Customer Reviews

The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future

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Fred Pearce has written a wonderfully readable and information-packed analysis of the untouchable population issue. It deserves praise for breaking the ice, allowing the ugly truth to surface. Demography is demonstrated as a powerful explanatory force, and a guide to policy making in the making, if we will only pay it attention. I can't say enough good about this book. My only criticism is of the optimistic undercurrent of the book, a property that other reviewers have lauded but which in my opinion sweeps truth at last exposed back under the rug. In several sections I cringed as Pearce time and again boarded the train of politically correct. "Multhusian doomsters" are evil eugenicists, confusing the mathematics of exponential growth with a matter of opinion. The Irish potato famine could not have been "Malthusian" says Pearce, because the blight still would have killed a smaller Ireland. A less than impartial Pearce places the blame on Britain's response to the crisis, and not on the origins and dangers of a potato monoculture. Opposition to immigration is viewed as "nasty stuff", missing the connection between Hardin's "Tragedy of the commons" and a world without effective borders. I would have loved it if Pearce had withheld judgment on the so-called Malthusians, which in my mind are just believers in math. But I admit, a storyline without a "bad guy" is not nearly as compelling.

It is true that there are reasons to be optimistic, but optimism itself, spreading like chain mail, can defuse the pessimism that has led to smaller families.
In all likelihood, the crash will be far worse than Pearce predicts, and we will not be saved by a decrease in fertility alone, because, as he covers very well, we are degrading the ability of the planet to make food. But for all of its understandable hopefulness, the book presents a future that is far less Pollyanna than the mindless projections of the UNFPA. For that, and for being eminently mindful, it deserves high praise and readership.

This is an excellent book for readers interested in the future of the planet and how population will effect our world yet in a way it is deeply flawed. Its strength lies in the color it provides in humanizing and understanding the factors effecting population growth and birth rates and how varied different societies are. If one were to look at world population as a beach Pearce samples different grains of sand from Bombay slums to Israeli Hasidic communities providing a loving understanding of what makes them what they are. The weakness of the book is that after examining the grains of sand he doesn't discuss the beach. The author is so afraid that the reader will, like Malthus, demonize the poor that he devotes less than a page to world population forecasts and the possible consequences. Pearce is also quick to find racism in every movement that concerned itself with population growth from planned parenthood to the Sierra club.

It is interesting and well written so I recommend it but a more balanced approach to the implications of current population trends would have been nice.

I judge books by how dog-eared they are when I finish them and whether I buy copies to press into the hands of colleagues and friends. This book soars in both categories.

I've been active in population politics and recently wrote about the subject in my own book (Whole Earth Discipline). I wish to hell I'd had Pearce's book in hand when I was writing, because he produces no end of important news on the subject, including the deep streak of eugenics wrong theory that has nearly poisoned the subject ever since Malthus. (Applause to HG Wells for seeing through the pious racism back when everyone thought it was obvious truth.)

This is a great book on a crucial subject.

Most of the book is a history of birth control, famine, and migration. For a book that is supposed to be about the future, most of the chapters are about the past. The last few chapters flirt with future predictions but, over all, the book is insubstantial. While the thesis is interesting--that we are headed for a population crash after the present surge--the presentation is superficial. When I bought this, I had hoped for something with more meat on the bones...

Not recommended.

It is common wisdom that the world has too many people and thus faces an uncertain future from resource constraints (Peak Oil, food shortages, etc..) and pollution (global warming, ozone etc). However as Fred Peace shows in this easy to read and refreshingly optimistic book, the answer to our problems may lie in the simple numbers of demography. Pearce starts with a history of population control, beginning with Malthus in the 18th century, which lead to Eugenics thinking of the early 20th century which lead to the Holocaust and then to the sterilization programs in India by the UN and 1-child policies in China - all of which have been disasters and essentially nationalistic and/or racists at the core. Along the way he shows uncomfortable connections with the environmental movement and Malthusian/eugenics thought.

As it turns out, population control has been naturally occurring on its own. In countries all over the world, birth rates are on the decline as woman choose to have 0 to 2 children, which is near or below replacement rates. The reasons are not by design, it just sort of happened, a result of increased affluence and urbanization brought on by the green revolution of the 60s, and increased access to and awareness of birth control. Given a choice, women don't want big families, they'd rather invest resources in a few healthy children and pursue their own life interests. The numbers tell the story and Pearce's book is full of page after page of amazing perspectives that totally changes how one sees the world. In short, most likely we will reach "Peak Population" by 2040, that is, the total number of humans on the planet will peak at around 8 billion and then begin to decline, rapidly. There are already some days on planet earth when more people die than are born.

