We all know that there are about seven and a half billion people in the world. But is it really so? Let's look at 5 facts of modern demography, which lead even the most seasoned skeptics into a stupor.
Russia
Recall the history of this scandal: in 2010, Ekaterina Ulitina, an employee of the Central Analytical Center of the registry office, told the whole world that, according to the registry office, as of June 1, 2010 - in Russian Federation according to the documents, the living population is only 89,654,325 people, and not 142 million, as officially stated in the census. Ekaterina Ulitina even gave real statistics, for the whole of 2009, about 5 million people died. And over the next half-year in 2010, 4.6 million deaths were recorded.
Moreover, within 10-15 years in Russia, according to the forecasts of this analytical center, the death rate of about 40 million people was expected.
Ekaterina Ulitina spoke about this in 2010, the data was officially published in the newspaper Za Russkoye Delo. Immediately after that, she was fired, but not a single official structure denied this information.
Serious experts and analysts say that this is quite possible, for example, the words of Andrei Fursov:
But this is a distant 2010, let's just look at the latest data and compare the figures of Rosstat and the registry office:
Here are the statistics of deaths for the entire last year in the Lipetsk region:
And here is the Voronezh region:
And this is Tulskaya
Everywhere we see numbers of deaths that are almost 2 times higher than the birth rate.
And here are the official figures from Rosstat:
There are also calculations on the so-called grain index. The calculated norm is about a ton of grain per person per year, of course, this does not mean that every Russian eats a ton of grain per year, but according to experts, these are the volumes needed for the food industry, this is not only flour, but also feed for meat and dairy production, and alcohol, and much more.
Based on these figures, 147 million is also not recruited.
Look, here are the data for 2015.
100 million tons have been produced, of which a third is exported. Just about 70 million tons of grain remains.
Well, maybe it's only in Russia that such a mess with numbers? Let's look at the most densely populated countries in the world.
India and China
A large number of facts indicate that far from one and a half billion people live in the Celestial Empire.
There is no way to rely on historical data on the number, the numbers there do not converge from the word "completely". Otherwise, we will have to assume that every Chinese woman in the middle of the last century gave birth to 5 children annually.
Let's go to Wikipedia and sum up the population of 20 largest cities China. And it will turn out to be an impressive number of about 250 million people (taking into account the population of the districts). Where is the rest of the billion? In the countryside? But the same Wikipedia reports that the share of the urban population in last years accounted for more than fifty percent! It turns out about 500 million people. Of course, this is an approximate figure, but here are the figures for food. How to feed one and a half billion people? According to published data, at the beginning of the century, China produced about 500 million tons of wheat. About the estimated rate - about a ton of grain per year per person, we have already spoken. Part goes directly to food, and part goes to livestock feed and other needs. If you believe that one and a half billion people live in the country, then China clearly does not provide itself with grain. But if we accept that the population is two or three times smaller, then everything falls into place.
Compare: in the USA about 500 million tons of grain are harvested a year. And the US population is only about 300 million people.
You will say - wheat is not the main grain crop in China, they mainly eat rice, and indeed, about 200 million tons of rice are produced there per year, but the figures that we have already given show that this is still not enough to feed 1.5 billion people.
How can you not remember about the famous Chinese ghost towns. By the way, one of them, Ordos, as independent researchers dug up, was one of the ancient centers of Tartaria, read the series of articles on the links under the video, it will be interesting.
The situation is similar with India.
The population of the 20 largest cities in India is only about 75 million people. And where is the other one billion two hundred million? The territory of the country is a little more than 3 million square meters. km. Apparently, they live in the fresh air with a density of about 400 people per 1 sq. km. km.
But according to these figures, the population density in India is twice as high as in Germany. But in Germany - continuous cities throughout the territory. And in India, about 5% of the population lives in cities. For comparison: in Russia, the share of the urban population is 73%, with a population density of 8.56 people / sq. km. But in the United States, the share of the urban population is 81.4%, with a population density of 34 people / sq. km. km.
Well, let's summarize:
Planet Earth
If we take into account everything that we have already talked about, then the total population of the earth will not be 7 official billion at all.
We are told that in the miserable last 200 years of human existence, the population has grown by 6 billion people. Mass media have existed for about 200 years.
Maybe the Golden Billion is not those who are allowed to live comfortably on the planet, but the true number of all the inhabitants of the earth that the pseudo-elite is able to control? Maybe a billion is a kind of bifurcation point in the control system of world masters, exceeding this critical mass is not acceptable for them, and for this the population of the planet is overestimated by an order of magnitude?
Like it or not, let's discuss after watching in the comments, but one thing is clear for sure that the global deception about the number of people on the planet is directly related to the myth of overpopulation.
Back in the fifties of the last century, it was proved that the technologies of that time reached a level at which one working man provided for himself, his family - his wife, two children and another pensioner. To do this, he had to work eight hours a day or forty hours a week.
Today, technology has become an order of magnitude higher. But the working day has not become less. To provide for the family, it is necessary that all its members be employed in production. The retirement age in all countries is growing.
Why is this happening?
Watch the seditious video "Fifteen quotes of the world pseudo-elite", evaluate the "mercy" behind the scenes.
They don’t particularly need a nuclear war, the problems of radioactive contamination will affect them too, but they still really want to dispose of extra people - after all, the industrial stage of civilization is coming to an end, less and less human labor will be required, in a post-industrial society it will be replaced by robots. That is why the owners of money and the secret power are so actively promoting digital technologies in order to replace inferior, in their opinion, superfluous people with technologies.
Of course, this manic desire to destroy as many extra mouths as possible has nothing to do with reality, because our planet can feed an order of magnitude more people than it does now. As it appears to have been in the past.
planet in the past
Here is a graph of world population growth over the past ten thousand years. This is the development of events official demographic science.
According to the diagram, during the time of ancient Egypt, the Earth was as deserted as the Moon. And between the first and second millennium there was an unprecedented dawn of the human population. In reality, of course, it wasn't like that.
Let's move from desert Egypt to the French city of Paris. Hundreds of kilometers of dark underground tunnels pierce the earth. In ossuaries - repositories of the remains of eleven thousand square meters- collected more than six million human skulls, not counting other bones.
