attached has an Omigod! effect. A semi-log graph of the same data (given more elbow room on the time-scale) might lead one to think "Hmm. Growth might be slowing down a tad."

And should the low birth-rate trend continue, both graphs will have lines heading south.

Posted by: Donald Pittenger on July 20, 2007 3:14 PM

It's important to bear in mind that the UN's prediction that world population will level off at 9 or 10 billion is based on the assumption that fertility rates in the third world will taper off just as they have in the West plus Japan (and China, under government duress).

I think this is very unlikely in the Muslim world or in much of sub-Saharan Africa, or in much of the Indio heavy parts of Latin America.

Instead I think the upper limits in these areas are likely to be bounded by the brutal Malthusian forces of "war, famine and disease".

Actually much of the reason for the explosion in third world population is the great reduction in disease around the world, due to 20th century Western medical science. Nearly all net world population increase since 1960 (end of the West's post war baby boom), or it's doubling from 3 to 6 billion in 2000, has been in the poor third world. This has been due primarily to disease eradication and secondarily due to the "green revolution" wherein Western seeds and agricultural techniques have lead to a more than doubling of agricultural productivity in much of the Third World. However those gains have leveled off, at least without heavy imputs of expensive irrigation, fertilizers, gm seeds and so on, which poor farmers working small plots often can't afford. Besides water supplies are close to running out in many places, such as much of India.

Darfur is an example of what will increasingly happen. For now the West's intervention (under the UN flag) has prevented that from become a truly massive die off, which it would have become otherwise. Things will reach scales we can't or won't deal with, I suspect.

Posted by: dougjnn on July 20, 2007 3:31 PM

The reason population growth is posited to continue at a strong clip in America is that the demographers assume our immigration policies will remain as they are now and rates of legal and illegal but tolerated immigration will stay at current levels.

Essentially all American population growth in recent decades has been due to immigration and the high birth rates of recent immigrants, particularly Hispanics.

Posted by: dougjnn on July 20, 2007 3:36 PM

Implicit in the West-vs-the-rest crowd's concern about declining fertility rates in European countries is a heavy dose of racism. It isn't new. In the 19th century there were the Mongol Hordes and the Yellow Peril.

I certainly agree with you, especially about Furedi. I've read several of his pieces at Spiked, and he strikes me as one of those contrarian cranks who usually are to be found on the right end of the political spectrum.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on July 20, 2007 3:45 PM

Implicit in the West-vs-the-rest crowd's concern about declining fertility rates in European countries is a heavy dose of racism.

I'm not sure about that. A lot of it is also surely a concern (especially within the Western societies -- even apart from the international context) that as the middle and upper-middle classes shrink generation to generation, and the lower classes grow, wealth, power, and education are becoming confined to an ever-shrinking pool of privileged individuals lording it over an ever-growing pool of serfs. The American middle class, today, cannot hire teams of Mexican servants the way the upper classes can. But that's just because Mexico actually has fairly high wages, even if they're far lower than the United States. Wages drop further, farther south. And in the dense, destitute countries like Bangladesh, average wages are still lower. An expanding pool of poor people drives relative wages still lower, and eventually, the middle class can afford their native ayahs and bearers, their little bungalows and walled gardens, just like the upper classes.

That's the world you create, when the rich countries fail to breed. And I suppose it has its attractions, for those who don't mind crushing inequality and the chance to play the colonial grandee. But opposing that future isn't exactly a sign of racism.

Rich people having many children and dividing the family's inheritance between them is one of the most natural means of redistributing wealth (and connections, formal education, and praxis) down the socioeconomic chain. I don't see why we shouldn't encourage it.

Posted by: Taeyoung on July 20, 2007 5:06 PM

"Implicit in the West-vs-the-rest crowd's concern about declining fertility rates in European countries is a heavy dose of racism."

What's Winkler's point?

Posted by: PA on July 20, 2007 6:09 PM

Oh for goodness' sake people, quit worryin'. Nature takes care of itself. Aquarium fish grow to the size of the tank and number of inhabitants. Evolution reigns supreme and adaptation is its method and means. We'll simply be shorter, eat less, and take up less space per person. So there.

Posted by: susan on July 20, 2007 6:22 PM

I'd like to see Frank Furedi's living quarters. I've got a feeling he has plenty of elbow room. Anybody for rewriting the holy books of the world. They're all got their version of "be fruitful and multiply." That stopped making sense a couple hundred years ago.

Posted by: Fred Wickham on July 20, 2007 7:41 PM

Re. rocketing the excess population to other planets, the rockets need not be well made.

