Fertility Rates: Is Western society self sustaining?

[lehighguy]

Procreation rates in Asian cultures aren't that high either, though I give them a break for being a little overpopulated. I don't think it's a racial thing. It seems to be much more related to income.

[Darryl_P]

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Procreation rates in Asian cultures aren't that high either, though I give them a break for being a little overpopulated.

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Not to mention stiff penalties in China for having more than one child.

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It seems to be much more related to income.

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I suppose within western cultures that's true, but in Islamic cultures the correlation is reversed, ie. greater wealth = more children.

[fun160]

The aticle The Global Baby Bust by Phillp Longman from the May/June 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine is a must-read for anyone interested in fertility, birth rates, population size, and its implications for America and the world.

[John Feeney]

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The aticle The Global Baby Bust by Phillp Longman from the May/June 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine is a must-read for anyone interested in fertility, birth rates, population size, and its implications for America and the world.


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From the article summary:

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Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay.

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As far as I can see the author is a journalist (or perhaps has some economic background?) without scientific training. That might explain why he ignores some basic math.

His view ignores the irrefutable math of exponential growth:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461

http://www.mnforsustain.org/bartlett...th_society.htm


The earth is finite. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people assume we can We can go on growing indefinitely? By all scientific accounts we've reached the limit.

In any event, population growth does not necessarily correlate with economic growth:

http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/pu...s/gottlieb.pdf

[FlFishOn]

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The earth is finite. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people assume we can We can go on growing indefinitely? By all scientific accounts we've reached the limit.

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If you believe this, and it looks like you've bought it wholesale, then you owe it to yourself to research the historic price trends for important commodities.

What you'll find is that damn near everything, food, metal, fiber, energy, are all in long-term declining trends. Now how can you square that with your gloom and doom population hysteria?

Technology provides. It done it's magic since fire and flint were discovered.

[pvn]

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[ QUOTE ]
The earth is finite. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people assume we can We can go on growing indefinitely? By all scientific accounts we've reached the limit.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you believe this, and it looks like you've bought it wholesale, then you owe it to yourself to research the historic price trends for important commodities.

What you'll find is that damn near everything, food, metal, fiber, energy, are all in long-term declining trends. Now how can you square that with your gloom and doom population hysteria?

Technology provides. It done it's magic since fire and flint were discovered.

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See the Simon-Elrich wager:

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The year 1980 was a time when many people thought that the earth was running out of its precious natural resources. Simon, an economist who died in 1998, contended that human ingenuity would always come up with substitutes if needed. Thus humanity would never run out of key materials. In contrast, Ehrlich, a neo-Malthusian biologist, contended that overpopulation and excessive consumption were already forcing shortages of key materials and that this trend would continue.

Simon and Ehrlich agreed that rising prices would be a sign that raw materials had become scarce. Simon offered to bet that any raw materials selected in one year would be lower in price ten years hence. Convinced that prices would go up over the next decade, Ehrlich and two colleagues responded to Simon's offer.

So, in October 1980 Ehrlich and his colleagues picked five different metals (chrome, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten), spending $200 on each metal. The total investment was worth $1,000 in 1980 prices. If, in October 1990, the value of the five metals at their original 1980 quantities, adjusted for inflation, turned out to be greater than $1,000, then Ehrlich would win the bet. If the value were less, Simon would win the bet. Whoever lost would be required to send a check to the winner equal to the difference in value.

In October 1990, the price of the basket of metals had fallen substantially below its 1980 level. All the metals had experienced a drop in value. Moreover, the drop was so substantial that Simon would have won even if the values hadn’t been adjusted for inflation. Ehrlich and his associates sent Simon a check for $576.07.

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http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=588

Note that oil is one exception to this rule. But, if you look at the long-term inflation-adjusted price of oil, you'll notice that the prices only began reversing this trend after OPEC (a cartel maintained by government coercion) was formed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:O..._1861_2006.jpg

[John Feeney]

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See the Simon-Elrich wager

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Yeah, I've seen it before. Partly for reasons I mentioned in another post, and partly because Ehrlich basically fell for a prop bet, it means almost nothing. Ehrlich subsequently offered a more meaningful bet, btw, which Simon declined.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/ehrlich_...g_erickson.htm

Simon is truly a laughing stock among scientists who've studies this matter. He actually said something to the effect that though we rely on the sun for energy, even if it were not so vast we would need not worry because there are other suns out there. There's more on him here:

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/bartlett/flatearth.htm

At any rate, economists and their notions of infinite ingenuity providing infinite resources notwithstanding, the earth and its resources really are finite.

[John Feeney]

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The earth is finite. Why is it that otherwise intelligent people assume we can We can go on growing indefinitely? By all scientific accounts we've reached the limit.[ QUOTE ]
If you believe this, and it looks like you've bought it wholesale, then you owe it to yourself to research the historic price trends for important commodities.

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So you don't believe the earth is finite? I suppose maybe you don't. After all Julian Simon's cornucopian message that the earth's resources are infinite (He really asserted that!) is comforting. But you have to admit it makes no sense!

Relatively short term price fluctuations and cycles in commodities don't mean much. (Some argue, for instance that physical depletion doesn't affect commodity proces until very far along in that depletion.) Those commodities are finite. Exponential population growth and per-capita resource consumption cannot help but deplete them over time. Sure, we'll find alternatives and various stop-gap measures, but as long as we keep using them, nonrenewable resources will eventually be depleted.

[FlFishOn]

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So you don't believe the earth is finite?

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Since sunlight falls upon the earth at some number of watts per square meter, most everything is infinite until the energy fails. Technology has the ability to provide everything at a price. The price of goods HAVE ALWAYS FALLEN, ALWAYS, throughout all of history, increasing population demand be damned!

Why is this so hard for you? Is impending apocalypse your prefered future?

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...nonrenewable resources...

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No such thing. You lack vision.