Alston wants your women.
And not just any old hags, either -- residents of this northern English town would prefer strapping young things who aren't afraid to get dirty. "Quite frankly, old people are not going to give us the vitality that we need," says Vince Peart, the cheerful if lovelorn spokesperson for the town's matchmaking campaign. "We're looking for young people who will work."
The area around Alston, a hamlet perched in the Pennine mountains, was once home to 20,000 people. Nowadays it's closer to 2,000. While Peart's booty call has proved to be a headline-grabbing move, he admits it's not just women the town is lacking. Warm bodies of all sorts are in short supply.
Peart is trying to keep positive as he crisscrosses Britain on a double-headed mission to lobby politicians on rural issues and get dates for his buddies. He and other lonely Alstonites should take heart, though: they're really not alone. Around the world, a demographic shift is under way, with people having fewer children. The resulting population decrease could -- more than hybrid cars or wind farms or policy shifts -- be our best hope for the salvation of the planet. Eventually.
Less Is More, More or Less
The little attention given to shrinking populations tends to focus on Europe. Among the nations with the lowest fertility levels in the world are relatively rich countries like Italy and Spain, but they are matched by still-developing Eastern European nations like Romania and Ukraine. Even the continent's comparatively lusty countries, such as France and Ireland, are only cranking out an average of 1.8 children per woman -- well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 that's needed to sustain current population levels.
Last of a dying breed?
Photo: iStockphoto.
Populations are declining in seven of the 25 European Union member countries, and the trend will continue. According to Eurostat [PDF], the E.U.'s pocket-protector brigade, population numbers will rise gradually over the next two decades to about 470 million, thanks mainly to immigration, before falling by 20 million people by mid-century, when immigration will no longer be able to offset rising death rates and falling birthrates. Germany alone is projected to lose 8 million by 2050, a drop of nearly 10 percent from its present population of 82.5 million -- that's a loss roughly equal to the populations of its five biggest cities combined.
This trend isn't brand-new; in fact, Oxford demographer David Coleman dates declining birthrates in Europe to the social-welfare state that began in the 1930s. In a society veering away from agriculture, he points out, children were no longer worth it, in hard economic terms. Other explanations for falling birthrates include women's rights, increasing female participation in the workforce, and birth-control programs.
Outside Europe, a notable trend toward depopulation is also occurring in Japan, where the fertility rate has fallen in recent years. The government estimates that by 2050 there will be 25 million fewer Japanese -- that's like saying goodbye to one-fifth of the current population, or all of greater Tokyo.
But the real surprise may be that birthrates are falling even in developing nations. Throughout the developing world, the U.N. says, people are having fewer babies -- an average of fewer than three per woman -- and 20 developing countries have fertility levels below the 2.1 replacement level. China's policies, including the notorious one-child rule, have driven its birthrate from 5.9 in the 1970s to sub-replacement level. An even larger decrease -- the fastest ever recorded -- occurred in Iran, which dropped from seven births per woman in the early '80s to around the replacement level today.
So is this good news for those concerned about crowding and consumption? Well, here's where it gets a bit tricky. Even though birthrates are falling, we're decades away from feeling the effects. According to the U.N.'s best guess, anyone still kicking in 50 years will be sharing the world with about 9 billion others. Even where birthrates are below replacement level, populations continue to grow -- there's a time lag before the effects of declining birthrates are felt. For instance, one estimate projects that China will still add 260 million people by 2025.
Business as usual in Tokyo.
Photo: iStockphoto.
Immigration and urbanization also create a sort of demographic microwave, leaving some areas ice cold and others blisteringly hot. In much of Europe and Japan, while rural areas are emptying out and birthrates are plunging, cities are coping with an influx of newcomers. For every amusing feature about a town like Alston, there's a corresponding news flash about thousands of Eastern Europeans moving to the U.K. In Rome, squatters are angry about spiraling housing costs caused by overcrowding. Meanwhile, in the former East Germany, where a sagging economy and the ease of migration to the West are compounding downward population trends, they're chopping up old communist apartment blocks to make nice low-density family homes -- that is, if concrete can ever be considered either nice or low-density.
But still, the big picture is getting smaller. After 2050, the U.N.'s medium-scenario estimates say the world will grow more slowly, hitting a peak of about 10 billion people in 2200 before stabilizing or entering a period of slow decline. This involves a huge amount of guesswork -- we're talking about estimating the number of children born to parents who aren't yet born themselves -- but the ultra-long-term trends are down.