Posted by: Daniel Newby on July 20, 2007 8:07 PM

I think many of those who profess not to care about population growth are anticipating an argument over immigration ... that it is not good because it makes the US overpopulated.

Since they are committed to immigration, they must logically be insouciant about overpopulation in general.

And why do they care so much about immigration? The same old story. Because of the reasons discussed at length by Kevin MacDonald ...

www.kevinmacdonald.net/CofCchap7+Ref.pdf

Posted by: Robert Hume on July 20, 2007 9:38 PM

Peter Winkler's point is that moral posturing is more important than survival. This population of curious thinkers will find that to be true in their case.

For the rest of us not so deluded, with a will to survive, we note that for all the talk by non-whites about racism, none condemn the racism of their own group, or lifts a finger to do anything about it. They correctly understand that its natural and normal to give preference to members of your own group over outside groups. In terms more likely to appeal to Peter Winkler's understanding, its like completely giving your country over to conservative christians and discriminating against "open-minded" liberals 'til the end of time. I can hear the alarm bells ringing in his head right now! See, you must use situations and language they can understand.

As far as overall world population goes, its not sustainable and at some point many will die off due to starvation and disease. What the natural equilibrium is will be is anyone's guess. The task is to make sure they all don't move here and make America into the same Malthusian nightmare they have created in their wonderfully "diverse" homelands.

Posted by: BIOH on July 20, 2007 10:25 PM

A lot of it is certainly Tribalthink. Check out these neat maps: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20c-pop1.htm

A century ago, Europeans were around 20% of the population of the world. Now we're well below ten percent and falling. Doesn't bother me personally much, but it certainly upsets some people that their tribe isn't important any more.

Posted by: Alan Little on July 21, 2007 3:33 AM

Alan makes it sound so abstract, like counting chips on the Risk board.

But people are bothered by their ethnic group's diminishing because it has real-life effects on their life. They feel in their bones that alienness and racial intimidation, violence and persecution are becoming not-so-abstract concepts as they think of their children's future.

Posted by: PA on July 21, 2007 9:16 AM

No one has even mentioned the single most critical (to my way of thinking) element about the future and the issue of population - we have China and India producing a large number of babies, all skewed towards the male gender. They are using technology to diagnose female births and to destroy them. Males are (bless them!) more aggressive, more expansive and yes, more violent. What impact will that have on the global geopolitical landscape. Nothing good, I predict...

Posted by: Jess on July 21, 2007 9:49 AM

I second Taeyoung's comments above. The survival of our liberal values and traditions, not racism, is the culprit here. I plead guilty.

Posted by: Luke Lea on July 21, 2007 11:14 AM

These are factors to be considered:

What proportion of the population is dependent (too young, or too old?) Population growth in its earlier stages drains resources as there are too many dependents for the producers. The same happens when population contracts, leaving too many dependent old for fewer producers. These situations rectify themselves with time.

What does not rectify itself is the drain on resources, since either producers or dependents, they all eat and they all eliminate.

In the meantime the West has shifted from the paradigm "high turnover-disposable child" to the "low turnover-precious child" one. Other nations still hold on to that paradigm, and that's where the big increase comes from.

The trick is to make them move to the new paradigm. It amuses me when some people decry the fertility of Muslim inmigrants into European countries, as they think that they will be engulfed by people who have eight, ten children. One would think that because people are Muslims they do not notice how small the apartments are, and how to get a good job you need a good education, something that stretches your dependency period and makes it impractical to have many children if you want to educate them properly (you can have as many children as you want if you can accept their being on the dole or on minimum wage - if you want to be supported in your old age by a doctor or a lawyer, they you cannot afford to have many children).

So, the situation is dire, but the elements to solve it are at hand.

Posted by: Adriana on July 21, 2007 11:50 AM

I'm with Michael. Who wants to live in a world with 20 billion people smashed together? Quality of life matters. A nice, graceful decline in population would seem to be a good thing. Demographic collapse, however, like seems to be happening in Europe, would not seem like such a good idea.

As for the racism thing, well, I think Glaivster asked the right question: is it racist for white people to not want their kind to die out? I suppose you'll have to answer that one for yourself.

BTW growth rates in Islamic countries are in decline, but they still have lots of demographic momentum.

Posted by: Thursday on July 21, 2007 11:54 AM

Thursday:

White people doom themselves to die out by the way they phrase the question. The old "one drop of blood theory"

Take Tiger Woods, for example. He is classified as "black", even though he has white grandparents. His white ancestors' genes are being passed thorugh him and his children. I do not call that dying out.

