The Population Bombing
Beware of the baby scare. It turns out to be false labor.
“Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” – Elon Musk
In 1798 British economist and demographer Thomas Robert Malthus, wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population. His book posited that population growth would always exceed growth in food supply, and in the absence of limits on population control, would lead to mass starvation.
In 1968, Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. His book predicted a series of environmental dooms for the same reasons as Malthus, from famine to resource depletion to the collapse of nations.
In the book’s Prologue, Ehrlich stated the following (emphasis added throughout):
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death …. in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.”
FEAR MONGERING:
While their predictions of exponential population growth may have been valid, Malthus and Ehrlich were spectacularly wrong about ensuing mass starvation. Indeed, since 1968 global population grew from ~3.5 billion to ~8 billion, but if they had been right about mass starvation, the data should confirm two things.
First, per capita daily calorie supply should have declined since their time. It has not. In fact, it has increased worldwide.
Second, the percentage of people in food poverty should have increased over time. What does the data show? At the time of The Population Bomb (1968), about 1 in 3 people were chronically hungry. Today that figure is about 1 in 9. So, what actually happened?
Population growth was outpaced by advances in agricultural production, and today, the entire human race, more than double its size in 1968, is better fed. Thank Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug, the Father of the Green Revolution, and agricultural scientists and innovators for this explosive growth in food production. (We wonder sometimes whether Paul Ehrlich thanks them or not).
Global cereal grain production, 1968 – 2020:
Global cereal grain yield, 1968-2020:
And even more stunning, we achieved this growth in food production by exploiting little additional farmland.
Since the publication of The Population Bomb, while global population more than doubled, chronic hunger has been reduced by almost 70% (from ~33% of total population to just over 10%). How Paul Ehrlich continues to get credit for his theories instead of pilloried by these facts is a mystery understood only by regressive progressive “environmentalists,” viewing the world through green colored lenses.
And apparently, also by CBS 60 minutes. Judge for yourself:
Ehrlich’s expertise was not limited to remarkably failed predictions about crops and famine. He also predicted that population growth would outstrip other resources (commodities other than food).
Writing about the political implications of the resource/population growth conundrum, in a 1980 issue of Social Science Quarterly, Ehrlich proclaimed, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist by the year 2000.”
Julian Simon, a University of Maryland economist interested in resource economics, challenged Ehrlich’s predictions. A public spat ensued.
The back and forth resulted in a widely publicized wager. Simon challenged Ehrlich to pick any five metals (Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten) and offered to bet him that the inflation-adjusted prices of the metals would decrease (Ehrlich took increase) over any period longer than a year. Ehrlich chose ten years. If prices rose, Simon would pay Ehrlich. If prices fell, Ehrlich would pay Simon. The bet was formalized and commenced on September 29, 1980, running through September 29, 1990.
We pause here to add an historical footnote, highly relevant to the broader issues of environmental predictions, modeling, and doom mongering. It also vividly demonstrates a recurring theme in government and modern environmentalism: no amount of failure is too much to succeed.
Ehrlich enlisted several “top scientists” to help him select the five metals. Among them was John Holdren, who later went on to become Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama. As we like to point out, ironies abound.
Despite the collective expertise of the Ehrlich Brain Trust, all five metals decreased in price. Ehrlich got trounced. In October 1990, he mailed Julian Simon a check to settle the wager. Ehrlich and team publicly Sciencesplained™ why they lost. Partnering with climate scientist Stephen Schneider, Ehrlich proposed another bet, this time choosing fifteen broader measures of environmental degradation. These ranged from crops to atmospheric gases (including CO2) to sperm counts (no, we did not make that up).
Simon declined. The way he declined closes this chapter of the story. He stated (emphasis ours):
Let me characterize their offer as follows. I predict, and this is for real, that the average performances in the next Olympics will be better than those in the last Olympics. On average, the performances have gotten better, Olympics to Olympics, for a variety of reasons. What Ehrlich and others says [sic] is that they don't want to bet on athletic performances, they want to bet on the conditions of the track, or the weather, or the officials, or any other such indirect measure.
Ehrlich was a biologist, Simon an economist. Simon understood, implicitly:
how scarcity is reflected economically (price).
how scarcity induces the search for more resources, and how finding more resources (or substitutes) reduces scarcity (which is then reflected in price).
how substitution works (e.g., today we use fiber optic cable and wireless signals for telecom instead of copper in advanced western nations).
how human minds are the ultimate resource. Constraining human population is effectively constraining human ability to innovate and solve problems.