Crave New World
This may be bad news if you sell cradles or run a mommy podcast, but environmentalists could have cause for celebration. In Europe, some of the effects are already being felt. "The decline in population is opening room for species that have been pushed back by humans," says Reiner Klingholz of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. "We're seeing an increase in animals such as wolves and deer.
"In [eastern] Germany, for example, you have old buildings, houses, factories, railway lines, and so forth where nature has taken over," he adds. "In places where there was nothing but humans and industry, now you have birds nesting in the rafters and foxes lurking around."
And fewer people could also benefit -- well, people. Oxford environmentalist and population expert Norman Myers says a smaller population is a more sustainable one. A drop in numbers could lead to a drop in energy use -- think fewer cars on the road, fewer power plants, smaller towns -- which bodes well for the climate. "This is something to be applauded solely because the sooner we move to declining populations, the less strain we place on the environment," Myers says, "and the better off we'll be."
But let's put the champagne and condoms on ice for a moment. Shifting populations bring their own set of concerns. For instance, Europe's population is still rising -- but four-fifths of that increase is due to immigration. Since new arrivals tend to be shunted into low-wage jobs, some demographers warn that European societies could fissure into two castes: childless Brahmins and the foreign underclasses who serve coffee, sweep streets, and shell out taxes to support them.
Gray matters.
Photo: iStockphoto.
On top of that, a declining population is an aging one. And in an aging society, says Philip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, "gray competes with green." Older people tend to have more disposable income, and thus tend to consume more. They use more housing units per person than families, swelling their environmental footprint. And ultimately, says Longman, "aging societies will face budgetary pressures" -- think Social Security and other pension plans -- "that will leave less resources available for investment in cleaner energy, conservation, remediation, mass transit, and all other environmentally friendly goods."
Could the environmental dream of zero population growth be a nightmare? Some think so. I ask Vince Peart if he sees any benefit to undercrowding. He thinks for a moment -- long enough for a few Alston old-timers to drop off -- but can't come up with an answer. There aren't more trees around or more native species to admire in his town. Perversely, the cost of living is going up as city people snap up second homes in the area. And the weekenders don't tend to support local businesses. Finally, he just says, "We're at risk of turning into something of a ghost town, a tourist attraction."
The Incredible Shrinking Debate
With the global population zooming upward, it's hard to drum up much talk about future depopulation. And even those you might expect to be excited at the prospect aren't talking about it much, because advocating smaller populations isn't very ... sexy. Groups like Greenpeace and Oxfam, which once championed population control, now barely mention it, according to David Nicholson-Lord of the Optimum Population Trust. He says progressives haven't been able to blend commitments to reproductive choice with sustainability, so raising the banner for population control has been left up to a few lonely voices on the left and, on the other end of the spectrum, the anti-immigration right.
"I think [population control] is deeply unfashionable, and taboo, and has fallen off of a lot of agendas -- and that's due partly to that broad agenda known as political correctness," Nicholson-Lord says. "It's seen as the wrong diagnosis and also as disempowering ... it has a bad name, and unfairly, I think."
Nicholson-Lord and his trust embrace positions that would make most liberals queasy, like zero net immigration for the U.K. He argues that more groups should concern themselves with such issues, since the environmental benefits of a lower population are just too high -- and the world's environmental problems too urgent -- to push for anything less. "We have to think seriously about the world's population," he says, "and about what kind of levels can be sustained in the long term."
If anybody running Europe is doing this type of pondering, they're not saying. In the playground of public policy, population decrease is seen as a problem, not an opportunity. Several countries, including France and Estonia, offer generous pro-family benefits, while others, including Britain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, are tinkering with their retirement systems to keep older residents working longer. But in debates over pensions and child and family benefits, serious discussion about proper population levels doesn't really happen.
And there's the challenge. The issue of population, once a key part of the green agenda, is today limited to a few demographers, think-tankers, and wonks. If countries can manage with fewer people, and even turn depopulation into an environmental benefit, we could be onto something big. Political tussles over whether to cut emissions or pursue clean technologies might seem as quaint and empty as a pub in Alston. But before that happens, we'll have to start talking about it again.
Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Obama
Comments
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roastero Posted 12:26 pm
14 Dec 2005
Population increase is often seen by economically-driven politicians as synonymous with economic growth. Populate or perish?
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Trucha Posted 7:23 pm
14 Dec 2005
My wife and I love kids, and have many children in our lives through our friends, but neither of us feel any real desire to reproduce. So why do I often get the feeling that when we tell people that, there's this underlying assumption that its really me, as the "male" that doesn't want kids and my wife is just aquiescing? She feels just as strongly about it as I do! Environmental issues aside, we also consider the impact it would have on our lives, and we see friends who have no free time, look exhausted all the time, can't just spontaneously go out to a movie or dinner, and we know that its not for us - we enjoy our free time, and the lack of pressure of having to make "x" amount of salary to start saving forr universities, etc.
