6 Billion Human Beings

A Review by Gregory Wilcox
Greater Boston Chapter of Zero Population Growth

A web site called 6 billion Human Beings came online recently. It's basically an advertisement for the exhibit of the same name at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, sponsored in part by Microsoft France. The information seems to be accurate, and the Java graphics are quite impressive. However, the underlying message is that overpopulation is nothing to worry about. If we just let nature take its course, everything will be okay. For example, in the section Towards a stabilization?, it says:

United Nations projections show that, in the next 50 years, family planning would be widely used all over the world and birth rate would become universally low. Simultaneously, average life expectancy would reach at least 70 years. Population growth would then start to slow down until it stabilized around the end of the next century.

And in the section Questions for the future, the message is that even though we don't know what the future will bring, human ingenuity can win the day. We just need to learn to correctly manage our natural resources and our large cities. AIDS, population aging, and starvation pose no real threats. For example:

A century from now the world population will probably reach 10 to 15 billion people. Will the world be a nice place to live in? Specialists have mixed opinions. Optimists think that the planet can accomodate a much larger population. Others, more pessimistic, predict catastrophies before ever reaching this number.

In particular, starvation is a non-issue:

Q: Will starvation increase?

A: In spite of the population increase, famines have become less frequent in the past two hundred years, thanks to phenomenal agricultural yields, and global economy. In the last few years several African countries have been affected by famine. The causes were all due to political problems --including civil wars-- that disorganize the economy, paralyze transportation, and prevent emergency food drops to reach their destination. Famine is no longer due to a global food shortage.

While true enough in the short term, this is a perfect example of trend-based reasoning. If it worked, everyone who invested in Thinking Machines Corporation would be rich right now. They were a high flyer in the early 90's but went bankrupt in 1994. (Full disclosure: I worked for them from 1986-1988. My stock is now worthless. Oh well... ;-) ) As mutual fund prospectuses always say, "Past performance is no guarantee of future success." If you want to know whether starvation will increase, read the book Who Will Feed China? -- Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet by Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute. China, the world's most populous country, is due to switch from a net grain exporter country to a net grain importer in the next few years. When this happens, there won't be enough rice in the world to supply them.

In summary, I would not recommend this site to anyone who is trying to learn about population issues. Although the facts are sound, the opinions they present are highly speculative, and do not follow logically from the facts.