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Some of the most spectacularly wrong predictions in history have been made by those who claim that overpopulation is going to swamp the planet. Thomas Malthus, a British economist writing in the late 1700s, is the most famous of these. Extrapolating past trends into the future, he predicted that population growth would inevitably swamp available food resources, leading to mass starvation. That didn’t happen -- we continued to develop new technologies that let us stay ahead of the reaper. In 1968, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb,” warning that unchecked population growth would lead to mass starvation in the 1970s. He was just as wrong as Malthus. Global population did surge, but food production managed to keep up. So far, the prophets of overpopulation have been defeated by technology. But human ingenuity alone can never deliver a final victory in

Newfie wrote:Adam linked it elsewhere. I didn’t bother to read it. To me just the title discredits the piece.

Newfie wrote:I don’t even read stuff like that. Old joke about guy jumping off Empire State Building comes to mind; he reports all good, no sudden stops yet, as he passes the 13th floor.

A study led by the University of Leeds has found that no country currently meets its citizens’ basic needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use.

The world’s fastest-growing populations are in the Middle East and Africa. Here's why

To put this into perspective, Africa’s population is expected to double to 2 billion by 2050. By 2100 its population could easily have doubled again. If that happens, at least four billion of the world’s 11 billion people will be African.

This unprecedented growth is largely due to the fact that infant mortality rates are down significantly and life expectancy has improved. Birth rates remain high at about five children per woman.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, a combination of a rapidly increasing youth population and an influx of migrant workers has propelled countries such as Kuwait and Oman into the top 10 fastest-growing populations.

That's where you have to tackle the problem. Fight to give women rights to choose how many children they have, give them some financial security and basic healthcare, and few will choose to have more than two kids.

Newfie wrote:The article is bemoaning the low REPLACEMENT growth rate. However the USA is growing due to immigration. Totally ignore that fact.

So both statements are true, replacement growth near zero, immigration growth robust.

Yet another misleading bit of that story.

News in the USA sucks

In the early 2000s, immigration accounted for roughly 40 percent of U.S. population growth, leaving 60 percent from natural increase. During the past few years, however, net international migration is estimated to have accounted for only 30 percent of the annual population growth. The decline in immigration has been linked to job losses in construction, manufacturing, and other occupations that are often filled by recent immigrants, as well as stricter enforcement of immigration laws. Net immigration levels from Mexico are estimated to have reached zero in recent years as an equal number of people entering the United States from Mexico are now returning to their home country.