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Darrell Bricker

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline Kindle Edition

by Darrell Bricker (Author), John Ibbitson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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An award-winning journalist and leading international social researcher make the provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape

For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different alarm. Rather than continuing to increase exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline—and in many countries, that decline has already begun.

In Empty Planet, John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker find that a smaller global population will bring with it many benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women.

But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States and Canada are well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism leads us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever.

Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.

Praise for Empty Planet

“An ambitious reimagining of our demographic future.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The authors combine a mastery of social-science research with enough journalistic flair to convince fair-minded readers of a simple fact: Fertility is falling faster than most experts can readily explain, driven by persistent forces.”—The Wall Street Journal

“The beauty of this book is that it links hard-to-grasp global trends to the easy to-understand individual choices being made all over the world today . . . a gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change.”—The New Statesman

“John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker have written a sparkling and enlightening guide to the contemporary world of fertility as small family sizes and plunging rates of child-bearing go global.”–The Globe and Mail

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February 5, 2019
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Editorial Reviews

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“Arresting. . . lucid, trenchant and very readable, the authors' arguments upend consensus ideas about everything from the environment to immigration; the result is a stimulating challenge to conventional wisdom."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Warnings of catastrophic world overpopulation have filled the media since the 1960s, so this expert, well-researched explanation that it's not happening will surprise many readers…delightfully stimulating.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Thanks to the authors’ painstaking fact-finding and cogent analysis, [Empty Planet] offers ample and persuasive arguments for a re-evaluation of conventional wisdom."—Booklist

“The ‘everything you know is wrong’ genre has become tedious, but this book is riveting and vitally important. With eye-opening data and lively writing, Bricker and Ibbitson show that the world is radically changing in a way that few people appreciate.”—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now

“While the global population is swelling today, birth rates have nonetheless already begun dropping around the world. Past population declines have been driven by natural disasters or disease—the Toba supervolcano, Black Death or Spanish Flu—but this coming slump will be of our own making. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Bricker and Ibbitson compellingly argue why by the end of this century the problem won't be overpopulation but a rapidly shrinking global populace, and how we might have to adapt.”—Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, University of Westminster, and author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch

“To get the future right we must challenge our assumptions, and the biggest assumption so many of us make is that populations will keep growing. Bricker and Ibbitson deliver a mind-opening challenge that should be taken seriously by anyone who cares about the long-term future — which, I hope, is all of us.” —Dan Gardner, author of Risk and co-author of Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

“A highly readable, controversial insight into a world rarely thought about—a world of depopulation under ubiquitous urbanization.” –George Magnus, author of The Age of Aging and Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy

“This briskly readable book demands urgent attention."–The Mail on Sunday

“A fascinating study.”–The Sunday Times

“Refreshingly clear and well balanced.”–Literary Review

About the Author

DARRELL BRICKER is chief executive officer of Ipsos Public Affairs, the world's leading social and opinion research firm. JOHN IBBITSON is writer at large for the Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper. Successful authors on their own, their first collaboration was on The Big Shift, a study of change in Canadian politics that became a #1 national bestseller.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It was a girl.

On Sunday, October 30, 2011, just before midnight, Danica May Camacho entered the world in a crowded Manila hospital, bringing the human population of our planet to seven billion. Actually, the scales could have tipped a few hours later, in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, with the arrival of Nargis Kumar. Or it might have been a boy, Pyotr Nikolayeva, born in Kaliningrad, Russia.

Of course, it was none of them. The birth that took us to seven billion people was attended by no cameras and ceremonial speeches because we can never know where or when the event occurred. We can only know that, according to the United Nations’ best estimates, we reached seven billion sometime around October 31 of that year. Different countries designated certain births to symbolize this landmark in history, and Danica, Nargis, and Pyotr were among those chosen.

For many, there was no reason to celebrate. Indian health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad declared that a global population of seven billion was “not a matter of great joy, but a great worry. . . . For us a matter of joy will be when the population stabilizes.” Many share Azad’s gloom. They warn of a global population crisis. Homo sapiens is reproducing unchecked, straining our ability to feed, house, and clothe the 130 million or more new babies that UNICEF estimates arrive each year. As humans crowd the planet, forests disappear, species become extinct, the atmosphere warms.