Pearce has written a fascinating and optimistic book, we really need it in this time of gloomy predictions about the future. Demography very well may be the saving grace of the human race. Or I should say, women may save the day by choosing not to have big families. My only complaint is he doesn't look at the potential downsides of a declining and aging population - on market economies, tax bases, standards of living, etc.. and what conditions in the future could cause a reversal of increased birth rates, such as what happens during baby booms. Nothing is assured, but assuming the macro trends stay in place - globalization, urbanization, woman's liberation - the population problem, and conversely environmental and resource problems, may just have a good chance of resolving themselves with time, and we may look back on this period as an overpopulated transition to a more stable and gentle older age.

I rate this book very highly. An inconvenient truth as the saying goes lies at its core and it is very well written - a great read.
I wrote a piece based on it for the online journal CounterPunch.com
Here it is:

The 7 billion person scare.
Women Against Malthus.
By John V. Walsh

This Halloween (2011)the neo-Malthusians, many dressed up as environmentalists, will have a big scare for us - the birth of the 7 billionth person on "space ship" earth. We will hear again of the demographic disaster sure to befall us with yet another mouth to feed. But a wondrous antidote to such fear mongering is one of the best books of the last year, The Coming Population Crash, by Fred Pearce. The book begins with a sound thrashing of Malthus and satisfyingly exposes the historical and conceptual links between his failed ideas and some unsavory strains of the current environmental movement such as the Carrying Capacity Network and Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, an anti-immigrant group.
At its heart the book conveys a simple fact. The rate of population growth has been decelerating for decades - well before the publication in the 1970s of Paul Ehrlich's alarmist, implicitly racist and dead wrong neo-Malthusian tract, The Population Bomb. It is amazing that many environmentalists are unaware of the crucial fact of slowing population growth, and that some react with hostility to it. Further, somewhere between 2050 and 2100, growth will stop and then come crashing down. It is not the sky that will be falling but the population. From Eastern Europe to Southern Italy to Singapore, that day has already arrived and sooner or later it will come to all parts of the planet. In fact, it may well be that in the next century the problem will be a population that is not large enough to be optimal; but that will be for the 22nd century humans to decide and act on.
And why has this happened? The key is the successful assault on patriarchy by women determined to control their fertility and their lives. Yes, prosperity helps; and population control programs, most notably in China have had some effect, but they are not the essential factors. In rich countries and poor, religious and secular, Isalamic and Christian, the trend is under way and irreversible. Of that there can be no doubt
The reason is simple. In the latter half of the 20th Century the survival rate of infants increased dramatically so that women did not have to continue to have children for a reproductive lifetime to replenish the population. At the same time the sexual revolution and easy contraception came along. Now bearing children takes only 10-15 percent of the adult lifetime of a woman.
As Pearce puts it, "Women have grabbed the chance created by that change. While having children remains important to most women's lives, it is no longer the only thing or even the main thing they do. They cease to wield power only within the home. Now they are out of the front door. Across the rich world and in much of the poorer world too, women outnumber men on university campuses and dominate entry to professions like medicine, media and the law. They run the farms and even the governments, sometimes. The reproductive revolution has created a feminist revolution that has a long way to go. But it has already changed the world.... For thousands of years men ruled the world. Patriarchy was regarded as necessary to produce the next generation. It was deeply engrained and tenaciously defended by men," their social institutions, both church and state, and mores that condemned lesbianism and homosexuality. "The reproductive revolution kicked away this system of patriarchy, because it was no longer necessary to sustain populations. Women have always wanted equal rights. Feminism is not a new idea And some women have always broken free. But for most women the reproductive revolution has taken feminism from the `realm of utopia to practical possibility'."
So while we hear a great deal of alarmist talk about "peak oil" from certain quarters we scarcely ever hear of "peak population." Fertility in the world peaked at between five and six children per woman in the 1950s. It is now down to 2.6 and still dropping. Replacement is about 2.1, and we are almost there.
What about the aging of this population? The other side of contemporary Malthusianism is the claim that an older population means more mouths to feed and fewer younger working hands to feed them. But that is also false. We have gone from a revolution in agriculture, where it takes an ever smaller fraction of the population, and an ever smaller amount of land per capita, to feed us, to an advanced technological revolution where, for example, productivity in manufacturing in the U.S. is growing exponentially with a rate constant of .035 per year and in all areas at an exponential rate of 0.02 per year. Productivity here is output per person hour. So when you hear a voice telling you that we cannot afford Social Security or Medicare benefits for all that is the voice of Malthus, always wrong, quavering from his grave.
In fact Pearce sees a great benefit in an older population. Not only will it be healthier than in the past and capable of making contributions well into the eighth decade of live. But it will be less testosterone driven, with more historical sense and more wisdom and less given to the calls of demagogues. Let us hope so.
In the end the greatest philosophical debate of the modern era may be the one between Marx (and Godwin) versus Malthus. Marx famously labeled Malthus's views as a "slander on humanity" and its capabilities. Malthus's views have been used, explicitly or implicitly, to justify some of the worst atrocities in human history, way beyond that of the great Irish famine. But in addition to being cruel, Malthus has always been wrong. He remains so to this day. If we ignore his false prophecies and those of his heirs, we have a very bright future indeed.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com

