Population: Bomb or Bottleneck? Quiz

Answer: 1968

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" predicted that the developed and undeveloped world would soon face mass starvation. His dark predictions have not (yet) come to pass. In a special issue of "Scientific American" entitled "Crossroads for Planet Earth", nine eminent experts offer up a strikingly different perspective on our planet's future with respect to demographics, economics and environment. Ehrlich's concern about population was not a new one. Thomas Malthus eloquently expressed his concerns about overpopulation in the late 18th century, and as early as the 17th century BCE, Babylonians were expressing concern that there were too many people.

In retrospect, with population rising at unprecedented rate, it is easy to see why some scientists became alarmed. After all, before 1930, no one had seen a doubling of world population within their lifetime. In the late 1960s, the rate of population growth reached what would turn out to be its peak. Between 1960 and 2005 the population more than doubled in only 35 years.

Answer: Human choice

Human populations have always been subject to war, famine and plague. However, in the 20th century, population growth rates declined for an unprecedented reason: human choice. Perhaps the alarms that Paul Ehrlich and others raised in the 1960s and 1970s, by focusing the world community's attention on the problem of population, destined their jeremiad predictions to be proven wrong.

The forces that influence family size seem to be numerous and complex. Certainly government policies, religious views and societal attitudes play a role. But, two factors seem to be particularly influential: urbanization and economic status. As will be emphasized below, both improving economic conditions and increasing urbanization seem to be trends that will continue. In an interview on PBS in 2002 ("http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1021.html"), E. O. Wilson theorizes, "it's apparently a universal human response and particularly female response, that once one gets a certain level of security in their lives, and in the case of women a sufficient empowerment so they make their own decisions, they opt for a small number of quality children as opposed to, well, just producing big families."

Answer: World population will begin to decline.

Since 1970, the population growth rate has nearly halved, from 2.1% percent down to 1.1 to 1.2 percent. Now it is projected that the average woman will have 2.1 children in her lifetime, which is at or below the birthrate needed to replace the woman and one man. Because there are still a number of women who have not passed through (or even reached) the end of their childbearing years, population is continuing to grow but at an ever decreasing rate. Sometime after 2050, according to middle of the road demographic estimates, the world population will be in decline.

Demographers' estimates vary, but most believe a population ceiling will be reached at between seven to eleven billion people. The estimates are very dependent on the number of children that women bear. An increase or decrease of one half child in the average number of children born to a woman over her reproductive life would increase or decrease the projected population in 2050 by 1.5 billion.

Answer: All of these

With the industrial revolution, urbanization accelerated in the industrial world reaching 75% in developed countries in 2000. More than 30% of people are expected to be living in cities in even the least developed countries by 2030. But urbanization is not necessarily an evil to be endured.

In a "Scientific American" Article entitled "Myths of the City", author Robert Doyle assails common misconceptions regarding urban versus rural life. Owing largely to improved sanitation and access to health care, city dwellers are now generally healthier than their rural counterparts. Sociological studies have debunked the myth that social ties are weaker in urban areas. Economies of scale and public funding result in improved factory productivity with increasing city size. With expected increases in production and prosperity leading to more amenities and to further improvement in sanitation, health care, police protection and public transportation; could it be that those desiring Eden may have to move to the city to find it?

Answer: The Industrial Revolution

Without fanfare, one could almost say insidiously, extreme poverty is being eliminated. Although 1.1 billion of earth's 6.5 billion people remain in extreme poverty, the proportion of those living in extreme poverty has been declining for centuries. Amazingly, between 1990 and 2001, despite rising population, the absolute number of, not merely the percentage of, extremely poor people declined!

Answer: Extreme poverty could be eliminated within twenty years

Extreme poverty is presently defined as having less than $1 (American) daily. Although the number is declining both as a percentage of the world population and even in absolute numbers, there are still over 1 billion people living in extreme poverty.