Unless humankind defuses this population bomb, these prophets proclaim, we face a future of increasing poverty, food shortages, conflict, and environmental degradation. As one modern Malthus put it, “Barring a dramatic decline in population growth, a rapid decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, or a global outbreak of vegetarianism—all of which are trending in the opposite direction at the moment—we’re facing nothing less than the end of plenty for the majority of the earth’s people.”

All of this is completely, utterly wrong.

The great defining event of the twenty-first century—one of the great defining events in human history—will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end. We do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust—a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

If you find this news shocking, that’s not surprising. The United Nations forecasts that our population will grow from seven billion to eleven billion in this century before leveling off after 2100. But an increasing number of demographers around the world believe the UN estimates are far too high. More likely, they say, the planet’s population will peak at around nine billion sometime between 2040 and 2060, and then start to decline, perhaps prompting the UN to designate a symbolic death to mark the occasion. By the end of this century, we could be back to where we are right now, and steadily growing fewer.

Populations are already declining in about two dozen states around the world; by 2050 the number will have climbed to three dozen. Some of the richest places on earth are shedding people every year: Japan, Korea, Spain, Italy, much of Eastern Europe. “We are a dying country,” Italy’s health minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, lamented in 2015.

But this isn’t the big news. The big news is that the largest developing nations are also about to grow smaller, as their own fertility rates come down. China will begin losing people in a few years. By the middle of this century, Brazil and Indonesia will follow suit. Even India, soon to become the most populous nation on earth, will see its numbers stabilize in about a generation and then start to decline. Fertility rates remain sky-high in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East. Even here, though, things are changing as young women obtain access to education and birth control. Africa is likely to end its unchecked baby boom much sooner than the UN’s demographers think.

Some of the indications of an accelerating decline in fertility can be found in scholarly research and government reports; others can only be found by talking to people on the street. And so we did. To gather research for this book, we traveled to cities on six continents: to Brussels and Seoul, Nairobi and São Paulo, Mumbai and Beijing, Palm Springs and Canberra and Vienna. There were other stops as well. We talked to academics and public officials, but more important, we talked to young people: on university campuses and at research institutes and in favelas and slums. We wanted to know what they were thinking about the most important decision they will ever make: whether and when to have a baby.

Population decline isn’t a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a big thing. A child born today will reach middle age in a world in which conditions and expectations are very different from our own. She will find the planet more urban, with less crime, environmentally healthier but with many more old people. She won’t have trouble finding a job, but she may struggle to make ends meet, as taxes to pay for healthcare and pensions for all those seniors eat into her salary. There won’t be as many schools, because there won’t be as many children.

But we won’t have to wait thirty or forty years to feel the impact of population decline. We’re feeling it today, in developed nations from Japan to Bulgaria that struggle to grow their economies even as the cohort of young workers and consumers diminishes, making it harder to provide social services or sell refrigerators. We see it in urbanizing Latin America and even Africa, where women are increasingly taking charge of their own destinies. We see it in every household where the children take longer to move out because they’re in no rush to settle down and haven’t the slightest intention of having a baby before they’re thirty. And we’re seeing it, tragically, in roiling Mediterranean seas, where refugees from wretched places press against the borders of a Europe that is already starting to empty out.

We may see it, very soon, influencing the global contest for power. Population decline will shape the nature of war and peace in the decades ahead, as some nations grapple with the fallout of their shrinking, aging societies while others remain able to sustain themselves. The defining geopolitical challenge in the coming decades could involve accommodating and containing an angry, frightened China as it confronts the consequences of its disastrous one-child policy.

Some of those who fear the fallout of a diminishing population advocate government policies to increase the number of children couples have. But the evidence suggests this is futile. The “low-fertility trap” ensures that, once having one of two children becomes the norm, it stays the norm. Couples no longer see having children as a duty they must perform to satisfy their obligation to their families or their god. Rather, they choose to raise a child as an act of personal fulfillment. And they are quickly fulfilled.

One solution to the challenge of a declining population is to import replacements. That’s why two Canadians wrote this book. For decades now, Canada has brought in more people, on a per capita basis, than any other major developed nation, with little of the ethnic tensions, ghettos, and fierce debate that other countries face. That’s because the country views immigration as an economic policy—under the merit-based points system, immigrants to Canada are typically better educated, on average, than the native-born—and because it embraces multiculturalism: the shared right to celebrate your native culture within the Canadian mosaic, which has produced a peaceful, prosperous, polyglot society, among the most fortunate on earth.

