and to another four billion by 2100. 147
~The Club of Rome and their (in)famous study “The Limits to Growth” in 1972 forecast a decline (after a ~50-year rise) in human population, affluence and resource availability. (The ‘business as usual’ scenario is roughly tracking their scenario as of 2014. 148 ) ~ The “replacement rate” to maintain a population is 2.0 children per couple but ranges up to 3.3 children per couple in developing nations due to higher infant mortality. ~ Higher education and access to birth control lead to women wanting and having fewer children, but environmental and economic stress leads to having more children 149 (rationally, so there is greater possibility for some to survive to care for parents; and irrationally because under stress, we collectively revert more strongly to the gene agenda and less to deliberation and sapient choice). ~ These days, it is very common to find people in cultures around the planet who say the Earth currently has too many people. Yet as individuals, they (almost) all still want their own kids, grandkids, consumption, and stimulation. ~As long as ‘growth’ is our cultural objective, it is very unlikely w e can solve the overpopulation (or climate) problems whilst maintaining GDP as our objective. GDP growth requires ‘consumers’ (who begin as babies, then children, then young adults) to pay for: teachers, diapers, toys, pensions, etc. Population, then, is another big problem downstream of growth. There exists an extremely large spread in estimates of ‘how many people the earth can support.’ The issue is one of variables and boundaries – what is the peoples’ level of consumption and how much of ‘other generations’ resources’ are they consuming. The related deeper question is how many humans the Earth can sustainably support, as opposed to temporarily support using fossil inputs. The variables in such calculations also include whether, and to what degree, we may allow current non-human species to exist. Credible estimates and supporting logic for sustainable human numbers range from as low as 10 million to as high as 2 billion. 150 Once again, we are approaching 8 billion human planetary residents today. TaaL: I think the UN’s confidence level is a major story in itself – they ‘upped’ their confidence in the 2015 report for all those billions in 2100 from 80% to 95%. If one is blind to the energy and resource lens, such mistakes can be made. They’re probably well -intended.
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