If whites stopped counting out of their group the children of intermarriages, then their proportion in the population will swell up.

Posted by: Adriana on July 21, 2007 12:31 PM

PA wrote, "'Implicit in the West-vs-the-rest crowd's concern about declining fertility rates in European countries is a heavy dose of racism.'

What's Winkler's point?"

Furedi and his ilk are distressed by the fact there are fewer and fewer of us - caucasians - and more and more of them - non-caucasians. Furedi wants us to propogate more and them to do less.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on July 21, 2007 4:04 PM

White people doom themselves to die out by the way they phrase the question. The old "one drop of blood theory"
Take Tiger Woods, for example. He is classified as "black", even though he has white grandparents. His white ancestors' genes are being passed thorugh him and his children. I do not call that dying out.
If whites stopped counting out of their group the children of intermarriages, then their proportion in the population will swell up.

It used to be whites who were the main supporters of the one-drop rule, but today blacks are its leading advocates. Motivations are different too. Whites supported the rule as a way of preserving racial purity, while blacks see it primarily as a means of increasing their numbers.

The one-drop rule, at least in its current incarnation, applies only to black ancestry. People of mixed white/Asian and white/Hispanic background are not necessarily classified as minority. For that reason, I don't believe that the rule's effects on white population numbers are quite as significant as the original poster believes. Especially since the most common form of interracial marriage is white/Asian.

Posted by: Peter on July 21, 2007 4:34 PM

More numbers equals more serfs, more cannon fodder, and more consumers -- and skyrocketing population numbers will always be economically good for the ruling classes, who can hide from the rabble and the mess behind walls, guards, and institutions.

My new favorite question for breeders is going to be, "So what are you naming the little Cannon Fodder?"

(Only the underclass breeders, of course.)

Posted by: communicatrix on July 21, 2007 4:45 PM

Peter: I was commenting on a basic math question

Say that you have in your palette reds and blues.

You have x reds and y blues

If you mix in different proportions red and blue and call the resulting purplish hues "blues" in the end you end up, given your classification system, with a lot more blues than reds. But if you were to classify the purplish hues as reds you would end up with a lot more reds than blues. You would still have the same number of pure reds, pure blues and purplish, all that changes is your accounting system.

If caucasians were to include into their midst the mixed race individuals, suddenly their number would increase, and they would see that, rather than decreasing, their presence is increasing, as they are making inroads in other ethnicities.

Posted by: Adriana on July 21, 2007 6:01 PM

If you look at the statistics, interracial marriage is a pretty negligable phenomenon. It would be nice if there were more of it, family ties being ties that really bind, but alas it is pretty rare. Furthermore, the most common mix is White/Asian, and those happen to be the two groups whose populations are declining most.

Posted by: Thursday on July 21, 2007 9:32 PM

Nobody who is mixed race considers themselves white. Whites aren't "making inroads" at all, they are being invaded and losing their numbers, countries, and cultural identities by intermixing. This is very interesting to people who have eschewed tradition, religion, and culture. Great. Since borders, language, culture, and race used to define a country and people, and those are all out the window, you can rally around what is left--money and entertainment--and try to pass that along as "culture". What a joke.

Yep, I bet the people who came here from Europe, who broke their back working 7 days a week, who cleared the prairies, built the farms, factories, schools, and churches, who raised families and cherished freedom and self-determination are oh so happy to see all that they built being dismantled and ruined by a third world invasion of economic vagabonds looking for jobs. The same third world dregs jumping on the illegal affirmative action boat, displacing american white kids from education, jobs, governmental representation, marching in the streets like citizens, foreign nationals demanding the government of the United States cater to any third-worlder who manages to drop off a airplane, overstay a visa, or run through a tunnel to get here! Its disgusting!

Gee Alan, it must be nice to pass it off as some sort of clinging to imperialism when its actually our own white countries that are being invaded. If that isn't a line from the same old leftist shit-sheet that got us into this mess, I don't know what is. You'll be unhappy to know that 90+ percent of the population thinks you're crazy, and I'm one of them.

What the hell happened to people that they don't care about keeping their own country, or a distinct racial, religious, or cultural identity? Are you too busy shopping for comfy shoes, sipping coffee, and looking at the internet to give a damn? Do you see the rising taxes, failing (minority) schools, rising crime rates, murders, rapes, etc.? Do you see whites being displaced from jobs by mexicans undercutting wages, or affirmative action hires and H1-b visa vagabonds? I know that you don't care about it because it hasn't happened to you. That's why when you talk about how you care so much about third worlders, I know you're full of BS. Anybody who has eyes can see it horrible for us whites. All you care about is feeling morally and culturally superior, and the entertainment value of talking with foreigners. Yeah, we should all build a society around what entertains leftists. That's a real winner!