Not every country is able to accept waves of newcomers with Canada’s aplomb. Many Koreans, Swedes, and Chileans have a very strong sense of what it means to be Korean, Swedish, or Chilean. France insists its immigrants embrace the idea of being French, even as many of the old stock deny such a thing is possible, leaving immigrant communities isolated in their banlieues, separate and not equal. The population of the United Kingdom is projected to continue growing, to about 82 million at the end of the century, from 66 million today, but only if the British continue to welcome robust levels of immigration. As the Brexit referendum revealed, many Brits want to turn the English Channel into a moat. To combat depopulation, nations must embrace both immigration and multiculturalism. The first is hard. The second, for some, may prove impossible.

Among great powers, the coming population decline uniquely advantages the United States. For centuries, America has welcomed new arrivals, first from across the Atlantic, then the Pacific as well, and today from across the Rio Grande. Millions have happily plunged into the melting pot—America’s version of multiculturalism—enriching both its economy and culture. Immigration made the twentieth century the American century, and continued immigration will define the twenty-first as American as well.

Unless. The suspicious, nativist, America First groundswell of recent years threatens to choke off the immigration tap that made America great by walling up the border between the United States and everywhere else. Under President Donald Trump, the federal government not only cracked down on illegal immigrants, it reduced legal admissions for skilled workers, a suicidal policy for the U.S. economy. If this change is permanent, if Americans out of senseless fear reject their immigrant tradition, turning their backs on the world, then the United States too will decline, in numbers and power and influence and wealth. This is the choice that every American must make: to support an open, inclusive, welcoming society, or to shut the door and wither in isolation.

The human herd has been culled in the past by famine or plague. This time, we are culling ourselves; we are choosing to become fewer. Will our choice be permanent? The answer is: probably yes. Though governments have sometimes been able to increase the number of children couples are willing to have through generous child care payments and other supports, they have never managed to bring fertility back up to the replacement level of, on average, 2.1 children per woman needed to sustain a population. Besides, such programs are extremely expensive and tend to be cut back during economic downturns. And it is arguably unethical for a government to try to convince a couple to have a child that they would otherwise not have had.

As we settle into a world growing smaller, will we celebrate or mourn our diminishing numbers? Will we struggle to preserve growth, or accept with grace a world in which people both thrive and strive less? We don’t know. But it may be a poet who observes that, for the first time in the history of our race, humanity feels old.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07CWHYVW5
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown (February 5, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 5, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2946 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 252 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #143,201 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in Demography
- #21 in Demography Studies
- #72 in Cultural Anthropology (Kindle Store)

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4.2 663 ratings

About the author

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Darrell Bricker

Darrell Bricker

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Dr. Darrell Bricker is CEO, Ipsos Public Affairs. Ipsos’ Public Affairs has offices in 38 countries and a staff of 800 research professionals. It is the world's leading social and public opinion research firm.

Ipsos Public Affairs is part of Paris-based Ipsos which is the 3rd largest market research company in the world.

Prior to joining Ipsos in 1990, Dr. Bricker was Director of Research in the office of Canada's Prime Minister. He was also a research consultant with firms in Ottawa and Toronto.

Dr. Bricker holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Carleton University (where he was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow), and a BA and MA from Wilfrid Laurier University. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree by Wilfrid Laurier University, which named him one of their top 100 graduates in the last 100 years.

Darrell is a prolific author. He's written five national bestselling books, Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset (with Ed Greenspon - Doubleday, 2002), What Canadians Think About Almost Everything (with John Wright – Doubleday, 2005), We Know What You’re Thinking (with John Wright - Harper Collins, 2009), Canuckology (with John Wright - Harper Collins, 2011), and The Big Shift (with John Ibbitson - Harper Collins, 2013). In February 2019, Dr. Bricker will publish his sixth book, Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (with John Ibbitson).

