over-population or over-hype?

A United Nations report predicting a projected population of 15 billion, far higher than previous estimates, by the year 2100 has alarmed some who describe the possible as unsustainable.

Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh, has long been worried about population growth. “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause unless we limit population,” he says. “People don’t like talking about population control, but we have to.” He argues that the number of humans is “out of balance” with the natural world, and that almost every country is over-populated.

Challenging that view is Fred Pearce, author of the book, "Peoplequake", points out that half of the world’s women are now having two or less children. "... if you are under 45, you will almost certainly live to see a world population that is declining – for the first time since the Black Death almost 700 years ago.” Pearce argues that the education of women coupled with rising standards of living and reduced infant mortality is driving down the birth rate, meaning that “peak population” may not be far away. “Women have always wanted freedom, not domestic drudgery and the childbirth treadmill,” he says. “And, now that most of their babies survive to adulthood, they are having it.”

Others agree. Vanessa Baird’s in her recently published "No-Nonsense Guide to World Population" and Matthew Connelly in Fatal Misconception. Danny Dorling argues in his book "Fair Play" the world’s population reaches 9.3 billion peak in 2060, but by 2100 drops to 7.4 billion – and if the pattern holds, will continue to fall. If women who are currently each projected to have 2.5 children just have 2, and those groups projected to have 1.5 children just have one, the drop will be even greater – to 6.2 billion in 2100. In a century there may well be fewer people in the world than there are today.

However, as SOYMB as pointed out previously, scientists tend to extrapolate their conclusions from the present capitalist conditions. Under capitalism it is important to point out that what scarcity there is — whether it be food or water — is artificially brought about. Present and projected increases in the global population only pose a problem under the conditions imposed by capitalist society. We live in a social system predicated on endless expansion and the blind, unplanned drive to accumulate that is the hallmark of capitalist production – the profit motive – which has created the "problem" of over-population. Whatever the population socialist society will of course have to feed these billions, something that the present profit-based system is all too plainly unable to do even with the current population. As argued by Colin Tudge in "So Shall We Reap" it would not be at all difficult to feed even 10 billion, as long as agriculture were organised along sensible. So why does it not happen now? Tudge’s answer is essentially the one that the Socialist Party would give: food is produced for profit, and those who have no or very little money do not constitute a market. He identifies the current capitalist model as monetarised, industrialised, corporatised and globalised. The interests of corporations, treating agriculture as just another industry to be milked for profits, take precedence over those of people. The problem becomes not one of feeding the world's growing population, but of organising production and distribution on a rational basis.

People can work together — with each other and with the planet on which we all live — to make that work more pleasant and enjoyable and to produce things. But to achieve that will need a revolution in the way the world is organised.