Tag Archive for: demographics

Overpopulation is an Environmental Red Herring

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It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that 2020 has been an interesting year (in the sense of “May you live in interesting times”). Fires, plagues, floods, Presidential impeachment, global economic meltdown, lockdowns: this year has seen them all. And we’re only in September. Thank goodness there isn’t a major election coming up where some are predicting social breakdown in nearly every conceivable scenario or anything…

It’s not quite dogs and cats living together in peace and harmony, but another sign that the end is nigh is that I find myself nodding along to an article of George Monbiot (greenie extraordinaire) in the Guardian. In it, Monbiot argues that blaming overpopulation for environmental concerns is a cop out, particularly for rich people in first world nations who get to lecture the third world on the need to have fewer children while they enjoy a lifestyle with a carbon footprint bigger than that of small central African nations.

As he states, the current population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people. This means that a rising human population is only producing a tiny fraction of the extra resource use and greenhouse gas emissions due to consumption growth. Instead, we in the West should be turning our attention on our own behaviours (that latest iPhone, the plane trip to Davos to discuss climate change) rather than fretting about more Indian or African babies.

The example Monbiot gives of Dame Jane Goodall is a good one. She told the World Economic Forum in Davos that if only we had the same population as we did 500 years ago (500 million) then the current environmental issues would not be with us. The audience of course consisted of those with ecological footprints many thousand times greater than the global average. But the greater irony is that Goodall has previously appeared in British Airways advertising. If the world’s population was 500 million, and it was entirely composed of the average UK plane passenger, then our environmental impact would probably be greater than the 7.8 billion people alive today. When it comes to the environment, population size does not matter nearly as much as lifestyle.

Indeed, wishing that the world’s population was one-sixteenth its current size is the same as wishing for the moon and just as useless. Tut-tutting about more people being born over there saves us from having to worry about anything we are doing over here. It is environmental virtue-signalling.

Except when it leads to policy outcomes that are far worse than virtue-signalling. Population panic has led to barbaric, coercive population control measures in many countries throughout the world. And this is not an historical problem: UK foreign aid was helping to fund crude, dangerous and coercive sterilisation in India as recently as 2011, it was justified on the grounds that it was helping to “fight climate change”. (At the same time the UK aid was also pouring money into developing coal, gas and oil plants around the world…)

Of course, Monbiot could have been reading Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si in which the Holy Father said that:

“To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.”

And both Monbiot and Pope Francis had perhaps been reading this very blog, since nearly a decade ago I wrote of the thinly-veiled condescending bigotry underlying much of the West’s panic about overpopulation. Perhaps now that the more people are coming around to the view that the world’s population will stop growing in a few decades, we will see less insistence on the kinds of arguments Monbiot is railing against.

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

COLUMN BY

Marcus Roberts

Marcus Roberts was two years out of law school when he decided that practising law was no longer for him. He therefore went back to university and did his LLM while tutoring. He now teaches contract and… .

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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator Net column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Death by Demography: The 2016 Presidential race will decide America’s future

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It is as simple (and as scary as that)!

And, everyone of us must now, immediately, begin or continue to educate ourselves about Islam and what the expanding Muslim population will do to Western Civilization, America and our way of life.

We can already see what it is doing to Europe, what more do we need!  Do we think that somehow we will escape? Do you believe America’s melting pot can withstand the Islamic demographic juggernaut (the hijra!) coming our way?

Update May 31: be sure to see Leo Hohmann’s story at WND about the huge numbers of green cards we are giving out to Muslims from all over the world, here.

Ellison and Cardon

Representatives Keith Ellison and Andre Carson went to the National Press Club last week to speak against ‘Islamophobia’ and said of Trump: Trump in particular appeals to people’s “paternalistic, tribalistic impulse,”…. Sheesh, and of course Ellison isn’t doing the same for his Islamic tribe!

After seeing this enlightening and provocative post at ‘Gates of Vienna’ thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum, I wanted to say something here about how every one of you reading this must begin to thoroughly educate yourselves about what Islam really is!Do you know the ten Arabic words?***And, since I read that post last week, I see that America’s first Muslim Congressmen took to the podium at the National Press Club to exhort their fellow Muslims to get into the Presidential election to defeat Donald Trump and “Islamophobia” here.

It is not about ‘Islamophobia,’ it is all about migration and the fear among Islamists that Trump (and you) will demand a halt to the migration, the hijra.

In Minnesota, where Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison represents the large and growing Somali ‘community’ we see the Minneapolis Star Tribune (also last week) go ballistic over speaking engagements throughout the state by an Egyptian Coptic Christian using the Koran to explain to the public what Islam’s goals for world domination entail. (Hint: It involves migration!)

