BOOK REPORT: EMPTY PLANET by DARREL BRICKER and JOHN IBBITSON

 

IN EMPTY PLANET, AUTHORS BRICKER AND IBBITSON PROVIDE AN INTERESTING corrective to the general view (one held by me, at least) that the human population on Earth will reach unsustainable levels by the end of this century (or earlier). They cite figures from the United Nations’ Department of Economics and Social Affairs’ Population Division, that provides a range (frFom low to high) of demographic predictions for future population growth. Their low-end population number by century’s end is predicted to be roughly what our current population is—7 billion. There is a “medium” forecast of 11.2 billion by 2100 with numbers stabilizing afterwards, and a high-end estimate of an incredible 17 billion people by the end of the century. The medium prediction is typically what the UN holds as the most likely scenario.

In 1958, UN demographers and statisticians predicted a “medium range” world population of 6.28 billion by the year 2000, which was remarkably close to the actual figure, so the the division's statistical analysis models are considered exceptionally reliable. But, does this mean that we are on track for a global population of 11.2 billion by 2100? According to authors Daniel Bricker, CEO of a major market research firm, and John Ibbitson, writer and columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper, the UN’s prediction, this time, may be a tad high.

 

   Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson

THEY BEGIN THEIR STUDY by discussing the five-stage “DemographicTransition Model” that is used to analyze societies as they develop and industrialize. This model calculates the twinned trends of fertility rates and death rates. The “fertility rate” (or birth rate) is defined as the “number of children a woman is expected to produce, on average, in her lifetime” in a particular society. (20) Death rates, or to put it another way, “life expectancy”, is how long people can expect to live, on average, in a society. The five stages are as follows:

Stage One: Birth rates high; death rates high. This stage “encompassed all of humanity from the dawn of the species until the eighteenth century…” (13)

Stage Two: Birth rates remain high; death rates gradually declining (i.e., people are living longer). In Europe, beginning in the eighteenth century, there were fewer wars, more trade, food products from the Americas, the start of the Industrial Revolution, modernized farming methods, growing cities, improved sanitation, etc. Thus a “rapid and sustained” (14) population growth was seen during the Victorian Age. Of course, many societies remained at the less-developed, Stage One level.

Stage Three: Birth rates begin to fall; death rates continue to fall. In the twentieth century, urbanization is the major factor. Children on farms are investments; in cities they become more expensive for parents. City living increases women’s access to education, healthcare, and greater economic independence. Couples choose to have fewer children.

Stage Four: Birth rates fall to at or near levels to sustain population; death rates continue to fall. These societies are at the “Goldilocks-like stage” (19), meaning they are at a balanced or near-ideal demographic. Population remains stable or slightly growing.

Stage Five: Birth rates continue to fall below "replacement levels"*; death rates continue to fall. The authors review how and why birth (or fertility) rates continue to fall below replacement levels in many developed countries, meaning their populations will shrink going forward. To maintain current population levels or slightly increasing ones, a fertility rate of 2.1 children on average per woman is necessary. However, most industrialized countries today have rates below this level. Canada’s fertility rate in 2019 was 1.47 births per woman.

To cite this trend in one country: In the United States the fertility rate in 1850 averaged 5.4 births per woman. By 1900 it was 3.6; in 1940 it was down to 2.2 and today the rate is below replacement level at 1.7 births. Like most mature, industrialized/urbanized countries, fertility rates no longer sustain their populations. Without immigration, the indigenous population will fall. And falling birthrates have social and economic implications: a shrinking workforce and a shrinking economy, as well as an increased tax burden per worker to maintain social services and infrastructure.

 

As mentioned earlier, Bricker and Ibbitson feel the United Nations Population Division’s medium range projection, the one most often cited as the probable future  figure—roughly 11.2 billion globally by 2100—is high. Instead, they tend to accept the lower variant projection of seven billion or so as more accurate. They cite Jordon Randers, for example, co-author of the ground-breaking 1972 Limits to Growth study, who has subsequently changed his mind on his original findings which were similar to the UN predictions. He says, “’The world population will never reach nine billion people…It will peak at eight billion in 2040, and then decline.’ He attributes the unexpected drop to women in developing countries moving into urban slums. ‘And in an urban slum it does not make sense to have a large family.’” (46) Bricker and Ibbitson do not accept the UN's or Limits to Growth's prediction of an over-populated, resource-depleted, and environmentally stressed future global scene.

One reason for their optimism is due to the fallacy of “recency bias”, which is “a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones.” (Wikipedia). The authors suggest that demographers often are influenced by recent population trends in one country which they use to predict outcomes for other countries. For example, the United States took fifty years to go from a 3.8 births per woman fertility rate (at top end of the Baby Boom baby bump) in 1960 to the below replacement level of 1.8 births per woman by 2020. So, if I understand Bricker and Ibbitson’s argument (statistics being anathema to me and something I generally avoid like the plague), a country like India should take 50 years for a similar drop in fertility rates. But it didn’t. In the same amount of time, India dropped nearly four births per woman! In other words, India went through an accelerated rate of fertility decline. The authors suggest that population growth and decline do not necessarily move in steady waves; they can occur relatively rapidly depending on the circumstances. The main take-away is that fertility rates fluctuate from country to country and are affected by the forces of industrialization, urbanization, female education, improvements in agriculture, etc., with an emphasis on the growth of cities. And it should be noted that by 2100 it is estimated that 85% of the world will live in cities. (For the record, I'm not sure this is at all a good thing.)