FWIW, all that having mixed race kids does is increase the number of future anti-white affirmative action hires to displace whites. Any white dipstick who glady embraces a policy that discrimnates against their white family, friends, and neighbors is stupid beyond comprehension. And for any deluded females who haven't yet been axed due to AA, here's how it works: first they divide the white men and women against each other, displace the men, increase the number of minorites, and then finally displace the white women. Divide and conquer--a strategy as old as the hills. And you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Amazing that people are so naive, and that they have so little foresight. If you think that once this country becomes majority non-white, you or your white family and friends won't be viciously dicriminated against and stolen from, you are completely insane.

Posted by: BIOH on July 21, 2007 10:06 PM

Michael-

Thanks for touching off this nice discussion. Its particular nice for you to provide an impressionistic focus -- how else could we speak about all of humanity and the course of human history.

I looked at that chart you included, and I thought -- I bet a person could draw a similar picture from when human population exploded after aggriculture first emerged. I look at that and I see mastry -- I think, my species has found a new way to convert sun into life.

OK, fine, I'm a bit biased. I'll confess something: I rather like crowding. I willingly live in the most crowded city I can get my crowd-greedy hands on; stampedes at every green light -- yes please! Of course I can formulate and rationalize this instinct, but I like big crowds and I don't think I'm alone (e.g. football stadiums, NASCAR, nightclubs).

I see the great nerve cells of the interent, the chlorplast-explosion that is aggricultural technology, an interstate circulatory system and I think -- I'm part of something changing, fantastic, new and different than life on earth as it has existed before. I'll admit, some kind endosymbiosis has crossed my mind as a pet theory.

Besides the gut feeling, I like the idea that there are a lot of people. I think, "there must some very odd/unique persons in a crowd this size." Maybe this is an odd an irresponsible sort of aesthicism -- I also think -- there should be some real problem solvers, brilliant persons.

I can't see "doing morality" at this level. I can't see a human-wide imperative to restrict our most basic biological obligation. Its neither humane to "mass produce" poor souls, nor is it humane to ask poor souls not to have children. I can't see weighing the inventions that the one-in-a-billion bright person will bring to the world, against congestion-claustrophobia that a billion more people bring.

At base my view is -- this is what we do. We live, we breed, we die. I don't see an alternative. I see this as a natural process, maybe terrible -- certainly monumental but without a doubt inevitable.

Posted by: Henry the Lion on July 21, 2007 10:22 PM

"What world-population level would suit you?"

One determined by people making their own free choices about their own private business.

Posted by: Lexington Green on July 21, 2007 10:47 PM

BIOH: You are managing to confuse two things: the surge of impoverished, uneducated peasants into this country for cheap labor, providning both profit for their employers and the costs to us, and the dilution of pure races, which in an age of globalization will occur more and more.

The problem of the presence of the impoverished, uneducated masses has to be dealt by going to the source: their employers. Anyone who hires illegal aliens should have to face such financial penalties that he/she will find it cheaper not to do so.

But the problem is not the aliens by themselves, but the hunger for cheap labor. Since "cheap labor" means "subsidize labor", we should set ourselves against it, the same way we are against any other subsidy. Plus it is a fact that the cheaper the labor, the more unwillingness to modernize and mechanize the tasks, which puts a brake on technological innovation (as the Indian lady said to the washing machine salesman "why should I buy your machine when I can get a maid to do the washing for next to nothing?")

But the fact that the white race is diluting themselves out of existence because of their unwillingness to accept mixed race individuals into their midst, expose them to their culture, and have them embrace it, that is a different matter which deserves a treatment of their own.

Posted by: Adriana on July 22, 2007 7:04 AM

To pick up on Adrianna's comments: there is a dominant pattern of mixed-race individuals, born to white mothers whose families raised them in nurturing environments and black fathers who had abandoned them, who vehemently reject their white identity. Hale Berry's hysterics at the Oscars or Barack Obama's black racial obsession expounded upon in his biography and subtly revealed in his campaign speeches are well known examples.

But as someone else noted, and as I've observed as well, white-hispanic or white e.Asian mixed-race individuals, (particularly when the father is white -- is that a factor?) tend to identify with whites. In their appearance, they generally fit along the white racial continuum and defy the one-drop rule rejection by whites that Adrianna speaks of.

On the other hand, mixed race people of black-white or s.Asian-white descent rarely look anything like their white parent (usually the mother). That fact probably has a lot to do with the miscegenation taboo.