At first blush this the title would indicate this is yet another Malthusian tract on mankind's impending doom that may come to be maligned in years to come much like Paul Ehrlich's well intentioned 1968 book The Population Bomb. There are certainly faint echoes of Ehrlich here and there in that there is a certain danger in attempting to predict the future as Ehrlich's experience points out. Yet Pearce points towards a different outcome than Ehrlich, for Ehrlich predicted a population explosion beyond our means to feed them would provoke the impending crisis whereas Pearce posits that the population will decrease once peaking in 2040 at 8 billion due to a number of factors. We like to think we've mastered the environment yet unfolding events should be warning us the opposite is true. Pearce started this theme with When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century and with "The Coming Population Crash" seeks to take it to its logical conclusion. What Pearce lays out certainly isn't at all far-fetched and is hardly as chilling as the title implies, yet it's also so plausible and understandable. Much of it is simple demographics: birth rates in developed countries have been falling for decades and are below the levels needed to replace the population, birth rates are also declining rapidly in developing nations, diseases such as HIV/AIDS are cutting average life expectancies in Africa and elsewhere dramatically, degrading environmental conditions will also cause us to rethink how we live. Most of this is a result of increased emphasis on family planning in the 1960s and 1970s, but also on changing societal values; things that Ehrlich underestimated or missed completely. By and large politicians, governments and non-governmental organizations haven't really acknowledged or attempted to address the larger scale potential problems the decreasing populations may present as it's so far off on their radars from more pressing concerns. And in reality a declining population is actually more of a blessing than a curse in many respects, especially compared to the future Ehrlich predicted. Not to mentions governmental action typically compounds the problems. And there is always a potential problem of trying to predict a future whether it is a year or two, or decades, and Pearce certainly runs that potential risk just as Ehrlich did.

But Pearce isn't gloom and doom as he does see the upsides to this particular problem. And certainly readers will take from the book what they want. Some may think a population decline may not be such a bad thing ecologically; others may be worried about shrinking economies and diminished futures. There are certainly times where a less crowded, less polluted earth sounds like a good idea! Not to mention mankind is a pretty hardy and adaptable species. I'm somehow certain we'll find a way to manage a decline should it come. Definitely interesting and thought provoking.

Which is more than you can say for a lot of "science" books. Pearce actually looks at data from the census and other reliable sources, as opposed to just spouting opinions. He gives a broad yet still thorough view of the history of population growth since the start of the industrial revolution. I think he brings a valid point in that the population growth we are still experiencing today is just a drawn-out (to us, not to the planet or universe) affect of the industrial revolution and the multitude of new technology.

To us the industrial revolution may seem like ancient history, but in the long view it's not surprising that we're still in the aftershocks of the second greatest technological and socialogical movement known to humans; the first of course being farming. We're still adapting to our new world, and it will take some time (ok a lot of time) for things to even out.

But for the first time in a long time, I feel that we will. That we, as a species, will adapt and mold ourselves to the needs of our planet and society. Pearce shows us that even though the whole species experienced an explosion in both population and longevity, we are now using the technology that gave us those things to restrain our use of resources. Even as more people are living and living longer, birth rates are falling to compensate. Now that a family doesn't need six children to ensure that at least one or two survive, families are only producing two children in the first place. It's all going to even out.

Of course that's an average. Let's not all go acting like the Duggars. Crazy people.

Anyway, this is the first time I've thought about population in years and NOT wanted to stab myself in the eye with a pencil.

Pearce travels the world, literally, in search of examples and stimulation to his argument, which is basically for everyone to have a cuppa tea and simmer down about the mess we're in. He is a winning, engaging writer, polite and brave, and yet the book twists back upon itself. Is the reader supposed to be sympathetic to the orthodox lunatics who populate one corner of Israel with women-killing babies? Should we trust Pearce's optimism that cancels the dire warnings because, well, we humans have done so well in the past with apocalyptic dilemmas?
The problem with this fine book is that it seems a giant hedge, so that Pearce, to his credit, is not really sure that population growth is a good thing in a triple crisis world. He scores Mike Davis for his Planet of Slums, somehow seeing Davis as influential with the powers that dominate the slums, a ludicrous notion - Davis is a fearless writer with a readership in the low tens, and no portfolio whatsoever. Pollyanna or not, in league with Bjorn Lomborg or not, Pearce deserves the best that non-fiction writing can offer - debate.