In his "Scientific American" article, Jeffrey Sachs attempts to explode a number of myths that he feels may encumber people's thinking on the subject. He points out that the following are true: Globalization makes the rich richer but does NOT make the poor poorer. U.S. aid levels (.21% of GDP) are among the lowest of donor nations and U.S. private contributions do not make up for the difference.

The root causes of poverty are neither the poor themselves nor the corruption of the governments of the countries in which they live.

Answer: A foot powered pump

Eighty percent of hungry people live in non-urban areas, most of them on farms. Improved irrigation seems to be the key to increasing the quantity of arable land and crop yields, as well as allowing small farmers to both feed themselves and earn a meaningful income from surplus crops. Low technology improvements such as treadle pumps and drip irrigation systems that farmers purchase for themselves are proving more effective than higher technology solutions. In the case of Bangladesh, foot powered treadle pumps purchased by 1,500,000 farmers for a total cost of $50 million increased the farmers yearly income by $150 million and irrigated an area of farmland that would have cost $1.5 billion to irrigate utilizing a dam and canal system.

In his article on small farms, Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises, emphasizes the need for profitability as well as food production. Although the world's food supply has been increased, hunger remains even in such nations as India. Although India has been able to produce enough food to feed its population for each of the last 15 years, India still has an estimated 200,000,000 undernourished people. Low technology innovations such as the treadle pump are having an impact on both rural hunger and rural poverty.

Answer: Energy costs decreased $2 billion; productivity is up 30%.

In a "Scientific American" article, environmentalist Amory Lovins points out that, while many believe there is an economic cost to reducing use of fossil fuels, "saving fossil fuel is a lot cheaper than buying it." Lovins points out that many improvements in energy efficiency have already been effected.

Many corporations including IBM, British Telecom, Alcan and DuPont have reduced greenhouse gas production while at the same time saving on energy costs. Savings have also resulted from more energy efficient devices from automobiles to fluorescent lamps. Changes such as these have resulted in the US using "47 percent less energy per dollar of economic output" than it did 30 years ago. Lovins believes that improved efficiency combined with increased production of renewable energy can result in "more profit with less carbon" and make allies of environmentalists and business.

Answer: All of these.

Coal fueled power plants produce carbon dioxide, a green house gas, as well as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that contribute to acid rain. But what if the carbon dioxide could be converted to oxygen and acid rain producing toxins absorbed? Ohio University's Ohio Coal Research Center has built a bioreactor that performs just this function. Gasses from a coal plant are funneled to heat-loving algae from a Yellowstone hot spring that are grown on a woven fiber surface illuminated by sunlight transmitted fiber optically from collectors on the roof. Water is sucked into the algae plates by means of capillary action greatly reducing the water requirement while the algae's requiring only 1/10th of full strength sunlight allows solar collectors to supply light for ten times their surface area of algae plates. The research center hopes to have a bioreactor capable of handling emissions from a 10-megawatt power plant by 2010.

Human population is expected to level off and then fall, but the amount of pollution produced per human has been steadily increasing and will not necessarily stabilize or lessen. Raising the standard of living in the less developed world is likely to require an increase in energy consumption per individual. Technological advances that permit the production of more energy with less pollution would permit the standard of living to rise in the undeveloped world without increasing pollution.

Answer: Government mandated birth control

In the 1960s Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" had a profoundly negative impact on my view mankind's future. The discussions, articles and media presentations that I encountered subsequently left me with a conviction that world population would grow relentlessly until an apocalyptic war, massive famine or devastating plague finally brought about population decline. To learn that voluntary choice has already reduced population growth below replacement levels, to realize that extreme poverty is on the decline and poverty being eliminated is a serious possibility, to know that the means to end hunger are already available, and to understand that technology may ultimately provide the solution for its own ills has shifted my attitude and given me a genuine sense of optimism regarding humanity's future for the first time in over 30 years.

I commend "Scientific American's" September 2005 issue, "Crossroads for Planet Earth" to those who have not read it.