For Empty Planet, Bricker and Ibbitson travelled to six continents, talking with specialists and a wide assortment of women and men--from university students in Seoul to slum-dwellers in Delhi--as they explored the conviction held by a growing body of demographers that global population decline, rather than rapid growth, will define this century. The book is published by The Crown Publishing Group in the United States; Little, Brown in Great Britain and McClelland & Stewart in Canada. The work is also available around the world in English through Little, Brown, and is being published in Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

Darrell is also a popular public speaker who regularly engages with audiences around the world. He is interviewed frequently in the media, appearing on CNN, the BBC, Bloomberg, and Al Jazeera, as well as on all of Canada's major television and radio networks. He's written articles for publications as diverse as Canada's Globe and Mail and France's Le Monde.

You can follow Darrell on Twitter at @darrellbricker

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Customers find the book interesting, eye-opening, and engaging. They also praise the writing quality as well-written, in a style everyone can understand. Opinions are mixed on the pacing and bias, with some finding it solid and well-supported throughout, while others say it's poorly informed and misguided.

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30 customers mention "Interest"27 positive3 negative

Customers find the book interesting, eye-opening, and engaging. They say it provides realistic analysis and speculation. Readers also mention the book weaves interesting anecdotes with data about an important trend.

"...two people collaborating to write it, and it is an encouraging, engaging page turner that also provides realistic cautions for the path ahead. '..." Read more

"...Again: Overall, the book is still very interesting and worth a read, but keep your mind open and, even though some of it is extremely interesting..." Read more

"Empty Planet is a worthwhile read, though it does have its blind spots...." Read more

"Some shocking predictions are made in this book. A great read and the authors present very plausible explanations why their population predictions..." Read more

15 customers mention "Writing quality"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book well-researched and logical. They say the arguments are well-laid out and the authors present plausible explanations. Readers also mention the book is fundamentally good but biased.

"...This should not dissuade the reader because the book is well-written, well-argued, and well-substantiated...." Read more

"...A great read and the authors present very plausible explanations why their population predictions make more sense than the official UN numbers...." Read more

"This book is well-written, not overly technical, and presents a positive view of a future with lower populations...." Read more

"...of growth rates is for now still very tentative, but the argument is well laid out and logical...." Read more

9 customers mention "Pacing"4 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's well-written, well-argued, and well-substantiated. However, others say the analysis is contradictory and the research is unnecessary. They also say the authors leave out many relevant facts and the conclusion is a muddle.

"...attitude is deeply neoliberal, and some of its analysis ultimately comes across as contradictory...." Read more

"...should not dissuade the reader because the book is well-written, well-argued, and well-substantiated...." Read more

"...Nothing could be further from the truth. Research unneeded. He was the son of an immigrant and married two separate immigrants...." Read more

"...That's in a nutshell the thesis of the book, which is very well supported throughout the book...." Read more

6 customers mention "Bias"2 positive4 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's bias. Some mention it's a novel on global demography, while others say it has a liberal bias on all issues.

"...Its attitude is deeply neoliberal, and some of its analysis ultimately comes across as contradictory...." Read more

"A great new perspective on population growth. It goes against all Malthusian views so prevalent in the news today...." Read more

"...In addition, there is a clear left-ward bias in this treatise...." Read more

"Good stats, but arguments are undermined by authors' liberal bias on all issues, particularly immigration...." Read more

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Where Have All The Children Gone?

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2019

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What if, instead of a suffocatingly overcrowded world, the future of humanity is actually defined by a steep loss of population? Not a genocide, epidemic, nuclear war, or meteor strike that reduces our numbers, but rather a shift in economics and quality of life that causes us to have fewer or no children. That is what Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson propose is already taking place in many nations around the world, including the likes of Hungary and Japan, and which they believe will become common in developed and even developing nations in the years ahead.

The authors did their homework, not only digging through census data, demographic studies, and historical records, but also going to places like Korea, India, and Brazil to speak with people — women, in particular — about their experiences and motivations with marriage and family planning decisions. They manage to weave a cohesive story around these vignettes tied in with the results of their research, one that is so engaging I could barely bring myself to put the book down until I finished.

You might think that population reduction is a great thing, and to a certain extent it can be, but Bricker and Ibbitson explain that there is a definite down side to not at least maintaining a population. With fewer producers and consumers, the economy is weakened, and without sufficient young people paying taxes, old-age benefits become unsustainable. Some nations that are already shrinking through attrition, like Hungary and Japan, also tend to be unwelcoming or even hostile to immigrants, making their situation all the more precarious. The United States and Canada are cited as examples of immigrant societies that can remain healthy long term, so long as they don't deviate from their historic acceptance of newcomers. As we know, nativist sentiment is strong in certain sectors of the US right now, despite historic lows in migration. In fact, people have been moving from the US back to their home countries in large numbers since 2008.