The official version tells of the flood of 1780, which washed away the cemetery and the discarded bones were placed in the empty labyrinths of the former quarries. Everything seems logical. Unless you go into the math.
Here is the plan of the city in 1720.
According to experts, in order for six million skeletons to accumulate in it, at least 3 thousand years are needed! Where did they come from then? There is something to think about.
Let's add one more fact to this. According to a professional graduate in agriculture, the giant irrigation complex he found on Google maps was able to provide five billion people with annual food.
Where did those five billion go? And if they were in Africa, 1/5 of the land, then the total population of the Earth, about which we know practically nothing, could reach twenty-five billion people.
Write in the comments what you think about the population, maybe all this is speculation of conspiracy theorists? And no one needs these dead Souls? Did you count everything correctly?
Video with additional materials based on this article:
Today I will tell you about a man as a species that is not even on the verge, but behind the last line on the road leading to extinction. And we are not talking about the third world, not about technological disasters, not about the theoretically possible power of machines due to the development of artificial intelligence, not about the destruction of species diversity on the planet or the uncontrolled spread of GM organisms and GM products. Not about global warming and not about global cooling, much less about small ice age or a sharp increase in solar activity, not about a flood, not about an alien invasion, a pandemic or the development of super-resistant bacteria that are not sensitive to all even promising types of antibiotics, not about catastrophic failures in the structure of DNA or out of control of the development of nanotechnology, various phenomena in deep space, and even more so not about overpopulation ...
All of the above listed or not listed here reasons for the possible death of mankind as a species have a different degree of probability and effectiveness. And there is not much that a particular person can do to avoid these real or potential, one might say imaginary dangers. And this applies to everyone...
I want to tell you about the reverse situation of overpopulation.
Alas, now the majority of the population is ordinary people, office plankton, people receiving an increasingly low-quality education, or doing without it at all, living one day ...
Are you smiling? Are you pointing your finger at the earth's population counter?
| 7 565 252 047 | Population |
| 3 815 972 399 | Male population (50.4%) |
| 3 749 279 648 | Female population (49.6%) |
| 129 920 075 | Born this year |
| 298 344 | born today |
| 51 188 625 | Died this year |
| 117 548 | Died today |
Of course, mankind has always been surrounded by various dangers, but now their number is growing, including due to the activity or sometimes inactivity of all of us. I will give you two points of view to be objective. But even an optimistic version of the development of events is unlikely to please you ...
"May you live in an era of change!"
The phenomenon of an aging population emerged in the second half of the 20th century. In the good old days, old age, unlike having many children, was very a rare occurrence... Until the 17th century, only 1% of people reached the age of 65. By the beginning of the 19th century, this figure had risen to 4%.
Then those who moved humanity forward made various achievements in the field of health. The main thing was the growth of its accessibility to the masses of people, the systematic fight against infectious and other diseases, the improvement of nutrition, the improvement of medical care, the improvement of the quality of life of the population throughout the world due to social changes as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia ...
In 1950, older people aged 60 and over made up 8% of the world's population, in 2000 - already 10%. Today, according to demographers, about 70% of the population, especially in Western Europe, will live more than 65 years, and 30-40% - more than 80.
As a result, the number and age composition of the inhabitants of the world, but primarily in developed countries, is undergoing significant changes. Due to the catastrophic decline in the birth rate and the increase in life expectancy, a sharp increase in the proportion of older people and a decrease in our total number are predicted ...
You yourself can notice this, especially if you happen to travel around Europe. According to existing forecasts, while maintaining current levels of fertility and mortality (which is not a fact!) In European countries, the number of children under the age of 15 will decrease by at least 40% by 2050 (to 87 million), and the number of elderly people will double (to 169 million people).
This is precisely what some "specially gifted" persons and organizations in power not only justify, but in every possible way contribute to the resettlement of at least 169 million immigrants, mainly from Africa and the Middle East. Expecting that they will work, pay taxes, support the elderly and multiply, and most importantly, consume.
Demographers' forecasts indicate that in the next 50 years, the age structure of the population, especially in European countries, will continue to change rapidly in favor of middle and older ages. The elderly will by no means be distinguished by good health, they need care, maintenance, care, various medical care, and at the same time they must be provided with the opportunity to live a full life and work ...
There is a high probability that by 2050 the world's population will be between 9.4 billion and 10 billion, half of which will be the elderly!
It used to be a lot of children and a few old people who could be supported ... And that happened for everyone ... And even earlier ... For example, in the famine years, the Indians left their parents in the winter by the fire with a bundle of firewood and left forever, allowing them to mercifully die from cold and hunger ...
Our population will consist of many helpless old people and a small fraction of middle-aged people and a very tiny fraction of children. A reverse age pyramid is emerging...
The collapse of existing social structures and probably the very structure of states. And who will provide for us in old age? Are you looking forward to retirement? Ha-ha-ah. For rent? What will your money be worth if there is no one to bring water to you?
According to the latest research by geneticists, people have twice been on the verge of extinction. About 1.2 million years ago, the number of our direct ancestors decreased to 26 thousand people, and about 70 thousand years ago, to 2 thousand altogether. And at the same time, our ancestors, although they were in more severe conditions, managed to survive, survive, create a society, settle all over the planet, and even take the first step into outer space. So are we and our children stupider than them?
A possible outcome is described by Kurt Vonnegut in the novel The Galapagos. According to the plot of the book, as a result of a random combination of circumstances, only a few people remain alive on Earth. At the same time, only six girls from the Kanka-bono tribe, a Japanese woman and a white man can leave offspring. As a result, after a million years, people evolved into seal-like creatures without arms and legs, who almost forgot how to speak and spent most of their time lying on the beach ... (But this is just a fantastic assumption, and now back to the facts.)
Note that the so-called overpopulation panic is taking place on a planet with only 7.5 billion inhabitants. Although it started much earlier...
Few people know that in the mid-1960s. English physicist John Fremlin made special calculations according to which at least 60 quadrillion people could settle on Earth. Let me remind you that this figure is with sixteen zeros.
In 2005, the famous Romanian physicist Viorel Badescu made new calculations and came to the conclusion that the permissible population of the Earth is 1.3 quadrillion people, that is we are talking not even about hundreds of billions, but about a figure with fifteen zeros, or 200,000 times the population more than now .