Environmental and climate change-driven doom predictions since ~1995 are endless and at times absurd. They range from sea level rise to life-threatening weather, crop collapse, biodiversity and more than we care to list or could ever make up.
All the models upon which these predictions rely, have at their core, scenarios driven by one key metric that Malthus, Ehrlich and virtually all environmentalists have fixated on for decades: exponential population growth.
But we have followed global population growth for almost thirty years and watched birth rates plummet, from 4.96 per fertile woman in 1968 to 2.35 in 2020.
World renowned Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich obviously did not see what was coming in 1968 when he published The Population Bomb. We would not be surprised if he tried to claim credit for it, however.
The decline is especially obvious in the world’s wealthiest nations, where a birth rate of ~2.1 per fertile woman is required to maintain a stable population (known as the replacement rate). The birth rates in the world’s top 10 GDP nations are shown below. Note especially Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.
The data show we can achieve a “sustainable” population level “organically” by helping countries become wealthier. Environmentalists love “sustainable” and “organic”!
More draconian measures might accelerate reduced birth rates, but to “unsustainably” low levels. Communist “one child” policies have some demographers predicting that China’s population will fall from ~1.4 billion today to ~650 million before the end of this century. This very real possibility is what Elon Musk is getting at.
The real threat is coercing the world into underpopulation under the false pretenses of climate and environmental crises. This fear mongering is both dishonest and a human tragedy in the making. Steven J. Shaw recently discussed his documentary film, Birthgap, on Jordan Peterson’s podcast. He vividly depicted a sad window into the future, including orphanages for the elderly in Tokyo and a generation of young men known as “incels” – involuntary celibates.
But the rapid reduction in worldwide birth rates is good news to environmentalists! After all, fewer humans mean less emissions, less climate and environmental impact, less land disturbance and best of all - less capitalism. Less everything “bad.”
Climate change-driven mass hysteria constrains the developing world from using affordable, reliable, often domestically-abundant energy, thus hindering their economic advance. But again, as the data show, as per capita GDP increases, birth rates decline.
Increasing prosperity also reduces environmental degradation over time. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) describes the relationship between environmental degradation and GDP growth. Critics of the model contend it fails to measure things like “Gross National Happiness” (no, we didn’t make that up) or income inequality. Of relevance though, is how the EKC conclusively shows that if we want to reduce birth rates, population and environmental impact over time, the best way to do so is to promote wealth.
At turn of the century, some “experts” still predicted a global population peak of ~11 billion people in years 2150 – 2200. Today it is clear these figures were severely overestimated. A study from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington concludes the peak will occur earlier, in 2064 at 9.7 billion people, then fall to 8.9 billion by 2100. If correct, by 2100 the world’s population would be barely larger than it is today, and dropping even faster.
There are a variety of reasons for the rapid decline in global birth rates. They vary across time, nation, culture, education, socioeconomic circumstance, and many other factors.
Over the next several generations, the trajectory toward underpopulation could trigger profound, real and severe socioeconomic consequences. Consider the following examples:
The developed world’s system of social safety nets – medical, retirement, welfare programs – is based on a growing labor pool. Workers today pay for the retirement benefits of aging populations. How will governments pay for these obligations (debts) in a world with fewer workers?
Growth in global equity markets (stocks) depends on future earnings. For a time, future earnings growth from innovation and horizontal distribution (US and EU selling into emerging markets) will paper over the demographic changes associated with falling birth rates. But once global population begins to reach the apex, what will happen?
Trillions of dollars of home equity are tied up in real estate in the advanced nations. When population drops precipitously and housing demand/prices along with it, that home equity – the largest source of net worth for most middle-class families – becomes severely devalued.
These are merely a few examples of a future we believe too few see coming. Including “experts” who build models across a variety of environmental spectrums: climate, energy, resources, electricity, consumption, and economics.
What if early models predicting the worst effects of “climate change” were based on overestimates of future population?
They might have predicted far more emissions, sooner – and for a longer period before population began to drop - than were likely.
The world might have been panicked into reactionary environmental and energy policies that were more harmful than helpful.
The worldwide media might have endlessly perpetuated the worst fears of doom.
Funding for research might have been poured into “finding solutions” for problems that were overstated from the beginning.
Trillions in taxpayer dollars might have been squandered on false solutions that defied physics, economics and harmed the poorest the most.
