Whoops — make that 10.1 billion people on Mother Earth in the year 2100. The population isn’t going to level off at 9 billion after all.
That’s the latest estimate from the United Nations population division, which has a pretty good track record. Most of those additional people, the U.N. says, will be in Africa, where the growth rate is so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s 1 billion to 3.6 billion.
Africa, the report points out, has trouble today providing food and water for its current population. Continued growth will require profound changes there. Today, Africa remains at the primitive level in its agriculture. With modern equipment, better seed, better fertilizer, insect and disease control, etc., etc., etc., African food production would soar. Feeding 3 billion there would be possible.
With China as an example, however, a powerful argument can be made to Africans that they should focus on family planning and adopt population control as a national goal. More than food and water are at stake. Two billion more people on that continent would require more schools, more hospitals, more universities — more of all of the infrastructure that civilization requires.
In addition to the nuts and bolts — the material things that people use and consume — Africa needs nurturing political, social and economic institutions that will provide the structure its people need to develop as individuals and as societies. Adding hundreds of millions of people to a continent that remains torn by racial and tribal conflicts and so often misgoverned by tyrants, offers a frightening prospect.
Africa stands out in the U.N. forecast because the projected increase there is so dramatic, but it is by no means the only source of concern. India already has a billion souls on a much smaller area and has shied away from an all-out effort to stop the increase. While China’s one-child policy is working, it was put into place late and the population will continue to grow beyond the 1.3 billion mark. It is expected to peak at 1.4 billion and then gradually decline.
The United States continues to add numbers, primarily because of immigration and the higher fertility among Hispanic immigrants. Our population is pegged to rise from today’s 311 million to 478 million by 2100.
WHILE 2100 SEEMS the distant future, it is merely one long lifetime away — near enough to make planning for all of those additional mouths an urgent matter. First on the to-do list should be worldwide family planning, starting with the education of girls as they reach puberty. Experience shows that women who understand that family size is a matter of choice choose to limit the number of children they have.
Access to effective and safe contraception must accompany access to information.
The assistance that rich nations give to developing nations should start with family planning units. Perhaps other aid should be contingent on the implementation of those programs in those countries where women have been denied the information and the medical supplies they need to make their own family-size choices.
Americans don’t come face to face with the population challenge often. Our nation is still relatively empty. Much of rural America has seen its population drop over the past half century. Allen County, for example, hit a high of about 25,000 before the Great Depression and is now about 13,200. The threat of over-population requires imagination for us.
The remedy is a trip to Mexico City or the most casual page-turning of the National Geographic magazine.
Nothing is more precious than a new bambino. But there can be too much of a good thing.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