.. And even if they exaggerated ... Against the backdrop of a modest modern 7.5 billion, this is a completely different order of numbers.It is important to move away from consumption, to switch to the rational use of natural resources.
And know: our planet is underpopulated!
In the context of urbanization, talking about overpopulation means going against logic. Even in China, the country with the highest population, there is a lot of sparsely populated land.
Let me remind you that the birth rate is declining at a catastrophic pace in all age groups - both in developed countries and in developing ones!
Many international organizations speak of a lack of resources and millions of hungry people. They blame it on the high birth rate.
Instead of blaming the social system or the methods of distribution of available wealth and food as well.
Against the backdrop of the so-called overpopulation and depletion of resources, which we have been talking about for more than a decade, a whole billion overweight people still look very contradictory. And their number continues to grow.
In Russia, every second resident is overweight, and every fifth is obese. According to some reports, 50% of women and 30% of men are overweight.
Even in Africa, so often called the starving continent, it turns out that more than a third of women and a quarter of men are overweight. IN South Africa 56% of the population is obese or overweight compared to just 10% of underweight South Africans. In Cameroon, Gambia and Nigeria, 35% of the population can be safely classified as obese or simply fat.
If this trend continues, then in 2050, a normal physique in those over 30 will be the exception to the rule.
Of course, among the reasons excess weight and low mobility, and malnutrition, etc. But in any case, the very fact of the growing number of overweight people suggests that the problem of global hunger and food shortages is more of a "horror story" than the real state of affairs.
The number of countries with under-replacement birth rates has risen from 13 in 1970 to 76 today. About half of all mankind lives in these countries.
According to existing forecasts, the birth rate will continue to decline, and with it the population in many countries will collapse ...
In his sensational prophetic book “The Decline of Europe” (1918), Oswald Spengler predicted the inevitable death of the ancient continent, the cradle of Western culture: “... All civilizations are entering a phase of horrific depopulation, which can last for centuries. The whole pyramid of culture is collapsing. It collapses from above: first, the main cities perish, followed by provincial centers, and finally, the turn of the earth itself comes, whose most powerful blood flows uncontrollably into the cities, prolonging their existence, but only for a short time. Spengler explains the mechanism of the moral decay of society, which inexorably leads it to the path leading to a demographic catastrophe: “The primary woman, the peasant woman, is the Mother. All her destiny, to the realization of which she aspired from childhood, is contained in this one word. But now Ibsen's woman enters the stage, not a wife, but a friend, the heroine of a huge urban literature - from Scandinavian drama to a Parisian novel. Instead of children, she fills her life with spiritual conflicts, marriage for her is an act aimed at achieving “mutual understanding”.
Everything in her life prevents childbearing: for an American lady, this is a categorical refusal to miss the social season due to pregnancy, for a Parisian woman, the fear that her lover will leave her for the same reason, for Ibsen's heroine, the belief that she "completely belongs to herself." They all belong to themselves, and they are all barren.”
History shows that the reason for the death of the ancient Roman civilization with its extremely high level of technical and commercial development was the demographic collapse, associated primarily with the moral decay of society. Starting from the 1st century AD, Roman writers noted with bitterness and alarm the decline in the population of the empire due to the fall in the birth rate, explaining it by the mass practice of infanticide, the widespread use of contraceptives, rampant debauchery and a general decline in morals. Further events developed like an avalanche in an iron sequence. As the population declined, the tax base inexorably narrowed, and it became more and more difficult to maintain a huge army. Meanwhile, the influx of recruits into the legions gradually dried up. Overwhelmed by a thirst for pleasure, young people did not want to bear the burden military service, and their number has steadily decreased with each generation. (The first signs of an impending catastrophe appeared much earlier. At the turn of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, the outstanding commander Marius, not out of a whim, carried out a radical military reform, abandoning the principle of voluntary military service for all citizens of the great city - the time when every Roman considered it an honor to go to military service was gone, the Roman golden youth preferred to indulge in the pursuit of pleasures, and there were already not enough volunteers. Mary had to create a professional army, which recruited mainly urban rabble.The result was a noticeable decline in the military qualities of the Roman legionnaires.)
The weakening of military power required the abandonment of centuries of expansion. There was no strength to continue the wars of conquest with the main goal of capturing slaves, on whose labor the entire economy was kept.
Economic turmoil further weakened Rome, he was no longer able to keep his vast possessions. From some remote provinces - in particular, Britain - the Romans simply left, the protection of others was entrusted to hired barbarians. And when this process reached its logical conclusion, it took only a slight push for the empire, rotten to the ground, to crumble to dust.
Describing in detail the process of the collapse of the Roman Empire, Brian Ward-Perkins warns all those who love Western civilization: “The end of the Roman West was marked by such horrors and upheavals, which, one hopes, we will be able to avoid. Along with the Roman Empire, a sophisticated civilization collapsed, the population of the West was thrown back in terms of living standards in prehistoric times. Before the fall of their empire, the Romans were absolutely sure that their world would exist forever without any major changes. We are confident in the inviolability of our world. But the Romans were wrong, and we are at great risk if we follow their example and fall into a similar error.”
Are you familiar with the book by the American journalist Philip Longman called "The Empty Cradle" that made a lot of noise a few years ago?
It is a cry of despair and horror in the face of the inexorably approaching specter of a worldwide demographic collapse not seen since the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire. The scale of the crisis is eloquently evidenced by the figures. According to UN experts, by 2050 Estonia will lose 52% of its population, Latvia - 44%, Bulgaria - 36%, Ukraine - 35%. And it looks like the forecasts were clearly too optimistic. (Today, Ukraine has a maximum of 35 million, at least 24 million inhabitants, if we focus on bread consumption, we get the last figure in general.)
Germany will miss 17 million people, which is equivalent to the current population of the former GDR. The population of Russia, where the death rate regularly exceeds the birth rate, is shrinking by three-quarters of a million people a year, and by 2050 there will be almost 30% fewer Russians than today.
Do you want to poke me into the statistics? Yes, due to the annexation of Crimea, migration flows especially from the Donbass region, the Caucasus and Central Asia, relative parity in the last 2 years of the number of deaths to the number of births, some narrow-minded individuals believe that everything is in order with demographics and you can relax.
Do not think that a demographic catastrophe is only for old Europe!
