Customer Reviews

Demographic Winter

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

DVD: Demographic Winter

The premise of this documentary is that population in the civilized world is in decline. Population is expanding because were getting older (not dying) not because of births. This of course is going to bite us on our rear end. Why? Here are some points the documentary to illustrate this:

1. Japans economy fell as their population aged. The older people retired and didn't spend as much. Consumer spending drives an economy.

2. Europe is having serious population depletion right now. There are countries giving out subsidies to encourage people to breed. It's a huge problem.

3. Russia's population is declining by 700,000 a year and they too are encouraging people to breed.

4. The least populated areas of the world are the ones that are some of the least environmentally friendly.

5. The world economy will be drastically impacted by western population decline. Where China and other countries will be impacted at first they will have the population to recover. We won't.

6. The baby boomers are going to retire soon. Then you will have more people collecting benefits like social security and medicare then supporting it (a reverse pyramid). This will crush our economy... So you can look forward to: 1. Increase of age limits to retire, 2. increase taxes on those still working, 3. a decrease in benefits...

7. One of the biggest problems is the destruction of the family. Our children are being raised in broken homes. I can't begin to do this part of the movie justice. You really have to see it to appreciate it. In the end this is about the world we are leaving our children. Many movements (environmental, exc.) have stated increasing population as one of the evils of the world (and against their movement). This documentary (if looked at honestly) will challenge many of these assumptions and force them to come up with a more honest platform. It's not that some of these issues are not real; it's just that the resources are being misused to blame things that are in truth NOT THE PROBLEM... Without young people new technology won't be made, new ideas won't be as plentifull. These are serious issues one should take a look at. Please watch this documentary. You may not agree with them but it will challenge some of your beliefs.

Lastly, do watch all the way through the ending credits. There's a little something at the end.

I highly recommend this documentary. As the demographers interviewed mention, there is little quibble over the numbers. Current birth rates are below the replacement levels in 70 countries now. There is a great need for awareness of the truth on this issue. Countries like Russia and Latvia are facing extinction, and it is on the forefront of their political minds. However, in the US we are still blissfully unaware of our coming troubles. As Adam Smith said, population growth leads to economic prosperity. Population decline leads to depression.

As a side note, the demographers interviewed are not coming from a faith-based perspective in many cases. Several mentioned that they are members of secular progressive organizations or have a Darwin/Malthus based approach to understanding human behavior. This is why the fact that people are not reproducing is so surprising in light of the evolutionary theory that all life forms are driven to reproduce themselves to the limit of their resources.

The sequel to this documentary, Population Bomb, has also just been released. I hope Amazon carries it as well.

This 58 minute video is about the worldwide decline of the human family. It is a documentary that uses interviews from a variety of economists, demographers, sociologists, psychologists and political figures. They all agree that there are some rather chilling dangers facing society and the world's economies based on the fact that most countries in the world are failing to reproduce at a replacement rate. They account for the result by pointing to decades of abortion, homosexuality, feminism, high rates of divorce, people living together outside of marriage and bad government policy. And, interestingly, they didn't interview Christians for this documentary.

This is an outstanding DVD about the population decline of the world and it's consequences - current and future - stemming from the growing unwillingness of people to have children.
The film is chocked full of graphs, stats, and great quotes, and has a cool extra of being able to view one by one each graph shown in the film.
People have become increasingly selfish and are having less children, by choice, to have more time to indulge themselves in their self-centered pursuits. The media and entertainment industries glamorize the idea of putting off things like getting married and starting a family, which at one time would've been considered part of growing up. But the chickens may be coming home to roost sooner than we thought. As the baby boomers pass into retirement age, a shrinking young work force will not be able to support them, causing people strapped for money to have even less children, and so making the problem worse.
This story is one you'll never hear the media talk about, because unlike the myth of global warming, people returning to nuclear family structures and having more children does nothing to further their religion of humanism. After decades of hearing about the dangerous "population explosion" and "global crowding", finally another liberal myth is killed by facts and truth. They can bury global warming right next to them.

This is an incredible movie that everyone in our country should watch, especially young people getting ready to start a family. This information is not generally presented in the mainstream media, but they are presenting hard numbers - not opinion. This is not a religious film, just facts, and ones we need to know.

Everyone must agree that economics is related to population (demographics) and the ability of society to support its government and social programs.
Professors from University of Virginia, Michigan State, University of Chicago, Texas at Austin, and more should be heard and considered.
When Russia has to pay women $9,000 per baby, and pay 40% of their salary to stay home and take care of the child, plus $120 month - there has to be a problem.
"Demographic Winter" is well worth everyone's time.

Excellent documentary on the truth about population control and how/why the declining population worldwide is a huge problem.
We showed this to a group of high school teens with rave reviews. They only hear the opposite view at most schools.

Excellent information. I was surprised by the number, variety, and qualifications of the experts interviewed. I found the issues facing other nations like Latvia, Japan, and Russia interesting and the connection between the issues and the birth rate fascinating. I think if an institution or educator wanted to give students the opportunity to hear a different side of the debate, this would be a great resource. Another place for information along the same lines is overpopulationisamyth.com and their parent company Population Research Institute.

I showed this to my sister-in-law who studied at NYU to ask what she thought about the quality. She said it was one of the better documentaries she had seen for quality of film and information without pandering to viewer's emotions.

Wow! This will open your eyes. Well done. Who would have believed that our population could decline? I do now. Who would have believed that the "progress" of all our modern policies would lead us to annihilation? Global warming is nothing compared to this.

I just finished watching this DVD and will be watching the sequel tomorrow night. I think I am a fairly astute viewer and I could not detect any glaring errors, so will take at face value the bones of the argument as presented by the demographers who are featured in the film.From what I can discover in 20 minutes of Googleing, the numbers are more or less accurate. There will be less young people in the future in developed countries and there will be more seniors, and this disparity will have effects on the economy and the direction of the species. Japan and Spain and Latvia are showing us what we in North America can expect in the coming few years and it doesn't tend to foster optimism.

Where I take some issue is with the interpretation of the data and the idea that seems to shine through the careful control exercised by the film maker, namely that free thinking urban westerners will ultimately succumb to the masses of religion-loving rural folk who are out-breeding the eggheads.

Things are never that simple. It may be counter-evolutionary that the brightest and most powerful are having few children while poor single-parent families are having large numbers of children, but predicting what that will mean in the long run is highly problematic because there are so many factors in this fluid "wired" world where innovation and change benefit from massive inter-connectivity and synergistic collaboration. Take for example TED or Avaaz or any other web energized social change agency. There is no way to know if robots, algae farms, or the failure of antibiotics will completely alter the destiny of human kind.

But back to the problem with this film. A good documentary should give both sides of an issue, present a panel of experts with a varied of views and the logic behind each argument. No attempt is made in this film to present any alternative interpretations, the viewer is left wondering if, miracle of miracle,just possibly, for the first time in history, an academic department is unanimous in their conclusions, across institutions and countries. "Demographers of the world unite and predict the decline of the human race unless we return to family values and religion." Really?

So at this point, I have to say I am having trouble trusting the conclusions reached by the film makers. I feel disappointed that such films fall so short of journalistic ideals, and sad that I don't have better options out there to watch.

I think this issue of loss of trust and frustration at our inability to get to the real truth of a matter, is much more scary than the decline in birth rates. My only hope is that the second part presents a more balanced perspective. If not, then I will have to consider this a piece of propaganda.