The London Daily Mail just had an article about a white woman's conflicted feelings at seeing no part of herself in her mixed south Asian daughter.

Posted by: PA on July 22, 2007 9:50 AM

Oops - I linked the wrong article. Here it is.

Posted by: PA on July 22, 2007 10:20 AM

It's good to note that the number of children per woman may be actually going down worldwide but we should take one other detail into consideration: the length of time between generations. The age at which women begin producing their children matters even if the number that they produce isn’t excessive.

Take, for example, Woman A, who postpones children until she is 30 to pursue education and passes these cultural values on to her children. Then take Woman B, who begins bearing children when she ends her education at 18 and passes these cultural values on to her children. If we restrict the number of children per generation to 2 and the years between births to 2 for both women, we can quickly see some intresting demographics.

The second generation isn’t too dramatic. By the time that Woman A has completed her family at 32, Woman B still has only her 2 children, born when she was 18 and 20. Then it starts to get VERY interesting.

By the time that Woman A first becomes a grandmother at 60, Woman B has 4 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. That makes 3 descendants for Woman A at age 60 and 14 for Woman B.

Let’s assume that they both live into their early 80’s. By the time, she dies at 83, Woman A will have produced 2 children, who will have produced 4 grandchildren, making her descendants total 6 at her death.

Meanwhile in this same 83 years, Woman B will have produced 2 children, 4 grandchildren, 8 great-grandchildren, and 16 great-great-grandchildren for a total of 30 descendants.

The difference between 6 and 30 is quite remarkable. Needless to say, if you lower the age at which Woman B begins her childbearing even a couple of years and raise her number of children to 3 or 4, “demographic change” can kick in very quickly.

Posted by: D Flinchum on July 22, 2007 11:07 AM

Adriana - Props for cogent and on point comments. Although my own past experience with BIOH says you shouldn't poke the rabid racist bear. (He says, poking the rabid racist bear.)

PA - when mixed race kids repeatedly experience negative reactions and prejudice from whites and not from whatever other group or groups their "mix" includes it is hardly surprising that they grow up not identifying themselves as white. Adriana's point is well taken, the more "pure" one wants to see "their" race remain, the more they are likely to see a decline in total numbers ... or feel as though there is a decline, even if there isn't one.

Overall it is amazingly depressing how quickly a thread about overall, global, HUMAN population numbers became a racially charged, US vs. THEM discussion.

If we humans are smart, we'll accept that we are subject to the same systemic pressures that effect other animal species. In other words, as Michael mentioned in his initital post, we'll hit the "carry capacity" problem. Among the usual ways nature has for dealing with the carrying capacity issue are disease and famine, we have added war, murder, etc. along with birth control and choosing as individuals to limit our reproduction.

Would that we (as a global species) had the smarts to try to smooth the growth curve with self selected birth control, but only the elite can see the advantages in that for both "humanity" and themselves personally. The ever growing poor are increasingly forced into that "high turnover-disposable child" mode. And won't I become a target if I suggest that a major redistribution of wealth aimed at evening out distribution and vastly lowering the high end while raising the low to a bit beyond subsistence wold go a long way toward slowing population growth.

Posted by: Chris White on July 22, 2007 11:32 AM

What a despicable woman, PA, in that article you linked. Saying she didn't think 2 steps ahead (of having a child) when fell in love with her Indian husband, now she performs the same fallacy - writes an article about her "alienated" feelings towards her daughter - searchable and googlable article. Does she ever think of somebody else's feelings, apart of hers? How it will affect her child in her teenage years?

Posted by: Tatyana on July 22, 2007 1:03 PM

The unkind remarks towards mixed race individuals always come from the majority race and not from the minorities. The different minorities see themselves in the same boat, the majority fears loss of being in the majority and distortion of their own type, a type which is celebrated in their culture.

Consider how mixed race Koreans are so despised that that they invariably immigrate to the more tolerant US. I doubt if the Koreans are an exception.

Racism is a universal human trait. As shown by brain scans it is even universal among flaming liberals. We have to learn how to get along with reality.

Posted by: Robert Hume on July 22, 2007 3:12 PM

Tatyana - that woman is without a doubt an idiot. The photo clearly shows a woman who is none too bright. Hopefully her little "confessional" will at least serve as a warning to other thoughtless girls.

Chris White - It's not that simple. In fact, your brief response to me above is loaded with promises that are hostile to whites. You just assume that whites will be nasty to mulatto children while blacks will embrace them lovingly.