The great silent looming monolith: population. What are its limits? Does anybody really know the earth's carrying capacity? Without that, can anyone really say that we have too many or too few people? Theories abound in parallel with ominous warning signs that humanity may have finally stretched itself too thin. Perhaps we'll only know our limits by reaching them? Other societies have done so. Did they see it coming? Cahokia, outside of modern day St. Louis, collapsed in the 16th century just before European explorers arrived. Easter Island and the Norse in Greenland also seemed to fall rapidly and mysteriously. Though no conclusions predominate, over-extension of population and resource limits figure large in explanatory hypotheses behind these famous collapse scenarios. Is a global collapse next? Can we support almost 7 billion people? Many doomsayers see a coming collapse as inevitable. Others see humanity surviving but in drastically reduced numbers, a result of our arrogant policy of fruitful multiplication. In this nebula of justified, and almost nihilistic, pessimism, at least one commentator has stepped out with unflinching optimism.

Many may misunderstand the title "The Coming Population Crash." This refers to a population that, in the author's opinion, will plummet in numbers in the coming century. Yes, "the Crash" does not refer to a societal or economic global collapse resulting from overpopulation, but a shocking decrease in the number of human beings. Say what? Don't historical population growth charts resemble global C02's alarming hockey stick shape? Both have risen dramatically since the onset of the industrial revolution. Many see an obvious connection. Not only that, don't many forecasts show human population ballooning to almost 9 billion in the very near future? This book argues the opposite. Given current birthrates, as low as 1.1 in some areas, the world could become surprisingly empty very soon. Falling population cascades in the same manner as rising population. Fewer women giving birth in the current generation means even fewer women to produce the succeeding generation, and so on. And this book cites numerous examples of women who have decided to have fewer or no babies. Why? Education. Women everywhere now expect to have lives beyond that of baby-making. Their expanding roles have left less time for offspring. Who can blame them? Only forty or fifty years ago, well within living memory, pregnant women were expected to simply end their careers. A little tummy bulge spelled instant retirement. Today's generations want more and they're pursuing it even if that means sacrificing family. All of this, in the book's view, means an emptier world.

Though some may rejoice at this relative shred of optimism, the road begins with a rather nasty history lesson. No population study can ignore Malthus, the disser of fecundity. Many know his nefarious arguments against helping the poor. Even the detestable Ebeneezer Scrooge was in part inspired by Malthus. But his genuine influence may surprise some. The book connects Malthusian thought with the Irish potato famine, calling it more of a political blunder than a lesson in overpopulation. Such ideas spread into the 20th century eugenics movement, which suggested population control for "lesser peoples." These ideas originated from the political left, though people in that camp today would find such concepts horrifying. Eugenicists even founded environmentalism, though no one could argue convincingly that today's movement supports such dangerous ideas. Still, eugenics runs through 20th century history until finally diminishing with the realization of the Jewish Holocaust. Nonetheless, the threat continued with affluent societies trying to control the populations of poorer countries, often with approval. Indira Gandhi's "emergency" still resonates. Simultaneously, popular books appeared presaging doom for everyone if global population continued to surge. Erlich's "Population Bomb" stands out. Thanks in part to Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution these dire forecasts were never realized. The author seems to harbor suspicion for these tracts and he tenuously connects them to Malthus. They yielded tremendous influence over China's infamous one child policy and other population control programs. In many ways, the book suggests that people reacted irrationally to these predictions and that their influence persists.

So where does this leave us? The book's final sections sometime sound too optimistic (particularly chapter 24), especially following the economic disasters of 2008 and 2009. Here consumption becomes the bugbear. Blame gets pointed directly at our current levels of consumption, not at population. True, consumption remains a serious problem. But of course the two go hand in hand, as detractors will quickly reply. We need to reduce our consumption for sure, but that won't obliterate population and resource limits. The answers here seem too simplistic, though the author makes many salient points. In the end we face an aging world, which some see as impending economic disaster (some argue that economies with predominantly younger people grow fast), but the author sees as the dawning of a "gentler age." Maybe. A big maybe. This argument rests on the premise that, due to disparities in gender mortality, women will "be in charge." This ignores the fact that numbers don't necessarily lead to authority. By the same argument, the poor should be solidly in charge of today's world, since they vastly outnumber the rich. They're clearly not. Still, the author does present a comforting possibility. It could happen. Let's hope it does.

Anyone concerned or interested in population issues should study this book. Its unique perspective can mitigate doomsday feelings about global collapse. Though things look bad, and doubtlessly they are bad, they may not be as bad as they seem. We can only hope that the optimism, often cautious optimism, showcased in this book comes to fruition. As always, we shall see.