Population
Finally we have to consider the impact of population. And here A Crude Awakening is excessively diplomatic about the solutions, and perhaps over pessimistic about likely starvation and social collapse.
There is no doubt that the world is presently overpopulated.
Human beings have existed in our modern form for perhaps 70,000 years. For all but the last 200 years the human population has been less than a billion and for most of recorded history has been less than half a billion. We presently number over six and a half billion and it can be fairly said that human beings are in plague proportions.
Natural resources, of which coal and oil are just the tip of the iceberg, are presently being consumed at an unsustainable rate, without any concern for the future.
Demographers now believe that the world population will reach nine and a half billion by 2050 but should then begin to decline. Most western countries have already reached underlying zero population growth and continued population growth is due to ageing and immigration in these areas. The single biggest factor in this has been the empowerment of women through equal education of boys and girls and giving girls control of their own reproduction.
There is every probability that the most populous country on the planet, China, will achieve a comparable standard of living and a ‘developed world’ demographic profile before 2050. But there is less hope for the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa or South America where a large proportion of the population live in poverty. Even developed countries often have a poor and ignorant underclass where population growth is often still out of control.
Poverty
As China’s experience demonstrates the practical solutions to poverty include some compulsion and some that reward desired behaviour. These need to include modified ‘one child’ policies but have to be supported by policies to empower women to take control of their reproduction, including birth control knowledge and means, and abortion on demand. Compulsory secular education, including basic science, needs to be enforced for all children between the ages of 5 and 15 preferably with opportunities provided for higher education, particularly for women.
Undernourished and/or abused younger children need to be placed in crèches during the day where they can be fed and cared for properly while their parents work. Unemployed parents need to be occupied while their children are at school, perhaps being given education in parenting or a trade, combined with work experience designed to increase their self esteem.
By these means we might hope to both, reduce or eliminate poverty and return the human population to a sustainable level of perhaps a few billion people by the end of the 23rd century.
But many of the high population growth countries and communities are in the sway of various cultural traditions and beliefs that are anathema to practical solutions, including female education and birth control. Many of these traditions originally evolved to underwrite ancient hierarchical power structures. They are typically designed to create and support a supreme ruler and wealthy class and their priests and adherents inadvertently or deliberately perpetuate ideas that have evolved to maintain class distinctions and instil a culture of subservience.