I've actually heard people say its "selfish" not to reproduce, and to value your own time and energy over having children - what's more selfish than acknowledging overpopulation is a serious issue, but you're going to have kids anyway?
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wren7 Posted 1:44 am
15 Dec 2005
I don't understand why so many people who do want kids have two, three, even four or more children. What's wrong with having just one, which would ease the burdens on working parents and allow many of them to save both for college and for their own retirement?
I often feel like a "female mutant" for feeling this way, because it is definitely not the norm. But since becoming an environmentalist several years ago, I have another reason to be glad that I'm childless.
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yorkvillezendo Posted 6:37 am
15 Dec 2005
What are we, people who do want children but are social-responsibility-minded, to do? It is a real dilemma, and it isn't being discussed.
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bookerly Posted 2:01 pm
15 Dec 2005
One of the reasons that population is not discussed more often is that it usually is spoken of in terms of numbers. However, it's not just how many children one has, but how they (and you) live. The deeper issue is consumption. Someone who builds a huge mansion but has no children has a more negative effect on the planet than a peasant family with five children. The real problem in the developed countries is not just how many people there are, but the way we all live.
While population needs to stabilize and trend downward, more importantly the consumption practices of the West need to be addressed. The houses full of unused stuff, the three cars per family, the suburban lifestyle especially (though not only) are what is killing the planet.
A stable society with good social welfare programs, education and empowerment for women seem to "solve" the numbers part of the population issue. The consumption part is even less likely to be seriously discussed.
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i zimba Posted 1:04 am
16 Dec 2005
"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall and we simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. The wall is a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species... Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years." -Jacques Cousteau (1910 - 1997)
"The prevailing view holds that a stable population that does not tax the environment's "carrying capacity" would be sustainable indefinitely, and that this state of equilibrium can be achieved through a combination of birth control, conservation, and reliance on "renewable" resources. Unfortunately, worldwide implementation of a rigorous program of birth control is politically impossible. Conservation is futile as long as population continues to rise. And no resources are truly renewable." -"Energy and Human Evolution" by David Price
"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive." -Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
"There not need be any more people in the world than one can get to know in a lifetime." - Unknown
"I question whether technological growth can keep us ahead of the consumption wolf pack. Particularly if we're trying to export a consumption-based economy to the whole world. At some point we need to say enough is enough." -Kurt Yeager, president and CEO of the industry-funded Electrical Power Research Institute
"You're not actually mammals. Every mammal on the planet naturally develops equilibrium with their surrounding environment. You humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern, a virus. You're a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure." - The Matrix (Film)
"Relief for hungry children is nothing but a symptom of accelerated ignorance, unaware of how a world forecloses on invading circumstance." - Roy Harper's "Ghost Dance"
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sandysanders Posted 7:23 am
16 Dec 2005
But to get there we need to:
ratify, implement and support all of the features of the Earth Charter...
eliminate political influence or power by non-citizens (this means corporations, businesses or PACs that own our political infrastructure) in our governments, and secure a verifiable and understood to be effective voting system (IRV)...
and establish appropriate taxation of the wealthy so that the lower and middle classes, and our government, have adequate resources to function in a sustainable way, under the circumstance of a satisfying life on Earth ("scarcity" is an illusory myth perpetrated by the Rich Boys Club).
I believe that if these three statements above can be the actively pursued goal of 10% of the population of Earth we can indeed build, what the Universe has as it's intended purpose for all of it's conscious fauna, Ecotopia.
Let's do Ecotopia Now! Let's do Revolution Now!
Peace!
-Sandy Sanders
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Trucha Posted 8:09 am
17 Dec 2005
What exactly are the conerns here? That we may someday have a lot of immigrants in European countries working in low wage jobs?!? While not an ideal situation, is it all that different than the present one? And this seems like a deep-seated social issue, not one caused by depopulation. And clearly, "depopulation isn't really what's happening - it's just population shift. To be honest, after years of colonial pillaging, I have little sympathy for countries like France that now have to deal with integrating people from the countries they robbed from for so many years. It is a serious issue, and one for which I see no easy solutions, but it really has little to do with "depopulation."