In Obama's case, he lived in what can be construed as a multiracial paradise, in Hawaii and Indonesia. He was loved, raised and accepted by his white family. He was abandoned by his black father. Similar in Hale Berry's case, and countless others, a few of them I know.

Posted by: PA on July 22, 2007 3:39 PM

To pick up on Adrianna's comments: there is a dominant pattern of mixed-race individuals, born to white mothers whose families raised them in nurturing environments and black fathers who had abandoned them, who vehemently reject their white identity. Hale Berry's hysterics at the Oscars or Barack Obama's black racial obsession expounded upon in his biography and subtly revealed in his campaign speeches are well known examples.
But as someone else noted, and as I've observed as well, white-hispanic or white e.Asian mixed-race individuals, (particularly when the father is white -- is that a factor?) tend to identify with whites.

It isn't necessary or even particularly desirable for mixed-race people to identify as white. What is much more appropriate is for them to acknowledge their mixed heritage. Unfortunately, in the case of mulattoes, though not usually Asian/white or Hispanic/white mixtures, is for them to go to the opposite extreme and reject their white heritage in favor of a "blacker than thou" identity. Obama and Berry are scarcely uncommon in this regard. Of the two, I find Halle Berry much more disturbing. Barack Obama at least looks quite dark, while Berry doesn't look remotely like an unmixed black person.

That being said, there are a few well-known mixed people who do not identify as solely black. Tiger Woods is the most famous example, fully acknowledging his unusually mixed background ... not that it matters, as everyone else seems to call him black :(

Posted by: Peter on July 22, 2007 4:45 PM

Actually, birthrates in Muslim countries and in Latin America are already starting to level off, and these countries are gearing their policies towards that fact. It's been in all the papers and everything. I guess for some folks, it's always 1973...

Posted by: tschafer on July 22, 2007 4:59 PM

The discussion wouldn't be turning back to the US and race if our borders weren't open and all this huge population increase worldwide wasn't coming here in droves. I'm sorry if you want to believe that race doen't matter, but it does and that's just reality. Each group looks out for itself. Unfortunately, to our detriment, there are whites who have been deluded by leftist brainwashing to believe that this isn't true. They are so used to living in a white majority nation that they can't comprehend the day it will end, nor understand its consequences if it does--that their ideal fantasy world of non-racism stops at the white doorstep, and that they, their friends, family, and neighbors will be subjected to intense official racism, unable to do anything about it. The old Chris White's of the 60's generation don't care, but being the future of this country, I care, and I'm not ignorant of what's going on. I see the results of the affirmative action and immigration "diversity" nightmare that Baby Boomers mostly escaped and foisted on the next generations.

The biggest racists are the leftists, but they are racist against their own kind. They think that being racist against your own kind doesn't count. But its still racism. And they all think its okay as long as its not them who has to pay the price. Its simply disgusting.

Posted by: BIOH on July 23, 2007 1:00 AM

I didn�t find the British woman in the Daily Mail article repulsive or stupid sounding at all. That she should feel some unease that the child doesn�t look at all like her somewhat disturbing is totally understandable. Her love for her child is unmistakable. Further she doesn�t express any sense of white inherent superiority, only appearance differences. Jumping all over her strikes me as the height of liberal ideological double think and straight jacket correctness.

I'm rather surprised that she struck you that way Tatyana, since you don't normally strike me as thinking so inside that particular box. He aside about not thinking ahead to how her child would look so unlike herself when she fell in love with an Indian man and wanted to have children doesn't strike me as so odd or so irresponsible either. She no doubt knew her child would be darker skinned than herself but she didn't dwell on that, which is if anything an indication that she's hardly race obsessed. I think it's the fact that no only her child's coloration but also aparently her features bear so little resemblance that has her feeling a bit left out of her child's heritage. Understandable, though the kid is very young still so who knows how she'll develop features wise?

Posted by: dougjnn on July 23, 2007 12:12 PM

"Actually, birthrates in Muslim countries and in Latin America are already starting to level off, and these countries are gearing their policies towards that fact. It's been in all the papers and everything."

You are exactly correct, tschafer, but as I noted in my posting above, if the years between generations remain small, we are still going to see large increases in population.

Posted by: D Flinchum on July 23, 2007 1:51 PM

The birthrates among Muslims are going down somewhat but they still have a very long way to go to get to mere replacement levels. Also, the cultural changes most seen as key to the replacement and lower level birth rates in the West plus Japan and S.Korea, most importantly much greater decision making power for women relative to men and extensive female participation at high status levels in the workforce seems to be happening very, very slowly if at all in most Muslim societies. This is also true in truly rich Muslim societies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

I think much of the optimism about future in control birthrates in the Muslim world and Africa is misplaced. India is troubling as well, though Latin America may be more hopeful. I see much more reason for pessimism.

