Population was to the 1970s what climate change is to today. Academia was in a frenzy, governments dragged their feet, and disaster seemed unavoidable anyway. The Al Gore of that period was Paul Ehrlich, a biology professor at Stanford who wrote the mega-bestseller The Population Bomb. After the mass starvations he had imagined for the ’70s and ’80s failed to materialize, critics began comparing Ehrlich to the likes of Thomas Malthus, the early 19th century British economist whose dire warnings similarly fell flat. And, along with Malthus, some linked Ehrlich to dark legacies like forced sterilization and centrally-planned famines.
Now, debates about population have taken off in new directions. They have been reconfigured to fit into two timelier culture-war boxes: climate change and the family. Often with Ehrlich in hand, environmentalists fear that the human population has reached unsustainable levels; if we were all to have an acceptable standard of living, the draw on Earth’s natural resources would be far too great. Unfortunately, since most of the world’s demographic growth is happening in the poorer countries and wealthier countries tend to have very low fertility rates, this often means that affluent activists are in the position of telling destitute others not to reproduce so much. On the other side, social conservatives see those falling first-world populations as a harbinger of demographic doom, often to the extent of sounding like a klaxon call for the rescue of the white, Christian race. More to the point, they believe that the answer lies in the nuclear, stay-at-home-mom family with piles of kids. They construe the social science to insist that this is how people should live or else pay for it with the consequences.
After walking through the ruins of a Mayan city here in Mexico, which many believe fell into decline for demographic reasons, I’ve been thinking about how this contemporary debate is shaping up. For the moment, I’ve found that quite a bit has already been said. Here is some of it. Let’s keep an eye out for stones still unturned.
- “Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies” – An article from The Nation in February of this year. Mainly a mudraking expose of the religious organizations trying to push the family agenda through demographic data, particularly with an eye to Europe. Includes a good catalog of the players and why they are offensive to political correctness, though offers no robust alternatives.
- “The Demographic Winter and the Barren Left” – A response to the Nation article above by Steven Mosher, who was mentioned in it. Criticizes “Missing” for being afraid of the demographic data.
- Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population – Columbia historian Matthew Connelly explores the ill effects of attempts to control the world population; “uncovers the cost inflicted by a humanitarian movement gone terribly awry and urges renewed commitment to the reproductive rights of all people.” An important tool for self-criticism on the left. (NYRB review here.)
- “Faith Equals Fertility” – A short and not really conclusive piece from Intelligent Life, but it raises the interesting question of whether larger families actually cause more religiosity.
- “Under the Spell of Malthus” – A critical review of Jared Diamond’s Collapse, which powerfully argues that population biology is at the root of civilizations’ extinctions.
- Demographic Winter – Saved the best for last. A very slick documentary from earlier this year produced by a Mormon team that is the Inconvenient Truth of the pro-family movement’s demographics wing. Odd, though, to speak of “the decline of the human family” at a time when the world population is growing faster than ever before.