Is the hypothetical scenario above - which was obvious to us by 2005 - essentially what happened?
The projected CO2 “emissions scenarios” responsible for driving the world down this path of panic are credited to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In each of their six Assessment Reports is a portion titled “The Scientific Basis” wherein the physical science behind climate change is presented.
In their First Assessment Report in 1991, they noted (emphasis added):
Growth of the economy and population was taken as common for all scenarios. Population was assumed to approach 10.5 billion in the second half of the next century.
Eleven years later, in their Third Assessment Report (2001), they noted (emphasis added):
For example, the two extreme estimates in the IPCC IS92 scenarios of the carbon dioxide emission by 2100 differ by a factor of 7.
By the 2001 IPCC report, the media, Charlaticians and environmental non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense council and others had already spent several years using the extreme emissions scenarios to terrify the world. The U.S. alone would go on to spend $99 billion just between 1998 – 2009. And we were only getting started.
We are not saying that all models have all population projections wrong and are therefore all null. What we are saying is: it is clear to us that the models which created the existential climate panic were not keeping pace with the rapid, high-resolution changes in birth rates. Because population estimates are key underlying assumptions driving actual outcomes, these errors compounded over time.
In 2005, RCP8.5 became the official name for the “business as usual” scare scenarios introduced in the 1991 IPCC report. In a recent Substack post, scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. detailed how it is now clear that RCP8.5 was never realistic. So much so that now even the Biden administration is abandoning it.
A paper published by Pielke, Jr. (included in the above linked Substack post) notes that RCP8.5 projected a potential 6.2 degree Celsius temperature increase over preindustrial levels by 2100. That’s more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
For perspective, earth’s average surface temperature has risen a little over 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial era. Put simply, RCP8.5 effectively projects warming almost 5 times as much to 2100 (a period ten years shorter).
Updated CO2 emissions scenarios apply more granular analysis of changed birth rates and population projections. The results versus the original 1990’s-era scare scenario, RCP8.5, drive home our point.
The graph below shows RCP8.5 as the orange line. It remains only as a reference to compare to the updated scenarios. The graph shows just how wide the divergence is across the worst of the old scare scenarios (orange line corresponds to population of ~11 billion) and updated projections (black lines: ~9 billion; teal ~6.9 billion). The black lines are the direction being adopted by the Biden administration.
Important lessons should be learned here, not the least of which is that helping the developing world to become wealthier will reduce birth rates, population, and long-term environmental degradation. Moreover, it will do so far more humanely and effectively than coercive population control and perpetuating poverty with absurd environmental and energy policy.
It is also evident that while scientists argued over and defended the precise atmospheric physics and chemistry details of climate models, their early scare scenarios were always overstated because of one simple foundational metric where their assumptions were wrong: future population.
But those scare scenarios, unfounded as they may have been, triggered global panic, wasted trillions of dollars on non-solutions, harmed the poor the most, and constrained economic progress for many low income nations.
Environmentalists who view the world through the lens of Malthus and Ehrlich (and Club of Rome, Extinction Rebellion, etc.) are commonly referred to today as “Malthusians”. Those who view it through the lens of Julian Simon are often called “Cornucopians”. The former often consider humans as a plague on the planet. The latter view us as The Ultimate Resource (title of Simon’s famous book), capable of solving more problems than we create. The distinction has never been more clear.
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Thanks for the mention of Norman Borlaug. Some call him the man who saved a billion lives. It’s truly amazing that almost nobody knows that name. If we properly educated our young people, there would be a national holiday in his commemoration.
Thanks for an accurate summation of our current situation. Call me a Cornucopian if you like as I’ve held Julian Simon as a hero for years.
I question all future predictions, both the experts and even yours. As per JS, the world is dynamic, not static and humanity is the most resilient species the world has ever produced. Amazingly diverse solutions will be adopted IF we rely on local solutions rather than the scourge of our time, centralized bureaucratic control.
For centuries human flourishing was impeded by ignorance on nature and mythological controls. Today largely, nature has yielded her secrets but our mythological controls have taken a massive turn for the worse. The climate change fiasco is one of the serious intellectual flaws, it is not the worst. Believing the government can and will solve our problems, particularly our economic ones will become visible as the greatest self inflicted error of all time.
With respect of needing a young population to care for an aging, non productive group I claim we erroneously ignore that most humans are productive over their lifetime with many being spectacularly so. The greatest dilemma we all face is a government that strips our past earnings, our savings, of valu through monetary devastation.