Population, Propaganda and Just Plain Lies
Let's start with some facts. In the year 1500 AD, the beginning of the Age of Exploration for Europe and the middle of the Ming conquests in Asia, the best estimate of the whole world's population was 450 million. That's million, with an "M".
A century later, when Spain and Portugal had conquered and colonized (Oooh! Oooh! Eeeh! Ick! Evil-evil!) and settled all of South and Central America, and a good-sized portion of North America, as well as slices of Africa and Asia -- and China (Crickets.) had conquered and colonized most of Asia, the 1600 AD global population reached 500 million.
Over the next century the European powers -- Spanish, Portuguese, British, French and Dutch -- expanded their settlements in the Americas. China suffered various setbacks; the Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Qing, who nonetheless expanded Chinese conquests and fought a few battles with the Russian empire and the Dutch. By 1700 AD the world's population reached approximately 610 million.
That was enough for Europe to launch the Industrial Revolution, which -- among other things -- created improvements in farming, fishing, food storage, transportation and medicine, which spurred population growth. It also led eventually to the American Revolution. In Asia, the Chinese Qing emperors consolidated their hold over more than half of the continent and settled down to rule it efficiently. In 1800 the world's population came to 1 billion, for the first time in history.
In the next century, with growing advances in the sciences, the global population doubled. The 1900 estimate for the world's population was 2 billion, and it took off from there. Throughout the 20th century the population didn't just expand but exploded. According to the UN, the 2000 AD global population was over 6 billion.
Today it's 7.8 billion, and it's expected to reach 8 billion in another five years. That's billion, with a "B".
That, to be blunt, is too damn many. Already our social systems and the environment are showing signs of stress. Over 270 million people in the last 20 years have fled their home countries to anywhere else, where they have often caused a severe economic burden. Viral plagues, like Covid, spread with unstoppable speed. Our land and seas are filling with garbage, our fresh water supplies are running short, and our farmable topsoil is badly in need of restoration. Regardless of how much climate change is natural and how much is due to human interference, its effects are becoming serious; we need to stop adding to it. Besides remediation methods, of which there are many, we need to cut our numbers down.
It doesn't take a university education to see this, and a lot of people all over the world know it. This is why, over the past 30 years, people in general have been marrying later and having fewer children -- regardless of what their preachers or families might say. Never mind losses due to wars, plagues and famines. Population increase in those same decades has fallen from 1.56% to 1.05%, and looks to fall still further -- though it may not reach zero in time to prevent that 8 billion population mark.
You would think that politicians and political influencers would be pleased, and would encourage the trend. China pursued its One Child Policy from 1980, hoping to cut its population down, and India has been pushing birth-control on its people since 1951.
Ah, but you'd be wrong. Elsewhere in the world politicians, preachers, and Captains of Industry have changed course and are wailing about their country's (or their religious congregation's) falling birth-rate. Even China ended its One Child Policy in 2015 -- and announced it was allowing families to have up to three children in 2021. Only India, which fears it will have the world's biggest population by 2030, is still pursuing its population-reduction plans. We really have to wonder why.
China claims its reasons for the policy reversal are economic; it has too many old people living on retirement plans and too few young people in the work-force to support them. It's ironic that a culture that used to value old people for their knowledge and skills now considers them only useless mouths. Various pundits in the US and Europe make the same excuse: too many elders draining the retirement plans and too few workers paying into those funds. Cynical historians have pointed out that when the US established the Social Security system in 1935 retirement age was set at 65 because most Americans didn't live beyond 70. Nowadays, in over 100 countries, people live late into their late 70s or 80s.
Examined closely, this argument doesn't hold water. Yes, people today are living longer, but they're also keeping their health -- and their jobs -- longer. Also, older workers tend to be more skilled and more productive than younger ones, and therefore pay more into the various retirement funds -- which is why Social Security has raised its official retirement age to 67. The age of the average citizen in China is 38.4 years, almost exactly the same as the US's 38.5. In India it's 28.7. Nobody's population is unprofitably old.
A more likely reason is the nasty business of covert warfare by population imperialism. We've all seen the effects of the Arab countries sending their excess populations to Europe and the US, often with explicit orders to outbreed the locals and further the cause of jihad. The current administration of Mexico began its reign by emptying out the country's prisons and trucking the now-ex-cons across the border into the US. China, which has always been better at economic and propaganda warfare than military expertise, has spent the last two decades sending record numbers of its spies/"students" to the US to spread useful social/political fashions and to learn American scientific and business processes. It's also sent business chiefs to buy up large swaths of American farmland. There's evidence that Chinese government agents are behind the organizing of "migrant convoys" from Central America into the US, and still more evidence that China developed and spread the Covid virus deliberately to cripple the western countries' economies and perhaps reduce their populations.
The western countries have noticed this trend, and have begun taking various steps to limit immigration as well as "foreign influence". Some have gone further, actively deporting Arab migrants and Chinese agents. Right-wing political pundits, especially religious ones, are actively stumping to raise their own groups' populations by everything from opposing abortion and birth-control to creating panics about "fertility loss". It's especially ironic to hear them quoting injunctions from the Old Testament which were first written for the express purpose of discouraging any form of sex that did not produce more babies -- therefore cannon-fodder -- for the tribe. It's obvious that those who are aware of the population problem are determined that, whatever portion of the global population shrinks, it won't be theirs.
But the "leaders" aren't the people, and the Information Revolution has made total censorship impossible. People can see for themselves what's happening and draw their own conclusions. As the Covid wave recedes and the government lockdowns with them, societies are determinedly not returning to "normal". In the US, working-age people are not returning to their old jobs, and not in expected numbers. Neither are they so willing to give up legal abortions, let alone birth-control, as their assorted pundits expected. In China, especially in the wake of the financial and housing fiasco, younger workers have taken up the fashion of "laying flat" -- neither breeding nor striving to work one iota more than they have to. In Europe and Asia revolts against "green" policies and immigration rates have toppled more than one government. A deep sense of cynicism has spread around the world, and with it a determination to breed less. Whether this will affect population growth in time to prevent that 8 billion population mark is anyone's guess.
But if, in the next two years, we hear that the world's rate of population growth has dropped to zero or below, then we'll know.
--Leslie <;)))><