The whole world is no longer over the abyss, it is rapidly falling and there are only minimal chances for a miracle and the determination of people.
The population of the Japanese islands will be reduced by a third. By the middle of the 21st century, China will begin to pay the bill for its policy of limiting the size of the family, China - the number of its inhabitants will begin to fall by 20-30% with each change of generations. Yes, in the country Now 2 children per family allowed but too late...
In Asia and Africa, the birth rate is declining, while it still seems to be sufficient for natural population growth. And increasing the numbers on the counter, allowing you to have a false calmness and confidence in the future...
(The total fertility rate is the most accurate indicator of the birth rate, this coefficient characterizes the average number of births per woman in a hypothetical generation for her entire life, while maintaining the existing fertility levels at each age, regardless of mortality and changes in age composition. For simple population reproduction, it is necessary to have a coefficient of 2.1-2.3).
Iran is an example...In Iran, in the 1980s, the birth rate was 7 children per woman, and no one could have imagined that in 35 years the birth rate there would be below the level of simple reproduction, that is, less than 2 children per woman. The sharp decline in the birth rate was primarily due to an increase in the level of education of women ...What is astonishing is that nowhere in the world is the birth rate decreasing as fast as in the Middle East resulting in a rapidly aging region.
By 2050, the median age (that is, the age line that divides the population exactly in half - half older, half younger) of the Algerian population will almost double - from the current 22 years to 40 ...
Let me remind you that countries with a low ratio are those in which there are 2.1 children per woman or less. This situation is observed in North America and Europe.
| Region | 2005-2010 | 2010-2015 |
| Number of children per woman | Number of children per woman | |
| Africa | 4,9 | 4,7 |
| Asia | 2,3 | 2,2 |
| North America | 2,0 | 1,86 |
| Europe | 1,55 | 1,6 |
Among the 125 countries in which fertility exceeded the level of simple replacement in 2005-2010, a decrease by 2010-2015 was noted in 117 countries.
The proportion of the world's population whose birth rate does not provide for simple reproduction is growing rapidly. According to UN estimates, in 1975-1980 it was about 21%, in 2010-2015 it increased to 46%, and by the middle of the century it could rise to at least 69%!
The total fertility rate in the world fell from 4.95 births per woman in the first half of the 1960s to 2.5648 in 2005-2010. Now he is aiming for 2.1. For more developed countries, this level of fertility was already typical in the early 1960s, and by the end of the century it dropped to 1.57, which is covered by immigration to these countries from less developed countries.
The highest total fertility rate in the world is in Niger - 6.76 (as of 2015). The lowest - in Singapore - 0.81 (for 2015)
And most importantly, it is also declining in Africa and Asia at an unprecedented pace.IN the world average rate is falling rapidly, meaning women will have fewer than 2 children in their lifetime. So we're dying today...
(To be continued)
The myth of the overpopulation of the Earth was debunked, as evidenced by comparative maps of the distribution of population density on Earth. It has been shown that there is still more than enough free space on our planet suitable for human habitation. According to the world's leading scientists from the ALLATRA SCIENCE group, the planet Earth is able to withstand 25 billion a person, subject to the predominance of cultural and moral values in public relations.
At the beginning of 2017, about 7.5 billion people live on Earth. This figure is so large that it is difficult to even imagine such a number of people. But this is only 30% of the possibilities available to the planet, so there is no need to talk about overpopulation today. Moreover, thanks to unique developments in the field of OF PRIMORDIAL ALLATRA PHYSICS The Earth is not only able to feed and provide everything necessary for such a huge number of people, but also to create quite comfortable conditions for existence, so that each person has the opportunity and time to pay attention to their inner spiritual and moral transformation. So it was in human civilizations of past epochs, so it can be in the near future, if people want it and unite in their pure aspirations.
But let's get back to the point here and now and try to ask a question: “And how much space would all mankind need today if it decided to settle in one friendly and bright city?” The main reason for such mass migrations can be global natural disasters. According to scientists, already in the coming years several billion people will be forced to leave their homes and migrate. And so that the other part of the people are not taken by surprise and that these figures do not frighten them, but, on the contrary, stimulate them to creative activity for the benefit of the entire world community, we propose to look into this issue in more detail.
So, city Earth with a population of 7.5 billion. What area would it occupy if all people lived compactly in one city? Naturally, the area of such a city would depend on the population density. This is what our city would be like, based on real-life examples today.
If in this city all people lived with the same density as in spacious Trondheim (Norway), then it would occupy an area equal to 70% of the area of Russia, that is, territories suitable for such living.
But if we take Aachen (Germany) as a basis, then the “city of Earth” would occupy a territory equal to half of Europe with such a population density, but all 7.5 billion people would live quite comfortably.
If people lived with the same density as in Toronto (Canada), then our city would occupy an area equal to the area of Iran. As you can see, the “city of the Earth” is already taking on a clearer outline and occupies relatively little space. But there are many cities on Earth in which people live much more compactly.
If 7.5 billion people lived in the "city-Earth" with the same density as in the city-state of Singapore, then it would occupy an area with Ethiopia. But this is not the limit of reasonable compact living of people.
Manila (Philippines) is considered the most populous city in the world. On an area of only 42.88 km 2, about 1.8 million people live in it.
As you can see, with a competent approach to this issue, very little space is required for compact living of 7.5 billion people. Let's now see how much space would be required for 25 billion people to live - exactly as much as people on our planet can live in. If we take Manila as the basis, as the most densely populated city, then this would require an area of 600,000 km 2. This category includes, for example, countries such as Ukraine, Kenya, Türkiye, Myanmar, Yemen and others. Of course, we are now looking at the map and see the boundaries drawn on it. But most likely, in a friendly, civilized, spiritual and creative world community, these stripes on paper will not be needed. People will be able to move freely anywhere in the world.
So, in the course of the study, we found out that on planet Earth there is more than enough free space for living not only 7.5 billion, but even 25 billion people. The basis for solving the issue of providing such a large number of people with everything necessary for comfortable living has already been laid - these are advanced scientific discoveries in the field of OF PRIMORDIAL ALLATRA PHYSICS . What then is the hitch? The question lies more in the moral state of today's society. Will each person in himself be able to overcome the mundane self and get out of the shackles of his consciousness. Will each person be able to become free inside in spirit and lend a helping hand to a neighbor? And then fractally this question is transferred to the whole society. Will the people themselves from all regions of the world, all without exception, be able to sit down at one round table and agree? We are not talking about those who divide, it is clear with them, they will never unite. We're talking about people... Universal keys for solving all fundamental questions are given in books by Anastasia Novykh, and especially in the book of books - AllatRa.
