With the improvement of medicine and greater availability of food that has accompanied technological advancement, human death rates have dropped dramatically, but birth rates are often slow to follow, resulting in exponential population growth. People began noticing this trend as early as the 18th century, and became very alarmed by the implications of unchecked human population growth. Thomas Malthus was an enlightenment thinker that predicted that the growth rates of humans would quickly exceed their carrying capacity and only mass disease and famine would recreate a balance of population and resource availability. This alarmism has even lead to policies such a the one child policy in China, eugenic sterilization and genocide, and withholding of social aide in times of crisis.
We will learn more about why this has not happened yet in the next module, but one major reason is due to women’s rights. When women are able to receive an education and make choices about their reproductive health, birth rates decline. As countries are raised out of poverty, the worst effects of population growth are avoided. The general trend is that as a nation becomes industrialized, death rates decline, and as they are raised out of poverty and women get more rights, the birth rates soon follow. In countries like Germany, Japan and the United States, the rate of population growth is actually negative. The connection between environmental issues and women’s rights is known as ecofeminism.
DEEPER EXPLORATION
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- Population anxiety has long plagued humans- even inspiring science fiction. The classic 1973 film, Soylent Green (based on the 1966 novel, Make Room! Make Room!) was the dystopian prediction for the year 2022. Watch the movie if you are intrigued, and think about what ways the prediction was correct. In what ways did it miss the mark, and why? Why do you think population anxiety has been so pervasive for so long?
- Another piece of literature inspired by population anxiety was the ironic satirical essay A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift in 1729, even prior to Malthus. In it, he derides the policies of neglecting the starving populations of Ireland by proposing sarcastically that they could solve two problems at once by eating their children.
Activity:
You can track human population change in real time. Explore the trends in different years and countries. What do you notice?
Reflect:
Think about how Homo sapiens overate their prey. Relate it to the green world hypothesis and carrying capacity.
We learned in the previous module that efforts for sustainability are made especially challenging as the human population increases. Providing for an ever growing population on a planet with finite resources necessarily threatens the welfare and security of humans and natural biodiversity alike. But the alarming predictions of unchecked human population growth have largely been unrealized, for several reasons.
DEEPER EXPLORATION
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Hans Rosling: The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen
Hans Rosling: Don’t Panic
Should I Still Have Kids if I’m Worried About Climate Change? Future Perfect Podcast from Vox
Explore gapminder.org to see other resources, simulations, and scenarios.