And what were the other issues to be concerned about here? That all those folks collecting pension plans will drain monetary resources from "green projects?" Please - a fraction of many countries' bloated military budgets could bridge the gap in a heartbeat. The issue isn't there isn't a result of people collecting pensions as much as it is the western military-industrial complex having warped priorities.
As the Mr. Wendling admits, the world's population is still growing, regardless. And the effects of that far outweigh whatever miniscule and over-dramatized impacts may be felt from declining populations in some limited areas. Frankly, with real issues worthy of serious concern, whether or not the aging population of some small town in northern England can find suitable young people to mate with and do their work for them is pretty low on my list. Yawn....
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Mike Wendling Posted 9:23 pm
18 Dec 2005
At the same time, however, population is tied to very personal choice - i.e. whether or not to have children - a difficult issue that John Kurmann handled brilliantly.
One thing I touched on briefly in my article was the impact on public policy. As a completely unscientific and, um, somewhat flippant survey, I did a bit more research over the weekend, into how many children a select few world leaders have spawned:
-Blair: 4
-Bush: 2
-Angela Merkel: 0
-Junichiro Koizumi: 3
-Jacques Chirac: 2
-Hu Jintao: 2
-Vladimir Putin: 2
-Silvio Berlusconi: 5
-Manmohan Singh: 3
-Kofi Annan: 3
So, like the larger topic - some surprises, few simple conclusions! I'm convinced though that we have to resume seriously thinking about population and how many of us can fit on the planet - despite the problems I outlined, the environmental benefits of a falling population could be tremendous.
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su Posted 2:51 pm
20 Dec 2005
Id love to have a child! somehow having all this machinery and not using it is just the most frustrating idea. Then theres what is called 'instinct',or what i've started to think of as conditioning, society expects that every woman would have the instinct to give birth to a child, and you accept it, and after a bit its so ingrained in you its almost biological.
There is the instinct to care for children, and anyone whose had a brother(s) or sister(s) knows its one of the best things in the world (usually). I do,I think more than one child is a great idea.
Then theres the age old pattern, babies need parents to take care of them, especially ones that love them. Old people, invalids need young people to care for them, especially young people who love them. That is a very important function of a 'family'. old age homes just do not compare.
so its quite clear people need parents, and people need children . . . But its perfectly clear that this genetic instinct for survival is actually responsible for bringing us closer to extinction !
I think the saving grace is that there are plenty of children out there that, unfortunately, do not have any parents. Of course they may not mirror your features, but they will follow your example, they might mimic your expressions , and adopt your walk, or the way you talk, and most importanly your values as much as any biological child would.
I like to think that if some of us have been given the insight to realise that bringing a child into the world is no longer as logical or wonderful as it used to be-for the parent or the child, we must value life-and that would make us more able to accept as our own somthing that has not necessariliy come from within us.
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saxa Posted 10:30 am
21 Dec 2005
Therefore, it would make sense to put far stricter rules around immigration than are currently in place. Not just because it would save the American environment, but the global environment.
Sadly, this thought is often dismissed even by environmentalists as racist for two reasons. First, most immigrants are not white. Second, the most vocal advocates of ending immigration have historically been tied to racist or sectarian groups going back to the 1800s. There is kind of a knee-jerk reaction in mainstream U.S. society to anything that could be deemed "anti-immigrant" because Americans often view the U.S. as an immigrant country.
Added to that, the Mexican government will do anything to increase Mexican migration to the U.S. as remittances are the second largest source of foreign currency after oil exports.
http://www.picayuneitem.com/articles/2005/12/21/news/19wall.txt
It would be nice to see the Sierra Club and other environmentalists take over the immigration issue from xenophobes and militia types so we can have an honest and productive dialoge about the effect of population growth on the environment. I think we can have this conversation in the context of improving the economies of all countries and the livelihoods of their citizens and not in the context of keeping groups of verious national or ethnic or religious backgrounds seperate from one another.
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kateotis Posted 2:08 am
28 Dec 2005
I'm single, and found myself craving parenthood, too. So - I adopted a baby boy from Russia. Ohhh, he's the love of my life. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and the best thing I've ever done, and I can't believe how happy I am. Yes, I too was a career overachiever, but now it's just a job. I can go back with gusto someday if I want to, but for now, I'm singing nursery rhymes and making snowmen. And I can't believe that I'm actually enjoying it!
There are tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of wonderful kids wasting away in orphanages just waiting for a family. When my little 3 year old gives me a hug and says "I wub woo", the genes don't matter.
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tylepard Posted 4:41 am
26 Sep 2007
Also, if you're in the Washington, DC area: Please attend a discussion on this topic at the Wilson Center on October 2, 2007.
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