Prepared by: Vitaly Afanasiev
Anything, including wars. But the main consequence will be hunger. Massive, terrible, hopeless. It has already begun.
Leningrad disease
Alimentary dystrophy (starvation disease) - this is the name of a violation of the general nutrition of the body due to prolonged malnutrition, when food contains an insufficient amount of calories compared to the energy expended. After the Great Patriotic War dystrophy has another one, informal name- "Leningrad disease".
Those who have experienced it know that there is nothing more terrible in the world. There is a feeling that you can hide from the bombing, but not from hunger. “Hunger is an incredible feeling that does not let go for a moment,” said Daniil Granin, author of The Blockade Book, in one of his interviews. “One mother fed her children with her blood by cutting her veins.”
Will all of us (or at least most of the inhabitants of the Earth) suffer the same fate? Many experts are sure that this is quite possible. There is a theory that predicts mass destruction of humanity in 50-100 years. There is a concept of some hypothetical Rubicon of 9-13 billion people (the specific figure is very vague), when overpopulation reaches critical limits and tends to naturally limit the birth rate.
The discussion of the problem began in 1972 with the famous report to the Club of Rome by a group of scientists headed by Professor Dennis Meadows. The report was called "The Limits to Growth". It included a number of ideas that the beginning of the 21st century will be marked by the inevitability of worldwide catastrophes associated with the depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution and a population explosion in developing countries.
Most experts today, however, do not consider overpopulation to be such an acute problem. Yes, and the data about him is very ambiguous. The lion's share of experts is sure that the growth of the population of the Earth is slowing down, although the number of people on the planet, of course, is growing. Where and when exactly this will lead is very difficult to say. But hunger is not only and not so much a consequence of overpopulation. It is also a consequence of wars, epidemics and mismanagement of resources. Water scarcity, climate change, desertification, deforestation and rising energy prices have already become a hindrance for many food producers.
In poor countries, families plan special days in which they will not eat anything.
Population explosion: to be or not to be?
Admittedly, the question is not correct. The population explosion had already begun long ago, and its peak came in the 1960s. But since the late 1980s, there has been a decrease in the absolute growth rate of the world population. Today, these rates are falling in almost all countries. Despite the fact that the world's population has already exceeded 7 billion, this number of "us" is just the consequences of the very population explosion that we talked about above. The number of people over 60 doubled between 1994 and 2014, according to the UN, and last year they outnumbered children under the age of five globally.
Therefore, demographers argue: we, on the contrary, live in an era of gradual decline in population growth. And although the number of people on Earth continues to increase rapidly, the increase has been reduced by almost half compared to 1963, when it peaked. According to experts, high rates of demographic growth (about 2% per year) will continue almost until the end of the 21st century - until 2090. Then they should decrease, and after the population of Homo Sapiens reaches 12-13 billion people, stabilization will come. True, in this situation, the degradation of natural systems that provide us with life is quite likely, and, of course, an acute food problem.
And in the near future, the threat of overpopulation is especially high in countries with uncontrolled births: first of all, we are talking about the states of Tropical Africa, such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, etc.
Danish economist, environmentalist and public figure Bjorn Lomborg criticizes the theory of overpopulation. In his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, he concludes that the concept of a population explosion is dubious, the number of hungry people is falling, as are food prices, the level of biodiversity necessary for the biosphere is too high, and the development of technologies and social responsibility lead to a decrease in environmental pollution.
Today, the largest state in terms of population is China, which after 2025 may overtake India. Until 1991, the USSR was the third largest in terms of population, after its collapse, the United States became the third. Russia occupies the ninth place in this list.
According to another specialist, candidate of sociological sciences, director of the Institute for Demographic Research Igor Beloborodov, the theory of overpopulation in many respects contradicts elementary statistics. This is especially true of the food crisis we are discussing.
So, in 1990, according to Beloborodov, about 1 billion people were starving in the world, and by 2013, after an increase in the population, this figure dropped to 842 million. In his opinion, the territory of Australia is enough to comfortably accommodate the entire population of the Earth, while each person will have one hectare of free space.
“According to all existing demographic forecasts, in the near future, the growth rate of the world population will constantly slow down, and then completely acquire a depopulation orientation,” the sociologist writes in his article “Symptoms of demographic degradation.”
He gives a “most probable” demographic projection scenario called the World Population Prospect, which shows how the population replacement rate will change between 2005 and 2050 compared to 1950-1975:
“All over the world, the population growth rate over the specified period will decrease by more than 5 times. The demographic trajectory will acquire a sharply negative direction in developed countries and European states,” Beloborodov points out. As you can see, the problem of overpopulation is extremely controversial, not only in itself, but also in relation to its consequences. Despite everything, many experts still believe that the threat of overpopulation is not so terrible, but mass starvation may turn out to be a very real problem. And it can happen for a variety of reasons.
Bread without spectacles!
“Using a well-known image, we can say that earthly civilization resembles a wizard who brought such powerful forces to life that he can no longer cope with them,” writes Evgeny Kovalev, Doctor of Economics, Chief Researcher at IMEMO RAS, researcher of this issue in his article “Global Food Problem”. - Mankind's pressure on the natural environment, in particular on resources, has reached such a limit beyond which nature can no longer (or almost cannot) restore itself to the same extent. In this sense, the growth of the world's population can be called a problem-forming factor. This seems to be true, but only in the final analysis. How else to explain the fact that in Africa, where food production is stagnating, the population is growing rapidly and the period of its doubling is a little more than 20 years.
Despite the growth in world population, Kovalev points out that food production has so far grown faster than the number of people. Yes, and technological shifts in the agricultural sector made it possible not only to increase production, but also to reduce its costs, and hence the prices of agricultural products.
And everything would be fine if, by the beginning of this century, observers had not alarmedly discovered two new trends emerging in the food sector. “Firstly, the growth of food production began to gradually slow down, and the reduction in the cost of production, and consequently, the price of a unit of production, also slowed down,” the researcher writes. “Secondly, although this did not immediately affect the direct cost of food products, the environmental price that humanity pays for the growth of agricultural production began to increase.”