"Remigration will be an increasing phenomenon in the years ahead, as immigrants are tempted to return whence they came, back to their family and their people and proper food. Developed countries in need of migrants to sustain their populations should be doing everything in their power to keep them. Instead, they have become increasingly hostile to newcomers, which is a highly self-defeating attitude." (pg 149)

A moment of introspection came to me when the authors pointed out the flaw in how people on the left generally respond to such attitudes.

"But the blame for this sorry state lies not only with the populist, nativist nationalists on the right. Defenders of immigration on the left contribute too, by characterizing immigration as a test of personal compassion and tolerance. To oppose immigration, for them, is to be selfish at best and racist at worst. People do not respond well to such insults. They tend to lash out at their accusers, damning them as out-of-touch elites, and then voting for the politician they think will have their back. What sensible politicians of both the left and the right need to explain is that accepting immigrants isn't a question of compassion and tolerance. It's good for business. It grows the economy. It increases the tax base. People are much more easily moved to act in their own selfish interests than to sacrifice for the sake of others." (pg 152)

While I'm certain that racism is behind a great deal of the anti-immigrant rhetoric of our time, calling it out as such in every case is counterproductive. It is reasonable to want immigrants, because the economy isn't a static pie that people take slices from, but rather value in the form of products and services that human action generates through creativity and labor. This goes to the roots of how I have long understood economics, and I think I'd be doing myself a favor to get back into that mindset, while also making the moral case for immigration and welcoming refugees.

Honestly, yes there will be some who will hate that this book utilizes data that appear to minimize the struggles of refugees and others. That would be missing the point. Of course there are very real problems that must be addressed, something that the authors are emphatic about. Just because some things are better now doesn't mean the status quo is acceptable.

This book is surprisingly fluid for having two people collaborating to write it, and it is an encouraging, engaging page turner that also provides realistic cautions for the path ahead. 'Empty Planet' is definitely worth a careful, considered read.

39 people found this helpful

Some good stuff but don't just accept it all

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2019

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The authors contend that underpopulation, not overpopulation, is where we are headed, and sooner, rather than later. They believe the UN predictions are based on outdated assumptions and proceed to show why. They do a pretty good job at this, despite some largely unrelated factual errors.

Sadly, they then spend a goodly percentage of nearly every chapter explaining why every developed country should be scrambling for immigrants to boost their demographics and avoid economic stagnation.

All at once I have three objections right off the bat. The first being that I believe our planet would be a lot better off if human population could be reduced to about a billion. That would be a billion people that could be supported at US middle-class or better standards, and they could be considerably more educated and productive than even our current seven to eight billion people. The authors talk about people being selfish by refusing to have more kids; I say it is selfish to have more kids just to shore up the economy.

The second being that they ignore the incoming automation transformation. The one where people who want to work will be in very low demand due to most occupations being significantly reduced, or even eliminated outright, and with new occupations that emerge thereafter requiring relatively few humans compared to the losses in other occupations. How many self-driving software programmers and hardware engineers will ever find employment, compared to the losses of six million taxi driver, chauffeur, bus driver, and trucker jobs in the US alone?

Third, there is the other problem with enormous immigration. My ancestors came from a smallish Northern European country. I've visited there, and I like it there. The locals seem pretty happy with it, too. If I went back and found it predominantly occupied by people of another culture, I would be less than happy. I expect the current locals would be less than happy, too. They would surely prefer to see it a bit less densely populated rather than become a minority in their ancestral homeland. Then too, there is the question of tolerance. Almost any other culture replacing their own would be less tolerant than they currently are. To be tolerant of a less tolerant culture supplanting their own would require them to be tolerant of intolerance, a logical absurdity in theory, and cultural suicide in practice. If you value and embrace tolerance, then you cannot be tolerant of intolerance

I don't believe in practicing discrimination on the basis of skin color, race, ethnicity, gender, and so on. I do believe that everyone on this planet discriminates on the basis of culture and they are not wrong to do so. Are you going to tell me that a culture that embraces female circumcision is better than your own? How about cannibalism? How about not permitting female suffrage? If you are from a culture that is fine with these things then you can't. A culture than embraces toleration is a very good thing, unfortunately, the one thing it cannot tolerate is intolerance.

