We Forgot the Begat

 

World Population: 5 scenarios

As a follow up to my post last week about the De-Darwinization of the human race due to the development of contraception (but with a brief nod to music at the base), further confirmation this week of my “End-of-the-World-in-5,400CE” prediction.

My projection of population in that article (and in the AMiTe paper on ‘how we’ll really meet E.T.’) was based on human population peaking at 10bn by 2100, then halving every hundred years. This 10bn is now looking like an over-estimate. A new study for the Club of Rome was published this week https://www.earth4all.life/news/global-population-could-peak-below-9-billion-in-2050s suggests the global population could peak just below 9 billion people in 2050 then start falling. With a ‘Giant Leap’ in investment in economic development, education and health then global population could peak even lower and earlier.

So, how about the halving? The second "more optimistic scenario" – with governments across the world raising taxes on the wealthy to invest in education, social services and improved equality – the report estimates human numbers would hit a high of 8.5 billion as early as 2040 and then fall by about a third to about 6 billion in 2100.

This fall of 29.5% in 60 years is very close to my estimate of halving in 100yrs (in fact, it’s equivalent to 44% fall per 100 years, just exponential mathematics). And why would it stop? People tend to revolt from the idea that very low birth rates might become embedded and get dewy-eyed with visions of Little House on the Prairie, but can’t explain why the trend, already a reality in developed countries, would significantly alter. It’s OK, people/societies will be just as happy/unhappy and probably as obsessed and inward looking as they are now.

The most cogent reason for a here-to-stay trend was hinted this week by Elon Musk and his pals, re Artificial Intelligence, GPT etc in Pause Giant AI Experiments: AnOpen Letter - Future of Life Institute. The key question re human futures (and decisions on family size) was, for me, not all the tosh about A.I. being inimical or running amok. Much more significant was the socio-economic question of “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?“  This will entrench the worries of parents, on top of the global turbulence we are seeing now (and the rest…) about whether their kid(s) will find fulfilling roles; the conventional wisdom will become to be conservative on number of progeny.  But water finds its own level, so society will be just as happy/unhappy as ours, self-similar, in-fact.

It makes you yearn for the good old days, when we were “a little bit naïve” The Begat: Finian’sRainbow. How’s that for a bit of Darwin-related music (‘Ratio of increase so high…”)? We performed that at our folk-music session last week, minus dancing.  

Chuck Cooper & cast in FINIANS RAINBOW 2009 Broadway (Harburg & Lane)

Picture credit: Earth4All report (linked article), FiniansonBroadway.com