As the German immunologist and bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich once said, “In trying to feed the growing number of our own kind, we endanger the very ability of the Earth to support any life at all.”
Between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from a massive mass famine in East Africa in 2011.
Yevgeny Kovalev says that today all the land suitable for cultivation is used. The plowing of new arable land can lead to higher prices for agricultural products and negative consequences for the environment, as has already happened in the zone of unstable agriculture, for example, in African countries. “According to the report of the American World Resources Institute, soil degradation and their water availability covers already 16% of the world's agricultural areas (according to 2004 data - NS). The increase in production is largely achieved by harming or even destroying agricultural resources. This means that the current population of the Earth in an ecological sense is increasing its food consumption at the expense of future generations,” writes Kovalev.
At the end of 1992, more than 1,500 renowned scientists from different countries of the world signed an appeal that sounded like an energetic warning to humanity about the ongoing deterioration of the environment, which is a threat to the existence of earthly civilization as such. It talked about the widespread decline in soil fertility as a consequence of existing methods of agriculture and animal husbandry. Among other things, the disappearance of forests was also named. Thus, since 1945, 11% (territories larger than India and China combined) of the Earth's vegetation cover have been degraded. Intensive irrigation of agricultural soils leads to the fact that even large rivers begin to shallow. Huanhe, for example, dries up every year for several months. The same problem with the shallowing of many large lakes and even inland seas, like the Aral in Central Asia or Lake Chapala in Mexico.
According to scientists, in 80 countries, where 40% of the world's population lives, there is a serious shortage of surface water. Completing the picture is the pollution of rivers, lakes and groundwater, making them unusable.
An important factor was the mass disappearance of the lungs of the planet - forests, especially tropical ones. Evgeny Kovalev: “According to the World Bank, the annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 1995 was 101.7 thousand square meters. km. The fact that in some places, for example in the US and some EU countries, forest area has increased in these years, does not give grounds for optimism, since it means that the actual rate of deforestation in the most vulnerable areas, primarily in the tropics, was even higher than the WB data show.”
In their appeal, scientists stressed that if such rates are maintained, most of the wet, tropical forests will disappear before the end of the 21st century, and with them a huge part of plants and animals will sink into oblivion.
WHO considers hunger the main threat to human health: it is the cause of a third of child deaths and 10% of all diseases.
Animal husbandry makes its own contribution - and much more than field cultivation - to the aggravation of the food problem. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, cited by Kovalev, in 2000 the total world population of all domestic animals was 1331 million cattle, 1060 million sheep, 905 million pigs, 235 million geese. But all this living creatures need space for grazing and feed. This need is a death sentence for much of the rainforest. “In Central America, for example, from 1950 to the present day, 6 million hectares of forests have been converted into pastures, and in the Amazon region, 50% of pastures reclaimed from tropical forests have been abandoned due to complete depletion,” the scientist cites statistics. Not to mention how much methane and ammonia all these animals emit into the atmosphere. There are also figures: it is estimated that the annual release of ammonia by domestic animals around the world is 23 million tons.
Yevgeny Kovalev refers to the conclusions of the World Bank, which claims that the world's population will not stabilize below 12.4 billion people, and, according to UN calculations, it will possibly reach 14 billion. There are no more than a few decades left until the time when the chance to prevent the growing threats will be completely lost, ”the author makes a disappointing forecast.
And although he also speaks of a decrease in population growth (especially in developed countries, in Europe and the USA, as well as in Russia), referring to the numbers, the scientist notes that in some states this growth, on the contrary, is gaining speed. Among them are the countries of Africa, which we talked about. Added to this are India and Pakistan.
“The aggravation of the water problem is also fraught with a political threat, since it can lead to an aggravation of conflicts within countries and between states,” the economist concludes.
Peter Grunwald, a statistician at the Dutch Center for Mathematics and Informatics, has calculated that over 107 billion people have been born on Earth in the entire history of mankind (assuming that it began 162,000 years ago).
Rescue of the drowning
According to the same World Bank for 2012, the growth of world food prices in the CIS countries has already turned 44 million people into the poor.
"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" dated March 16, 2012 in the material "Let's feed everyone!" wrote: “According to scientists, 925 million people are starving or malnourished today. Another 1 billion suffer from so-called hidden hunger, lacking enough vitamins and minerals in their diets. On the other hand, 1 billion of the most prosperous earthlings significantly "overconsume", spreading a new type of epidemic - overeating, ending in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
And how many once-usable foods end up in the trash every day? There are no such statistics anywhere.
The same publication in the same material writes: “The chief government scientist of the United Kingdom, Sir John Beddington, believes that genetically modified foods will become a key factor in the survival of the population of the sample of 2050. And people should accept them and put up with them. Moral and ethical counterarguments to GM crops are no longer acceptable. Indeed, how else to feed the population of the Earth, which today is growing by 6 million every month, despite the fact that by 2030 more than 60 percent of earthlings will live in cities, having ceased to be engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture?
According to British experts, by 2050 the world's population, which has reached more than 9 billion people, will need 40% more food, 30% more water and 50% more energy than today. Therefore, Professor Beddington predicts: without modern biotechnology, including genetic modification and nanotechnology, we will not see enough food from now on. Only genetically modified crops are able to withstand pests and insects that today devour up to 30% of crops, and only GM plants will be viable in the face of water shortage and salinity.
The philosophy of food itself must also change. This means that food should become valuable already today. “Today, the irresponsible average British consumer throws away £500 to £700 ($800-$1,120) worth of groceries in the bin every year, which is about a quarter of all the food a family buys,” the newspaper writes.
Better management of the global food system is another hope for escaping planetary hunger and artificial meat. This requires reducing subsidies and grants, as well as removing trade barriers that put the poorest countries at a disadvantage. "RG": "When grain burns due to drought in one single country, bread prices around the world soar, which proves the need for flexible food cooperation on a global scale."