We have Daniel Greenfield, writing at Frontpage magazine last week telling us that the Muslim migration will not end because Muslim countries are largely dysfunctional and Muslims procreate at higher levels than do westerners. The invasion will not end, for Europe and for us, there are just too many of them!

So how much do you know about Islam? Do you know what the ten words mean?

RELATED ARTICLES:

May: 1,035 Syrian Muslims admitted to U.S., only 2 Christians

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Does Janesville, Wisconsin get refugees?

Some states are pretty secretive about refugee health data—Tennessee is one of them

Bowling Green, KY pastor: ‘we need to have more faith in the process’

What will Senator Rand Paul do about new influx of Muslims to his hometown?

U.S. Census Bureau: Demographic and Economic Profiles of Iowa’s Electorate

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WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In advance of the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, the Census Bureau presents a variety of statistics that give an overall profile of each state’s voting-age population and industries. This is the first in a series of such profiles for all the states holding primaries or caucuses. Statistics include:

cb16-tps09_graphic_voting_iowa

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov

Are “retirement migrants” bad for Florida? The birth dearth and a dying older America

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The census bureau reports that one of three counties in the United States are dying, defined as counties where there are more deaths than births.

The US Census projects nearly 17% of the global population will be 65 and older in 2050, up from 8 percent today. In 2005, Europe became the first major world region where the population 65 and older outnumbered those younger than 15. By 2050, it would be joined by Northern America (which includes Canada and the United States), Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania (which includes Australia and New Zealand).

The US Census Bureau reports that 17.6 percent of Florida’s population was 65 and older in 2011 — which led all states.

Kenneth M. Johnson, Senior Demographer at the University of New Hampshire

According to a Fact Sheet issued by Kenneth M. Johnson, Senior Demographer at the University of New Hampshire, “Natural decrease occurs when more deaths than births occur in an area in a given year. The growing incidence of natural decrease in America has gone largely unnoticed, but new data released on March 14th demonstrate that natural decrease is no longer an isolated phenomenon. Last year, 36 percent of all U.S. counties experienced natural decrease.” [My emphasis]

Johnson found, “Deaths exceeded births in 1,135 counties, the most in U.S. history. As recently as 2009, natural decrease occurred in just 880 counties. So the recent rise reflects sharply higher levels of natural decrease.”

“Natural decrease is also regionally concentrated . . . It also occurred early in Florida counties that were among the first to receive retirement migrants,” reports Johnson.

Johnson notes that in the US, “Natural decrease is more prevalent because births are diminishing. There were only 3,954,000 births last year, compared to a record 4,316,000 in 2006–2007. This represents a decline of 8.3 percent in just five years.”

Some like the AP’s Hope Yen are promoting an increase in immigration to offset this birth dearth. Yen states, “The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law.”

Others point to the 2008 recession as the cause of the decline in births. Johnson states, “The recession was closely associated with this fertility decline. Recent National Center for Health Statistics data show that both the number of births and fertility rates dropped sharply over the last several years. Young women are having fewer babies. Fertility rates have declined sharply for them, but they remained relatively stable for older women. The fertility rate for women 20–34 declined 12 percent in just three years. Hispanic fertility declined the most, especially among younger Hispanic women. Taken together, these data suggest that the impact of the recession has been particularly pronounced on younger women, who are likely delaying fertility.”

One factor coming under increased scrutiny is the rate of abortions in the US and China.

Simon Rabinovitch from The Economist reports, “Chinese doctors have performed more than 330 million abortions since the government implemented a controversial family planning policy 40 years ago, according to official data from the health ministry. China’s one-child policy has been the subject of a heated debate about its economic consequences as the population ages.”

“Forced abortions and sterilizations have also been criticized by human rights campaigners such as Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist who sought refuge at the US embassy in Beijing last year,” Rabinovitch reports.

Rabinovitch notes, “As China’s working-age population begins to decline, economists have warned that the family planning rules will pose an increasing drag on economic growth. China’s dependency ratio – which compares the potential workforce with the number of children and retirees – rose last year for the first time in 40 years.”

Rabinovitch notes, “In the US, where the population is 315 million or about one-quarter the size of China’s, an estimated 50 million abortions have been performed since the landmark Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion in 1973.”

In effect the US has killed 50 million workers. Can any nation long survive economically with the demographic future of more deaths, fewer births and the killing (abortion) of its native population?

Johnson warns, “Demography is not destiny, but one ignores it at their peril.”