As globalization, information technologies, health care developments shift benefits to developing countries, those countries increase the pace of their urbanization and industrialization and hence their fertility rates fall accordingly. And due to our entangled globalized economy, many of the same political and economic forces shape developing countries, just as earlier they had shaped developed ones.

 

    Thomas Robert Malthus

But there’s a catch. As mentioned previously, fertility rates that fall below replacement levels mean a falling population and eventually a faltering economy that needs fresh cohorts of workers to grow. And one way to ensure that is through immigration.

Here, then, is the second reason Bricker and Ibbitson are optimistic: immigration. To mitigate the effects of aging and declining populations, the authors suggest, aggressive immigration policies be adopted to increase population numbers and compensate for the lower fertility rates of the resident population. Immigration acts to bolster a nation’s productivity and create wealth, as well as secure social services and infrastructure for the future. It also “pulls” immigrant groups into higher Demographic Transition levels. For example, a couple immigrating from sub-Saharan Africa (with an average 2019 fertility rating of 4.6 births per woman) to Toronto would tend to adopt, over time, the fertility “habits” or norms of their new home, and thus acting to lower over-all global population numbers. The authors suggest Canada and the United States, with their large, annual immigration numbers, are well-positioned to benefit from people coming from countries with surplus populations.

While countries like Britain, Germany, France and several more take in significant numbers of immigrants annually, other countries shun such practices. Like Japan and China. And Hungary. This puts them at risk for shrinking economies in the future and a decline in living standards. It is no coincidence that China has recently phased out its “One Child” policy. It has one of the lowest fertility rates in the developed world, (at 1.6 births), and must do something about its aging labour force and future worker shortages.

 

TO SUM UP: the authors are telling us that industrialization, urbanization, female education, and immigration are key factors in determining fertility rates and global population. Over the coming century, Bricker and Ibbitson envision a world with a declining population numbers and where people move from regions of high-fertility to ones of low-fertility. They also give a compelling reason—urbanization—as an explanation for falling fertility rates witnessed across many countries today. The fact that so many countries have low-fertility suggests a common factor, like urbanization, though environmental pollution can’t be ruled out.

Their book is readable and it was fascinating to examine fertility issues across the world in so many contexts.

 

I won’t add too much here in my concluding thoughts, but I have several problems with Bricker and Ibbitson’s analysis. For example, I don’t see immigration practices running anywhere near as smooth as the authors envision. Politics, economic competition, military conflict will factor into the equation in a future increasingly resource-depleted and environmentally challenged. Will increased immigration solve our problems or create more? Also, what happens to those populations who don’t emigrate, who stay behind? Presumably their country’s best and brightest will be hoovered-up by the low fertility, developed countries. Will their home nations falter and fail when they leave? Is it simply just "too bad" for the left-behinds?

Another problem: Bricker and Ibbitson suggest that the large cities of the future will be more environmentally friendly than populations distributed across the landscape. Apartment houses, they say, are more energy efficient; people use less transportation energy in cities (walking, public transit); more arable land is available if human habitations are more densely situated. Possibly. There certainly are cases to be made for all these factors.

I wonder, though, about the total environmental ‘footprint’ of tomorrow's metropolises. For one thing, they will import huge amounts of resources and have massive infrastructure maintenance costs, so I’m not sure how ‘planet friendly’ giant cities will be, in the end.

But my major beef with Bricker and Ibbitson’s vision is that it is premised on the continuing business-as-usual economic model, and I don’t think they at all consider how our rampant, energy-intensive, fossil fuel-enabled consumerism might be at the heart of such problems as over-population, pollution, etc. 'Nuff for now.

 

Cheers, Jake

 

 

 

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*Replacement level: "is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman.” (UN Population Divison)

 

 

From William Catton’s seminal 1982 book on ecological principles, Overshoot, here are a few key definitions that might suggest problems with Empty Planet:

“Myth of Limitlessness:   the belief (more implicit than explicit, perhaps) that the world’s resources are sufficient to support any conceivable human population engaged in any conceivable way of life for any conceivable duration; derivatively, the belief that a given resource is inexhaustible or that substitutes can always be found.”

 

“Cornucopian Paradigm:   a view of past and future human progress that disregards the carrying capacity concept, pays no attention to the fitness of the world or to differences between takeover and drawdown, and accepts uncritically the myth of limitlessness.”

 

“Carrying Capacity:   the maximum population of a given species which a particular habitat can support indefinitely (under specified technology and organization, in the case of the human species).”

 

“Overshoot: (v.) population in excess of carrying capacity; population so numerous in proportion to resources that standards of living are lower than they would be if population were less numerous.”

 

“Crash:  the more or less precipitate decline in numbers that follows when a population has exceeded the carrying capacity of its habitat; otherwise called a die-off.” (Catton)

 

 

Malthus: Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) An historian and economist. He is most best-known for his work: “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, published in 1798. “The main tenets of his argument were radically opposed to current thinking at the time. He argued that increases in population would eventually diminish the ability of the world to feed itself and based this conclusion on the thesis that populations expand in such a way as to overtake the development of sufficient land for crops.” (BBC: History)

 

 

 

Daniel Bricker and John Ibbitson. Empty Planet. McClelland & Stewart. Toronto. 2019.

 

Catton, William R. Jr. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. University of Illinois Press. Urbana and Chicago, 1982.