Perhaps with more stories like this making the news the media will start forgetting about the overpopulation disaster and will start focussing on things that matter

5 population stories you don’t usually hear…

Marcus Roberts

One of our main arguments over the last few years on this blog has been that the overpopulation disaster story that is peddled in the media and inhabits the collective societal consciousness is a bit out of date. Instead, we have been highlighting the fact that many countries throughout the world are suffering the opposite problem: a sustained drop in births leading to a contracting, ageing population. These countries must either prop up by their working age populations through widespread immigration (leading to serious societal issues relating to cultural integration and conflict) or rethink their social security schemes that essentially rely on a continually growing population base (much like Ponzi schemes).

Aside from this, the other problem we have with the prevailing overpopulation disaster story is that it is often informed by a deeply anti-human outlook. (See Attenborough’s “humanity is a plague” rhetoric.) To those who agree with Attenborough’s depiction of the problem, if not necessarily his choice of words, the answers to overpopulation range from some soft racism (there are too many foreigners breeding overseas in Africa and Asia and they just need some good old fashioned western influences: education to correct their cultural emphasis on the importance of lots of children; condoms; and abortion) to full-on coercive practices such as the horrific one-child policy in China (or Dan Savage’s abortion for all comments – interestingly, no pro-choicers have condemned this deeply anti-choice statement, perhaps Nancy Pelosi’s views are correct – abortion isn’t a choice, it’s a sacrament...)

These are the views that Demography is Destiny is trying to combat. Thankfully, over the last few years we’ve seen that many more stories in the media are starting to dial back on the overpopulation disaster story. Instead, headlines are starting to be made about ageing populations, and the fact that we are reaching peak-population this century. As another example of this, see this piece in the BBC magazine about population by Hans Rosling, Professor of Global Health, Karolinska Institutet. Rosling puts forward five facts about population that most people have no idea about.

1. Fast population growth is coming to an end
2. The "developed" and "developing" worlds have gone...
3. People are much healthier
4. Girls are getting better education
5. The end of extreme poverty is in sight

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