Posted by: dougjnn on July 23, 2007 2:37 PM

Michael – The first thing I noticed was how less alarming your graph would look if you used a logarithmic scale, but I see that Donald beat me to the punch here.

Otherwise, I guess I would be a lot more persuaded that growing population was a serious issue if you, or anyone, could tell me EXACTLY what the optimum population of every country, city and neighborhood should be. And why. Otherwise, I can’t get too excited about this, anymore than I can get excited about the doom-and-gloom predictions of the global warming alarmists.

You have consistently noted your belief that “Preference and taste deserve to play a role in the conversations we have about how crowded a planet we'd like to inhabit.” But I still don’t see how an irrational and arbitrary notion of preference is supposed to guide any policy decision. My preference is for more people. But either stance -- “more or no” -- is totally unrelated to any consideration of material well-being or economic productivity and you simply cannot pull a bait-and-switch and try to substitute preference for more rational considerations, or pretend that matters of taste have any necessary connection to anything else.

Let’s look locally. From 1950 to now, the US population increased from 151 million people to 300 million. Has your quality of life decreased 98.6% since then? On the other hand, between 1870 and 2000, the population of the US increased from 38.5 million to 281 million, a whopping 629.8% increase, a period which also saw a significant shift in the ethnic mix in the country. But this was also the period in which the US became the undisputed economic giant of the world, and which also saw an increase in almost every significant measure of health, wealth, comfort and overall standard of living in the US and in much of the world.

RE: A species that has occupied an ecological niche will tend to expand within that niche as much as possible. If and when it passes certain limits, though -- boom, suddenly the whole ecosystem collapses around it.

Unless of course, humans come up with solutions to these problems. Food shortages? I recall reading a July 20 news story about how rising flood waters in China flushed an estimated 2 billion field mice from their nests and wondered how many people those mice might feed. An unsavory idea, perhaps, like the idea of eating insects for protein, but still this underscores the idea that we will not necessarily run out of food if the population continues to increase. And other resources? Oil was just black stuff in the ground for the majority of human existence, but every dystopian projection I read about the ill-effects of population increases assumes that the resources that exist today are the only resources that will ever exist. This kind of thing simply cannot be taken seriously; it wouldn’t even qualify as bad science fiction.

Even less interesting are all of the fantasy posts about how to keep the US moderately populated with the right kind of people while throttling down world population. Anyone here want to suggest that the world would have been better off had the Roman Empire stayed pagan and never collapsed and all those pesky barbarians like the Germans, Franks and Britons never had a chance to rise up and create their nations?

Yes, I understand wanting to preserve the status quo. Good luck with that.

Also, according to speculations such as the Toba Catastrophe Theory, about 70,000 years ago, the human race was reduced to as few as 1,000 individuals, but still managed to bounce back and flourish. See here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory or here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution for example.

So by comparison, a catastrophe resulting from over-population, while obviously terrible, might still be just a walk in the park in terms of human evolution

Posted by: Alec on July 23, 2007 3:13 PM

Alec,

Nice confusion of status quo with culture and race. Yes, the graph would look different and less alarming if it were done on a logarithmic scale, but the point is to relate reality, not to smooth it over with graphical tricks.

Also, nice substitution of technonlogical progess for cultural and quality of living decline. "Look, we got cell phones and better dentistry!" while everybody has to lock and alarm their car, pay outrageous taxes, have two adults working, see their jobs shipped overseas, see the schools decline and jails fill up, bastard kids all over, etc. I guess a catastrophe is healthy as long as you aren't one of the victims! Spectator catastrophies! Fun!

Its not a fantasy to deport illegal aliens and end new immigration. It just takes a will to do it. The real dreamers are the ones that won't admit to how its ruining the country, despite a tsunami of evidence to the contrary, and tell us all how great life is with all the refugees. Leftism is boring. No more, thanks.

Posted by: BIOH on July 23, 2007 10:22 PM

BIOH - RE: Yes, the graph would look different and less alarming if it were done on a logarithmic scale, but the point is to relate reality, not to smooth it over with graphical tricks.

As Donald also pointed out, a semi-log scale might be more accurate. Graphs are not reality, they are attempts to display information in the most meaningful way. I suggest that you take a look at something like Edward Tufte's superb elegantly informative book, "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information."