As we have already said, most demographers agree that the growth of the Earth's population will naturally stop in the second half of the 21st century, when the number of inhabitants of the planet will reach approximately 9-13 billion people. But how to feed these 9 billion? “This is a very difficult task,” the newspaper quoted British professor Charles Godfrey as saying. - If all these 9.5 billion have the same appetites and the same menu that we have today in Europe - not to mention the United States! - that will be another problem. If we can somehow change the demand, then, I believe, the task of feeding the population will be achievable.
Outraged that humanity is recklessly using resources and throwing away about a third of food, German students looked into the garbage cans. In the photo: one of the students demonstrates the "waste" found in the trash can of a Berlin supermarket
A bit of optimism and... bugs
I must say that global organizations are working on the problem with might and main. And looking for ways out. At least some. So, in May 2013, the UN suggested that the inhabitants of the planet gradually switch to ... insects in their diet. “Insects are one of the most accessible types of protein food. They make up 50% of the known species of the fauna, the report says. “About 2,000 different insects are part of the traditional diet of 2 billion people.”
The report emphasizes that the concentration of proteins, healthy fats, calcium, iron and zinc in insects is sometimes even higher than in beef. At the same time, 2 kg of food is enough for growing 1 kg of insects, and 8 kg for cattle. However, one of the authors of the publication, Eva Muller, explains: “We do not encourage everyone to eat bugs. What we are trying to say is that insects are just one of the many resources that forests provide, although they are hardly considered as a potential source of food and especially animal feed.”
The aforementioned researcher of the food problem, Yevgeny Kovalev, also believes that “an encouraging trend in recent decades has been the development of mariculture - breeding oysters, mussels, and kelp on man-made marine plantations. Apparently, mariculture is the future,” he says.
But for the large-scale development of mariculture, large investments are needed, which will pay off only over time. In the meantime, you have to rely on the good old fish. And this despite the fact that scientists around the world have long been sounding the alarm about the growth of the destructive impact on the oceans, especially in its coastal areas, where the bulk of fish is caught. “The global marine catch is at its peak. Some fisheries are already showing signs of collapse. Rivers carry into the seas not only a heavy mass of washed soil, but also industrial, agricultural and livestock waste, some of which is toxic,” writes Kovalev.
Let's assume the worst and, hopefully, the most unlikely scenario: the extinction of mankind. What will happen in this case? Does our short-sighted, but still quite glorious kind in places have no chance of salvation? Fortunately, there is.
Suppose there are only 100 people left in the world. Is this enough to keep the population alive? “A hundred is enough, if they are not people of the same sex,” the famous anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky answers this question on the Anthropogenesis.ru portal. - For the successful survival of the population on Pitcairn Island, one man and several women were enough. The experience of preserving the Red Book animals shows that sometimes a couple of individuals are enough. Of course, evil recessives can spoil raspberries, but for capital spoilage, recessives must be very evil, and the selection is very severe. And in more or less adequate conditions (say, after nuclear war) a dozen Bushmen (left out of big politics and far from the sphere of interests of the superpowers) are enough for the eyes for the Homo reconquista.
Opinion
I am a supporter of the demographic concept of Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, so I think that overpopulation does not threaten the planet, - says Vladimir Dergachev, a well-known geopolitician professor, creator of the Geopolitics Institute network project, editor and author of the Landscapes of Life magazine, Vladimir Dergachev. - This is also connected with the geopolitical transformation of the world, because the center of economic and technological development is shifting to Asia. And the two largest economies in Asia, the largest countries in terms of demographic power, are China and India. These two countries are also expected to remain the largest in terms of population in the future. But the standard of living in them is rising, so the problem of overpopulation will probably not be too acute. The Chinese government understands that it will not be able to achieve the standard of living of a Westerner with such a population, so China has taken a course towards creating a middle-class society.
Of course, when you fly by plane over the Great Plain of China, overcrowding is clearly visible. Because of the boiler houses operating everywhere, there is literally smog over the plain. But, since I have been to China more than once, I can say that the authorities of the Celestial Empire are well aware of the severity of this environmental problem and will probably find a solution to it.
In the demilitarized zone, on the territory of the Svalbard archipelago, where there is not a single military facility, a storage facility for seeds has been built in the permafrost, to which those who can survive in the event of a global catastrophe will come. Today there are about half a million samples various kinds food crop seeds from around the world
There are theories that wars can stabilize population growth. But this, of course, is not the case. Currently, the world's population exceeds 7 billion people. And what kind of war is needed to stop population growth? According to my forecasts, there will be no world (nuclear) war in the foreseeable future, but regional conflicts will persist in the coming decades - precisely in connection with the global geopolitical transformation that I spoke about.
Not only that, the West, or the "golden billion", is actually a consumer society. At the same time, the problems of providing the population with food and fresh water are becoming more acute in many developing countries. For example, many of the conflicts in the Middle East over the past hundred years have been rooted in control over fresh water sources. Yes, you can cite the example of the United Arab Emirates, which turned the Arabian desert into a flowering garden through desalination sea water, but in other regions, fresh water shortages remain extremely acute. For example, in the African Sahel zone, between the Sahara and Central Africa, total desertification is taking place. All these problems lead not to the fact that the population will increase, but to the fact that mass deaths of people from lack of water, food and lack of normal medicine will continue.
According to the World Health Organization, every day 24,000 people in the world die of hunger or diseases directly related to hunger. While you were reading this article, about 400-500 people have died in the world. Of these, slightly less than half are children.
The demographic problems of humanity are associated with exponential growth in numbers and increased migration of the population. For most of human history, population growth has been subtle. However, during the 19th century this process began to gain momentum and accelerated extremely sharply in the first half of the 20th century. (Figure 5.2, Table 5.2). This gave analysts a reason to talk about a "population explosion".
The first people at the time when they began to master fire and populate the planet were a population of no more than 1 million people. This was even before the transition to agriculture, i.e. before man got out of the influence of natural selection. With the beginning of agriculture and cattle breeding, the human population increased to about 100 million people.
The average life expectancy in the ancient world was low: for example, in Ancient Greece she did not exceed 20-25 years. In the XVII-XIX centuries, living conditions began to improve, medicine stepped forward. At the end of the XIX and especially in the XX century. there have been dramatic changes in this area, due to which child mortality has decreased, life expectancy has crossed the 25-30-year mark (the border of reaching reproductive age) and a very rapid, exponential growth in the human population has begun. All these reasons were the beginning of the modern population explosion.
