The world’s total fertility rate has been cut in half since 1950, but the population is still rising, according to a study published Thursday in The Lancet. The total fertility rate — or the average number of children a woman would have if she lived through all her reproductive years — declined from 4.7 live births in 1950 to 2.4 in 2017. —Michael Nedelman, CNN, 9 November 2018
The old, discredited narrative was:
Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years. —Paul Ehrlich, April 1970
There has been a remarkable global decline in the number of children women are having, say researchers. Their report found fertility rate falls meant nearly half of countries were now facing a “baby bust” – meaning there are insufficient children to maintain their population size. The researchers said the findings were a “huge surprise”. And there would be profound consequences for societies with “more grandparents than grandchildren”. –James Gallagher, BBC News, 9 November 2018
Population Bombed: Exploding the link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change is an extensively researched, well-written and concise new book published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The book comes out exactly 50 years after Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which the Stanford University biology professor famously claimed that population growth would result in resource depletion and the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. The authors of Population Bombed, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak take stock of past scholarship on “depletionism” and provide a cheerful rejoinder to the doomsayers. Marian L. Tupy, CapX, 7 November 2018
