This is way too long for a FAQ answer on population and life extension, but it should serve as a longer treatment to which a FAQ answer might point. This is an adaptation of an essay published in Cryonics magazine.
I'm not sure if the table will come out readable.
Max More
The Population Panic
But what about population growth? Don’t we already have too many people on
Earth, and won’t longer lives worsen the problem? While some areas of the
world
undoubtedly have a mismatch between population and resources, there is no
general population problem. Where there is this mismatch, it is usually due to
economic and political factors reducing resource availability rather than
because there are excessive people. While many observers worry about
population
growth, those who perhaps have the best thought out approach to the
issueeconomiststend not to see it as a problem.
Perhaps the most publically recogized of these economists was Julian L. Simon, whom Wired magazine dubbed “The Doomslayer”. Simon’s views received a strong boost when he won a ten-year bet against doomsayer Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb, a book proven utterly wrong by history) when raw materials prices declined. While more vocal than most, Simon’s voice represents those of many other economists on this issue. Since this worry comes up every time I speak on life extension, I will take the space to make six points.
Even the apparent short term upward effect on population due to a lower death
rate may be cancelled by a delay in child-bearing. Many women in developed
countries (those who will be first to have extended life) choose to bear
children by their early ‘30s because their chances go down as they age.
Extending the fertile period of women’s lives would allow them to put off
having children until later, while they concentrate on their careers and
personal development. Couples having children later will better be able to
care
for them, financially and psychologically.
Even if there were a population problem, extending the human life span would
worsen the problem no more than would improving automobile safety or worker
safety, or reducing violent crime. Who would want to keep these deadly threats
high in order to combat population growth? If we want to slow population
growth, we should focus on reducing births, not on raising or maintaining
deaths. If we want to reduce births, we might voluntarily fund programs to
provide contraceptives and family planning to couples in poorer countries.
This
will aid the natural developmental process of choosing to have fewer children.
Couples will be able to have children by choice, not by accident. Women would
also be encouraged to join the modern world by gaining the ability to pursue
vocations other than child-raising.
3: We have seen that we have no reason to hesitate in prolonging life even if
overpopulation really were a concern. But how much should we worry about the
growing population? Is population growth accelerating out of control? Is
expanding population causing major and unavoidable problems? The fad for
popular books foretelling doom started in the 1960s, at the tail-end of the
most rapid increase in population in human history. Growth has been slowing
down, and we have sound reasons to expect this trend to continue. In the
Western world, population has stabilized. In some countries, such as Germany,
the size of the population is actually falling, as more people die than are
born. The population of the USA would be static were it not for an influx of
new mind and muscle through immigration. The poorer countries, well below
us in
the development cycle, have also been experiencing a drastic reduction of
population growth, despite extra decades of life bestowed by medical
intervention and nutrition.
The peak average annual population growth rate was reached in 1970 at 2.07%.
The rate for 1997 is expected to be 1.36%. Developmental trends suggest that
this growth rate will drop below 1% in 2016, and fall to around 0.46% by 2049.
Every year at present, the world population grows by around 80 million people.
By 2050, we will be adding perhaps 40 million per year, a number that we can
expect to continue dropping. This slowing of population growth results from a
falling birth rate. The birth rate in Asia and the Pacific, between 1950 and
1980 fell 28.8%, and in the Americas by 24.7%. Africa, further behind on the
development curve, reduced its birth rate by 2.2% in the same period, all
of it
being in the second half of the period. Overall, for the less developed
countries, birth rates fell 24.9% from 1950 to 1980. Here are the figures in
table form:
Crude Birth Rates 1950-1980 and Crude Birth Rate Declines 1950-65, 1965-80,
and
1950-80: Less Developed Countries
CBR 1950CBR 1965CBR 1980 % decline in CBR 1950-65 65-80 50-80
Africa 46.947.146.1-0.22.4 2.2
Americas 42.240.232.45.819.6 24.7
Asia & Pacific 40.939.430.04.126.2 28.8
Total 41.840.532.63.722.3 24.9
Source: Mark Perlman, “The Role of Population Projections for the Year
2000” in
The Resourceful Earth, eds. Julian L. Simon & Herman Kahn.
Why, though, should we expect people in less developed countries, even given contraceptives, to choose to have smaller families? This expectation is not merely speculation based on recent trends. Sound economic reasoning explains the continuing trend, and makes sense of why Africa is only just beginning to make the transition to fewer births.
Decelerating population growth appears to be an inevitable result of growing
wealth. Early on in a country’s developmental curve economists, in their
charming way, regard children as “producer goods. Parents put their
children to
work on the farm to generate food and revenue. Very little effort is put into
caring for the child: no expensive health plans, special classes, trips to
Disneyland, X-Men action figures, or mounting phone bills. As we become
wealthier, children become “consumer goods”. That is, we look on them more and
more as little people to be enjoyed and pampered and educated, not beasts of
burden to help keep the family alive. We spend thousands of dollars on
children
to keep them healthy, entertain them, and educate them. We come to prefer
fewer
children to a vast mob. Changing tastes resulting from improved education seem
to reinforce this preference. The revenue vs. expense equation for extra
children further shifts toward having fewer offspring as populations become
urbanized. Children cost more to raise in cities and can produce less income
than in the country.
