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The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future
Beacon Press | 2010 | ISBN: 0807085839 | 304 pages | PDF | 12 MB


Demography is destiny. It underlies many of the issues that shake the  world, from war and economics to immigration. No wonder, then, that  fears of overpopulation flared regularly over the last century, a  century that saw the world’s population quadruple. Even today, baby  booms are blamed for genocide and terrorism, and overpopulation is  regularly cited as the primary factor driving global warming and other  environmental issues.               Yet,  surprisingly, it appears that the explosion is past its peak. Around  the world, in developing countries as well as in rich ones, today’s  women are having on average 2.6 children, half the number their mothers  had. Within a generation, world fertility will likely follow Europe’s to  below replacement levels—and by 2040, the world’s population will be  declining for the first time since the Black Death, almost seven hundred  years ago. In The Coming Population Crash, veteran environmental writer Fred Pearce  reveals the dynamics behind this dramatic shift. Charting the  demographic path of our species over two hundred years, he begins by  chronicling the troubling history of authoritarian efforts to contain  the twentieth century’s population explosion, as well as the worldwide  trend toward the empowerment of women that led to lower birthrates. And  then, with vivid reporting from around the globe, he dives into the  environmental, social, and economic effects of our surprising  demographic future. Now is probably the last time in history that our world will hold more  young people than elders. Most fear that an aging world population will  put a serious drain on national resources, as a shrinking working  population supports a growing number of retirees. But is this  necessarily so? Might an older world population have an upside? Pearce  also shows us why our demographic future holds increased migration  rates, and reveals the hypocrisy at the heart of anti-immigrant rhetoric  in the developed world: the simple fact is that countries with lower  birthrates need workers and countries with higher birthrates need work.  And he tackles the truism that population density always leads to  environmental degradation, taking us from some of the world’s most  densely packed urban slums to rural Africa to argue that underpopulation  can sometimes be the cause of environmental woes, while cities could  hold the key to sustainable living. Pearce’s provocative book is essential reading for anyone who wants to  know what demographics tell us about our global future, and for all  those who believe in learning from the mistakes of the past.

                                
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