RE: Also, nice substitution of technonlogical progess for cultural and quality of living decline. "Look, we got cell phones and better dentistry!" while everybody has to lock and alarm their car, pay outrageous taxes, have two adults working, see their jobs shipped overseas, see the schools decline and jails fill up, bastard kids all over, etc. I guess a catastrophe is healthy as long as you aren't one of the victims! Spectator catastrophies! Fun!

None of the stuff you mention has anything to do with increasing population. Nor does it have to do with much of anything. Haven't the Republicans cut taxes? Do you have any realistic solution for stopping the shipping of jobs overseas? As an aside, are you going to stop buying products that are produced in part or in whole in foreign countries (like the PC that you are using)?

But apart from this, if you are willing to trade better health, a higher standard of living, a longer life expectancy, fewer diseases, and a better life than has existed ever before, then you could very easily achieve this by moving to Afghanistan, say, and joining the Taliban. Fundamentalists of various stripes would easily love to exchange material progress for safety and cultural comfort.

RE: Its not a fantasy to deport illegal aliens and end new immigration. It just takes a will to do it.

Let's see. Bush and his Wall Street cronies love illegal immigration. The Democrats and their nannystate cronies love illegal immigration. Libertarians and their free market cronies love illegal immigration. Who exactly, is on your side?

RE: The real dreamers are the ones that won't admit to how its ruining the country, despite a tsunami of evidence to the contrary, and tell us all how great life is with all the refugees. Leftism is boring. No more, thanks.

Apart from the fact that your fixation on immigration has nothing directly to do with increasing population, it is oddly reductive to see immigration as somehow leftist. Immigration is a fact of US history. When exactly do you think that welcoming "refuges" should have stopped? 1790?

Posted by: Alec on July 24, 2007 12:20 AM

Alec, don't patronize me. Using logarithmic displays of information is done simply to keep the graphs manageable on a single page. We're talking about population, not some other exponential function that almost nobody cares about. The regular graph is what it is, and that's alarming. It is reality. You just want to hide it.

Ron Paul will deport the illegal aliens, and pretty soon a whole raft of politicians will run for office on the promise of deportation--I guarantee it! Bet me! Deport three busloads from each state per day (150 people) and it two years you've gotten rid of 5.5 million illegal alien free-loading crooks. Crack a few employer heads, and the problem would be solved. I guarantee that too.

"Immigration has little to do with the increase in population"--it does in our country! Or is that another one of your logical non-sequiturs?

I'm not fixated on immigration--I just like to argue important matters with moldy leftists. I noticed their non-sensical pap goes largely unchallenged in many settings, so I lay into them when the need arises. Illegal immigration and the flooding of non-whites into America is not American history. It is the rewriting of American history to suit moldy leftists. We are not a nation of immigrants, we are a nation of citrizens, and we can close the goddamn door (and kick people out) whenever we goddamn well choose. Power wins. We rally the pople into a power. We exercise that power. The day is coming too when people like me get the country back, and I'm willing to do just about anything to make that happen. I'm dead seraious about that last statement. The backlash is coming, and it will be a whole lot more than just writing letters and making phone calls. Keep pushing the moldy leftism if you want, but its falling increasingly on deaf ears. We will win. The tide has turned.

Posted by: BIOH on July 24, 2007 10:41 PM

A little fact checking:

The present world population is around 6.6 billion, so 20 billion would be 3x. 3x the current U.S. population would be 900 million, giving the U.S. a population density of about 100 per sq km. The present population density of India is about 400 per sq km. So even in a thrice-populous world the U.S. would be far less dense than India is today.

I think we should also consider the possibility (only that, but real) that technology will reduce the human "footprint" over the next century. For instance, bio-tech will (IMO) render most forms of agriculture obsolete, reverting vast areas to wilderness.

Commentary:

I can sympathize with both sides of this debate. Obviously, exponential population growth cannot continue indefinitely. At 1% annual growth, the entire observable universe would be filled with human flesh in just 16,000 years. (Covering the land surface of the earth shoulder-to-shoulder would take a mere 700 years.)

OTOH, the decline in fertility observable in just about every industrial society projects out to social implosion. That's not an acceptable future, either.

I will further note that the decline in fertility is not recent. American fertility declined throughout the 1800s. In 1800, for every 1,000 white women aged 20-44, there were 1,342 children under 5. In 1850, only 892; in 1900, 666; in 1940, only 419. In 1950, with the "baby boom" in full spate, 587. In 2005, for all races, only 392.

A trend of that duration and magnitude suggests that fertility collapse is a natural consequence of modernity. If so, "going with the flow" may risk being washed away: it might not be possible to check the trend before its effects become catastrophic.

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on July 25, 2007 3:14 AM






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