Fertility declines for another reason: As poorer countries become wealthier,
child mortality falls as a result of improved nutrition, sanitation, and
health
care. (Reduced child mortality in modern times can come about even without a
rise in income.) People in poorer countries are not stupid: they adjust their
childbearing plans to reflect changing conditions. When child death rates are
high, research has shown that families have more children to ensure
achieving a
given family size. They have more children to make up for deaths, and often
have additional children in anticipation of later deaths. Families reduce
fertility as they realize that fewer births are needed to reach a desired
family size. Given the incentives to have fewer children as wealth grows and
urbanization proceeds, reduced mortality leads to families choosing to reduce
family size.
Economic policy helps shape childbearing incentives. Many of the same people
who have decried population growth have supported policies guaranteed to boost
childbirths. More than that, they boost childbearing among those least able to
raise and educate children well. If we want to encourage people to have more
children, we will make it cheaper for them to do so. If we want to discourage
fertility, or at least refrain from pushing it up, we will stop subsidizing
it.
Subsidies include free education (free to the parents, not to the taxpayers),
free child health care, and additional welfare payments to women for each
child
they bear. If parents must personally bear the costs of having children,
rather
than everyone else paying, people will tend to have just the number of
children
for whom they can assume financial responsibility.
4: We can expect population growth to continue slowing until it reaches a
stable size. That may be 12 billion, perhaps 15 billion people. Can the Earth
support such a number? We can take little comfort in stable numbers if those
numbers are unsustainable. A detailed answer to this question demands far more
space than I have here. References to excellent writings on the subject can be
found in Bibliography. A few brief points will have to do here. A reading of
economic and social history quickly makes one thing plain: Throughout history
people have worried about overpopulation. Even the great nineteenth century
social scientist W. Stanley Jevons in 1865 claimed that England’s industrial
expansion would soon cease due to the exhaustion of the country’s coal supply.
However, as shortages developed, prices rose. The profit motive stimulated
entrepreneurs to find new sources, to develop better technology for finding
and
extracting coal, and to transport it to where it was needed. The crisis never
happened. Today, the USA has proven reserves sufficient to last hundreds or
thousands of years. If one resource does begin to run low, rising prices will
encourage a switch to alternatives. Certainly, even a vastly bloated
population
cannot hope to exhaust energy supplies. (Solar energy and power from nuclear
fission and soon fusion are practically endless.) So long as we have plentiful
energy we can produce substitute resources and even generate more of existing
resources, including food. Even if population continues to grow well beyond 15
billion, we can expect human intelligence and technology to comfortably handle
the numbers.
5: Neither should we expect pollution to worsen as population grows. Contrary to popular belief, overall pollution in the more developed countries has been decreasing for decades. In the USA, levels of lead have dropped dramatically. Since the 1960s levels of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and organic compounds have fallen despite a growing population. Air quality is major urban areas continues to improve, and the Great Lakes are returning toward earlier levels of purity. This is no accident. As we become wealthier, we have more money to spare for a cleaner environment. When you are hungry for food and shelter and other basics, you will not spare much thought for the environment. So long as mechanisms exist for converting desires for cleaner air and water and space for recreation into the things themselves, we can expect it to happen.
Most effective at spurring the positive changes are marketsprice signals
creating incentives for moves in the right direction. If polluters must pay
for
what they produce because their activity intrudes on the property rights of
others, they will search for ways to make things with less pollution.
Pollution
problems do exist. Most of them can be traced to a failure to enforce private
property rights, so that resources are treated as free goods that need not be
well-managed. Fishing in unowned bodies of water is an example of this. The
desertification of collectively or government owned land in Africa is another.
We can be reasonably confident that the trend towards less pollution with
greater population will continue. Complacency is out of place however. We
should press for responsible management of resources by privatising
collectively owned resources to create incentives for sound management and
renewal.
6: Human intelligence, new technology, and a market economy will allow this planet to support many times the current population of 5.7 billionit can support many more humans than we are likely to see, given trends toward lower birth rates. Many countries, including the USA, have a rather low population density. If the USA’s population were as dense as Japanhardly a crowded place overallour population would be 3.5 billion rather than 270 million. If the USA had a population density equal to that of Singapore, we’d find almost 35 billion people here, or almost seven times the current world population. New technologies, from simple improvements in irrigation and management to current breakthroughs in genetic engineering should continue to improve world food output. Fewer people are starving despite higher populations. This does not mean we should feel satisfied. Millions still go hungry or are vulnerable to disruptions in supply. We need to push to remove trade barriers, abolish price controls on agriculture (which discourage production and investment), and pressure governments engaging in warfare and collectivization to change their ways.
So long as we continue to allow freedom to generate more wealth and better
technology, we can expect pollution to continue abating. More efficient
recycling, less polluting production processes, and better monitoring and
detection of polluters, along with economic incentives making each producer
responsible for their output, will allow us to continue improving our
environment even as population grows. Far-sighted engineers foresee a day, not
far off, when we will be able to completely control matter at the molecular
level, a technology known as nanotechnology. If we achieve this level of
mastery, we will have the keys to production without pollution. Another
product
of molecular manufacturing will be the disappearance of most large-scale,
clumsy machinery. Less and less land will need to be used for manufacturing
equipment, making more room for people to enjoy. Some manufacturing will be
moved into space. The result of these and other changes (some of which are
already underway) will be the freeing of the Earth from unwanted, but
previously necessary, means and by-products of manufacturing.
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
Consulting services on the impact of advanced technologies
President, Extropy Institute:
exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org