A country is just lines on a map (and an empire, a far more fragile beast, is just a collection of countries). A nation is a country that shares the same culture. Culture is not defined by preserving native dances or handicrafts, or even by geographic origin. Culture is defined by shared cultural values. The US cultural values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are open-ended enough to give it tremendous strength and resilience as a nation (despite often being incompletely embraced). But an immigrant that can't get behind these values is not an immigrant that strengthens the nation. Instead, that is an immigrant that will help bring the nation closer to being a country, and that's a step in the wrong direction; countries are inherently less stable.

The author's viewpoint on this makes a lot more sense when you realize they are Canadian. Canada is a country that nearly fragmented due to conflicting cultures within it. Remember that whole Quebec thing? Even today there are many people in French-speaking Canada, who have a fine command of the English language, but who will not speak a word of it to another Canadian (although the ones I've encountered will do so quite freely once they realize I am not a Canadian).

Overall, the book is still very interesting and worth a read. While I had already worked out the now unavoidable catastrophe that is Russia, I only had some inkling of China's. I had not realized just how bad it was going to be. I had not realized that Brazil is already plunging. Nor had I realized that North American adoption of foreign born children had gone from very large to almost none at all, as other countries, realizing just how serious their population situation is going to be, have found excuses to cut off the flow (without admitting why, presumably so they won't panic the masses).

None of it need be an actual existential problem as, within a century or less, it is entirely possible people or even governments, will find solutions. Even if some are as seemingly esoteric as creating their children online, and then later having them embodied (in forms either organic, inorganic, or some combination) or not, depending on whether they even need to exist in the purely physical world. Failing that, we might still see the crèche babies created by the State in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, as a means of preserving that State. Hopefully, they wouldn't be quite so brainwashed.

Again: Overall, the book is still very interesting and worth a read, but keep your mind open and, even though some of it is extremely interesting and well done, don't blindly accept all of it .

25 people found this helpful

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Suzan

Riveting Read

Reviewed in Canada on September 26, 2023

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I read this in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. It cited many studies and publications to support the ideas presented.
I can't stop thinking about it. I recommended it to my book club and we discuss it at our next meeting.

Simon Rotelli

Lettura molto interessante!

Reviewed in Italy on December 19, 2021

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In effetti questa tesi apparenentemente controcorrente mi sembra molto più verosimile rispetto a quella ufficiale.

Il libro non si accanisce contro la tesi ufficiale dell'esplosione demografica, ma attraverso ragionamenti e dati delle aree a maggior crescita attesa, riesce a far prevalere il pensiero di un repentino rallentamento, seguito da un rapido calo demografico.

Il tempo dirà chi ha ragione, certo a valutazioni diametralmente opposte si dovrebbero accompagnare politiche contrarie rispetto a quelle attuate in questo momento, quindi non un errore da poco da parte delle istituzioni internazionali.

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William Jordan

thought provoking book on demographic trends

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2021

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This book was a great read. The authors have discussed with young women around the world their lives and the part that having children will play in them. They paint memorable pictures of a great diversity of societies. In all birth rates are declining. In some population numbers are already in decline. Causes include urbanisation, education of women and affluence. 'Answers' for individual countries may include immigration - but needs to be accompanied by Canada style multiculturalism. The final chapter suggests that living in towns is also the single best answer to global warming (alongside the declines in fertility discussed in the book)....Strongly recommended...

Arsalan

Must read

Reviewed in India on February 19, 2021

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A nice read for all those who love Non fiction. The world is a global village . This books tells me about how immigration helped to sustain great nations .

Edison Bittencourt

Ma interpretação de autor de "Empty Planet..

Reviewed in Brazil on October 18, 2019

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Um dos autores em uma matéria do YouTube (empty planet...) visitou São Paulo (a cidade) e fez observações sobre natalidade mencionando a condição de "muito pobre" com relação ao que analisava na cidade, generalizando em termos de Brasil. Acontece que São Paulo é a cidade que é a décima mais rica do planeta. Foi à cidade errada.

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