After the Second World War, 2.5 billion people lived on Earth in 1950. In 1982, the total population of the planet exceeded 5 billion, and in 2000 it already amounted to more than 6 billion people, i.e. almost 2.5 times higher than in 1950. Recently, the population of China, Indonesia, India, African and Latin American countries has grown especially rapidly. By 2011, the world's population reached seven billion.
Development of mankind on a logarithmic time scale (according to the calculations of the UN and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (NASA)
Table 5.2
|
Cultural |
History, culture, technology |
|||||
|
Stabilization |
Going to the limit |
|||||
|
population |
||||||
|
Change in age distribution |
||||||
|
Globalization |
||||||
|
demography. |
Urbanization |
|||||
|
Computers |
||||||
|
The newest |
Nuclear Power World Wars Electricity |
|||||
|
New story |
||||||
|
Middle Ages |
Industrial Revolution Printing |
|||||
|
Ancient World Neolithic |
Geographical discoveries Fall of Rome, Mohammed |
|||||
|
Christ, Axial Time |
||||||
|
Greek civilization |
||||||
|
India, China, Buddha, Confucius Mesopotamia, |
||||||
|
Writing, domestication cities, villages / households. |
||||||
|
Ceramics, Bronze Microliths Settlement of America |
||||||
|
Languages, Shamanism Homo sapiens |
||||||
|
speech, fire Settlement of Europe and Asia Pebble culture, Homo habilis chopper |
||||||
|
Anthropogenesis |
Separation of hominids from hominoids |
Rice. 5.2.
- 1 - Ancient stone Age; 2 - the beginning of the New Stone Age; 3 - New Stone Age; 4 - Bronze Age;
- 5 - Iron Age; 6 - Middle Ages; 7 - our time
The population density in different areas is not the same. In many developed countries of Europe and North America, according to data provided by V.M. Galushin, the annual population growth is approximately 1% and continues to decline. A different situation is emerging in most developing countries, where rapid population growth makes it difficult to improve their well-being and gives rise to complex socio-economic problems. This manifests itself even within individual countries, where, as a rule, most of the population is concentrated in cities. According to the data given by K.M. Petrov, the world population is increasing today by about 90 million people a year. The main increase in the world's population occurs in developing countries (Fig. 5.3).
The rapid population growth in them provokes an aggravation of environmental and social problems, such as food shortages, the emergence and spread of epidemics of infectious diseases, intermittent inter-ethnic, religious and caste conflicts that arise as a result of increased competition for territories and resources located there, as well as an increasingly aggravated lag in the level of cultural development.
The demographic capacity of our planet is estimated by most ecologists at 1.0-1.5 billion people (under ideal social environmental conditions). Today, the Earth, according to experts, is overpopulated by at least 3 times. Population growth, as noted by P. Agess, will apparently continue, since food resources, despite regional hunger and malnutrition, are sufficient for more than 15 billion people.
Rice. 5.3.
The social stratification of people at the end of the second millennium is accompanied by an equally sharp division of states into two large groups, which develop and grow according to different laws - these are economically developed and developing countries, conditionally called countries of the North and South in UN documents.
There is also an economic inequality of people on the planet. The income of the entire population of the Earth can be grouped according to the amount of income and divided into five equal parts. So, 20% of the richest people have 82.7% of the world's wealth, and 20% of the poorest people - only 1.4% of the world's wealth. The difference is significant, and it continues to grow exponentially.
Life expectancy is also an important characteristic that indirectly reflects the very quality of life. Age characteristics by countries of the world are given in Table. 5.3.
The period of exponential population growth is now over in advanced economies (Figure 5.4).
Analysis of age pyramids, i.e. population distribution by 10-year age groups shows that they sometimes have a slightly expanded base due to small infant mortality. A noticeable narrowing of the pyramid (that is, a decrease in the population) begins at the level older than 50-60 years, and an active increase in mortality occurs only after 70-80 years.
Table 5.3
Age characteristics of the population by country (Levi, Boucher, 1995)
|
Average life expectancy, years Men Women |
Infant mortality per 1 thousand newborns per year |
Gross domestic product, USD US/person |
||
|
Brazil |
||||
Rice. 5.4.
The decline in the birth rate in developed countries is due to the fact that people have reached a high level of well-being, and in their minds there is a change in the value system. The values associated with a large family and kinship are being replaced by the ideals of comfort, a cozy, quiet personal life, which require large expenditures to provide for them. Thus, for developed countries, the limiting development factor is environmental pollution associated with a high level of consumption. The higher the level of consumption, the higher the consumption of energy, natural resources, and the more intense its pollution with production, consumption and household waste. In developed countries today, a crisis of consciousness has clearly emerged, leading to more high level consumption and hindering the growth of the birth rate.
On the contrary, in developing countries such as Africa, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and others, the growth of the human population is still extremely active. At the same time, both the birth rate and infant mortality are very high there, with a relatively low life expectancy. The age pyramid of developing countries looks completely different than that of developed countries. It has a very broad base, reflecting a high birth rate, and illustrates a high death rate in each ten-year group. Average life expectancy in many developing countries is only 40-50 years, which is about 30 years less than in economically developed countries. For developing countries, the main limiting factor is demographic. High birth rates are accompanied by high death rates, and the population of these countries is growing exponentially. In these countries, as in any agrarian society, family management uses working hands, including children. With high mortality, in order to have 2-3 adult workers left on the farm, the family needs to have at least 8-9 children. In many developing countries, children make up almost half of the population (Figure 5.5).
Due to the social and economic crisis that began in the 90s. 20th century the state of the human population in Russia at the end of the 20th century. turned out to be in a critical situation, because by this time the death rate had increased greatly, and the average life expectancy, together with the birth rate, had decreased. Countries in crisis (such as Russia) are the first to be threatened by the wave of extinction.
Measures to maintain the population balance of mankind include a number of international agreements adopted within the framework of the UN, in particular, the agreement on population. On the basis of UN programs to reduce the birth rate and death rate, a policy of assistance to developing countries has been developed, including the provision of contraceptives and health care, as well as economic measures designed to raise the standard of living and education of the population. In addition, international projects were developed in which developing countries received modern technologies, focused not on large industrial or agricultural production, but on small family businesses and farms. Mostly these are environmentally optimal technologies that ensure high labor productivity.
