All of a sudden, after years of people freaking out about Earth's expanding human population, there are pundits/researchers/organizations suddenly acting very concerned that humans in some geographical areas are not replacing themselves, and somehow they are implying that us regular people should be concerned too.
As someone who grew up reading about the 1 child policy in China, and being told that responsible people didn't have more than 2 children, I feel a little like, "duh - what did they expect would happen?"
I have watched a few videos on the subject, and I admit that as a permie who raises Muscovy ducks (who adore having babies), I'd like to raise some points that often aren't made clear.
1. We really *do* live on a finite planet. At some point, we *have* to stop exponentially increasing the number of humans if we want those humans to have any sort of quality of life.
2. We unfortunately, currently in North America and much of the developed world, and maybe even much of the undeveloped world, have an economic system that thrives on expansion. Thus a very
big point made is that if we don't start making more people, our economy will collapse. Anybody who hasn't read about Gert yet, I suggest you take a detour and realize that if our economy tanks, the best way to survive that is to have a wonderful life like Gert's. (
https://permies.com/t/gert )
3. Personally, my opinion is that the current economy favors the wealthy, and the middle class and poor are effectively scraping up the crumbs. Unfortunately, I don't have a magical better economic model, because most of the approaches seem to involve the wealthy sharing much more of the pie with everyone else and they don't much like any suggestion like that and they're the ones in power.
4. That leads me right back to Gert and wanting to generate many more ways that average people can decide that being Gert is better than chasing the next promotion. But what would some retired lady know about that? I do have a son who has definitely figured out that having a "good job" that's riding distance from where he lives, is a much better approach, than keeping up with the Joneses.
5. However, one point the experts are clear about, and right about, is that the transition will be painful. We used to have an expanding population supporting a shrinking number of senior citizens. Somewhere I recall reading that about 70 years ago, the average time a male lived post retirement was less than 4 years. Health care has expanded that. My in-laws and mother lived to 90. That's a *long* time to be receiving pensions - multiples longer than 4 years. Now we have a decreasing population supporting a growing senior population and quite frankly, the only way I think there's any hope of that working out is to massively change our North American expectations where everyone has their own home, their own car, their own everything. But we have entire generations who grew up doing that. The farm kids I met rarely, used to share beds with their siblings like my mom did. But as a kid from the urban 60's, we all had our own beds. Simple things like that are an example of problems we need to overcome to get through this.
6. Some of those "experts" seem to believe that if human population crashes, it will never recover. I think that's scare mongering. Let me use the example of the tent caterpillar. It goes along gradually increasing in numbers until, boom, it has a huge population explosion. Then along comes this tiny parasitic wasp who lays eggs in those caterpillars and the next spring, there are very few caterpillars. Human population recovered from the Black Plague. Humans who survived it, generally grew up with a better quality of life than those who lived before it. I believe in human resilience, and I believe we can get through this. (Probably not me personally, as this will take time I likely don't have, but I believe I will have grandchildren and that they will survive.)
7. We are the humans currently alive, and any that we create in the next 2 decades, are going to have to live through this experience, and it is going to be tough, and there are going to be winners and losers. To me, what we need people doing is working hard at finding solutions that will help us have a softer landing, rather than people pushing the status quo. I think permaculture is a huge part of that solution. All the things we encourage here on permies, particularly reducing the toxic gick in our lives and on our planet, are things we can do in our everyday life. Some are dead simple - make a clothesline or a clothes rack so you don't need to use a dryer. Some are more complicated - could someone please invent a way to clean up PFAS and similar forever chemicals that may be a big part of the low fertility in many humans that would have children except they can't.
Permaculture - the problem is the solution - let's do it!
