photo courtesy of Tony on flickr
The Washington Post reports today that the US fertility rate is back up to replacement level. The article generally spins this as a good thing, with a token quote of caution in the last paragraph from environmentalist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
But I’m particularly curious about this paragraph: “While the rising fertility rate was unwelcome news to some environmentalists, the “replacement rate” is generally considered desirable by demographers and sociologists because it means a country is producing enough young people to replace and support aging workers without population growth being so high it taxes national resources.”
During my research on the issue I came across all sorts of evidence that we’re already taxing our natural resources. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a 4-year project initiated by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and on which more than 1,300 scientists collaborated, of 24 ecosystem services vital to humans, 15 are “being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests.”
Back in 1993 the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” which stated, “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course,” and recommended a stabilization of population.
As Lindsey Grant succinctly sums it up in his 1996 book Juggernaut, “Perpetual physical growth is impossible on a finite planet.”