More often than not, problems we face today are directly or indirectly blamed on exponential population growth or more commonly, overpopulation. We constantly tell ourselves that if there were just half the people on this planet then there would be no problems at all. We could easily feed everyone and so everybody would live happily ever after.
The earth as of today holds roughly 7.8 billion people and this number may seem extremely scary to most people. Yes, overpopulation aggravates a lot of problems but when looked at from another, practical perspective, this kind of population growth is just nature’s course like tectonic shifts and was inevitable after the industrial revolution which gave better health and related infrastructure and the idea of family planning.
Way back in the 1000 BCs, more people around meant more security in an ever changing and insecure world. In the Indian subcontinent, for example, during the Mughal rule a large population called for celebration since more and more people could work on farms and produce more food. Roman emperors too promoted early marriages and frequent childbirths so their armies could stay up to strength. An excessive population growth was actually promoted until the number of people became a visible problem and in the 18th century, English economist Thomas Malthus started ringing alarm bells.
Tertullian, a father in a church in the 3rd century AD was frightened about the extreme population growth back then when the global population was 60 times smaller than the current world population! It was hence believed that war and famines were a ‘remedy’ to this problem. In fact, as late 1968, American biologist Paul Ehlrich suggested that we introduce poison into our deep waters so women consuming it become infertile.
So, after all it seems justified that people are anxious about overpopulation now, in the 21st century since the population is already close to 8 billion and that our sophisticated demographic techniques tell us that we’ll easily be adding another 3 billion to this number by the end of this century and that we’re not living in ‘ecological balance with nature’.
When most countries began to recognize overpopulation as a problem, they blamed it for all their problems right from poverty to global warming. As a means to ‘fight’ overpopulation, these countries started experimenting with politically and morally dubious methods. The infamous One-Child Policy in China stood at the forefront of this ‘battle’.
Overpopulation can be simply explained using carrying capacity which is the ratio of resources to the total population. Earlier calculations predicted that the carrying capacity of the earth is just 4 billion which means the Earth is capable of feeding only 4 billion people. But quite conspicuously, we’ve been able to feed 7 billion people as of today. So, what could possibly explain this? What Tertullian and Malthus didn’t realize is that although more people meant more mouths to feed and more space to accommodate them, more people meant more hands and more brains. So, we have been able to supplement our natural resources with technology and hence sustain this long. As far as space is concerned, the entire population of the Earth can be quite conveniently filled in just the island-continent Australia with the rest of the earth being entirely human-less. Developed countries use up very large amounts of land per capita that could be better utilized.
As a consequence of the population control policies, countries saw eccentric sex ratios, Total Period Fertility (TFR) and more visibly, lesser people on the fields and in the army. This called for immediate repeal of all these laws.
But Swedish physician Hans Rosling said in 2018 that population growth hasn’t been exponential after 1960. It has been perfectly linear and that we’ve added approximately a billion people every 14 years. In linear growth of any factor, the interest rate actually decreases. The TFR which defines the number of babies a woman can bear in her life while she’s fertile is supposed to be 2 or greater. But most developed countries have a TFR of less than 2. Which clearly points at a declining population.
In conclusion then, we should be worried about the decline in population and not population growth since most studies have proven that we'll not be able to exceed a total population of 11 billion on this Earth.
Most developed and developing countries have been conveniently hiding all their problems behind overpopulation which doesn’t seem to be the problem after all. So, are we asking the right question?
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