This United Nations report suggests that decreasing fertility rates around the world (The result of modernization, education, and economic evolution) will intersect with global rising population statistics and eventually offset them. It suggests that the world population will stabilize and possibly even begin to decrease at around 10 Billion.
The report is fairly long-winded and I didn't read the whole thing, but I think that there is a fair case to be made for the free market's ability to handle a population crisis. Perhaps, before the time earth's population reaches an unsustainable level, the "third world" will have emerged as a productive and educated new order. Perhaps capitalism, if allowed to work, will keep the potential crisis from becoming a crisis.
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
Imagine a world where 75% of the land currently used for agriculture is reforested due to advanced hydroponics and new forms of industrial farming; skyscrapers growing plants inside them and new processes allowing crops which once would have required a season to mature being accelerated; our cities becoming bigger and greener, and our countrysides sparser; where the food supply is greater and cheaper, and where well-run corporations drive down unemployment, educate their employees, and lower the cost of goods and services. Imagine a world with a population twice that of present day which exerts 50% of the environmental footprint upon our earth. It is possible. That is why now, more than before - not less - we should look to capitalism by investing in new ways to make the world better. Perhaps by the year 2100 we will be colonizing a newly discovered inhabitable planet in outer space. Who knows? Sure, it's far out; but then again, five centuries ago we believed the world was flat
This is very interesting stuff here, smug.
ReplyDeleteI find it more than a little disconcerting, however, that you picked April Fool's day to post it.