As a member of the 8.23 billion-strong human community, you probably have an opinion on the fact that the global population is set to hit a record high of 10 billion within the next few decades. Chances are, you\u2019re not thrilled about it, given that anthropogenic climate change is already battering us and your morning commute is like being in a hot, jiggling\u00a0sardine-tin.<\/p>\n
Yet according to Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, academics at the University of Texas, what we really\u00a0need to be worried about is depopulation. The number of children being born has been declining worldwide for a couple of hundred years. More than half of countries, including India, the most populous nation in the world, now have birthrates below replacement levels. While overall population has been rising due to declining (mainly infant) mortality, we\u2019ll hit a peak soon before falling precipitously. This apex and the rollercoaster drop that follows it is the eponymous \u201cspike\u201d.<\/p>\n
Most people\u2019s lives today are better than they ever were in human history, thanks to the progress, prosperity and brilliant ideas that have come with all those people. The more of us there are, the more human ingenuity there is \u2013 \u201cthe ultimate renewable resource\u201d. Spears and Geruso argue that future people who live alongside only a couple of billion others will have significantly worse lives than we have today. Stabilisation, not depopulation, they argue, is the right path for humanity. For that to happen, we need to be having more babies.<\/p>\n
Climate change is such an urgent issue that the upcoming turn towards depopulation will kick in far too late to make any serious impact<\/p>\n
After the Spike knocks down assumptions like skittles. Population fearmongers from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich are refuted, and evidence laid out to show what worldwide fertility is\u00a0not linked to: changes in wealth, the\u00a0invention of contraception or women\u2019s rights. Nor can government policies that force people to have, or not have, children do much to change long-term trends. This is as true for China\u2019s one-child policy as it is for Ceau\u0219escu\u2019s banning of abortion in Romania, which only had short-term effects. Even when non-coercive governments support parents with childcare and comparatively generous parental leave, as in Sweden, these policies have not shifted the needle. Sweden will start to shrink in 2051.<\/p>\n
The strongest commonsense belief the authors tackle is the idea that lower birthrates are a good thing because the planet is burning and more people means worse climate change. In fact, climate change is such an urgent issue that depopulation will kick in far too late to make any serious impact. Not only that, but the difference between the contribution to climate change made by the current population versus the population at the top of the spike is not significant. Depopulation won\u2019t help the climate, then, but it will mean that there are far fewer of us left to deal with part two of cleaning up humanity\u2019s mess on Earth: removing excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Creating a good life \u2013 whether that\u2019s finding cures for disease or ways to reverse environmental damage \u2013 relies on the ideas, work and progress produced by large, interconnected societies.<\/p>\n
Why, then, are we increasingly choosing to have fewer children? The answer is likely to be a combination of cultural, biological, economic and social factors, but the best unifying theory in After the Spike is to be found in a satirical headline from the Onion<\/a>: \u201cStudy Finds American Women Delaying Motherhood Because the Whole Thing Blows\u201d. As life on Earth has come to offer more and more rich and interesting options for how to spend our time, the opportunity cost of parenting has become increasingly less attractive. There are now more ways to make a meaningful life with fewer or no kids, even if you did want them, as gen Z is well aware.<\/p>\n If we agree that we ought to make life good for our descendants, and that this means supporting a stable, sizeable human population, how can we achieve this? The solution proposed by Spears and Geruso is no less than a total restructuring of society around care, in which parenting is so well supported socially, culturally, economically and medically that it is seen as a joy, not a relentless struggle. Were this to have been my reality a decade ago, I might have had the football team of tumbling, laughing babies I sometimes feel a\u00a0pang for. Whether humanity can achieve anything like it in time to avert depopulation seems doubtful, but if there\u2019s one thing After the Spike leaves us with, it\u2019s the impulse to back\u00a0ourselves.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n