ACCORDING to the United Nations, on the 15th of November 2022, the global population is projected to rise to eight billion. The highest growth projections will come from Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Central Asia while the least population growth will come from Europe and North America. The Philippines’ growth projection is somewhere in the middle category: East and Southeast Asia.
According to their numbers, there will be 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.6 billion by 2050. I don’t think the latter projection will happen, however.
I think that 8 billion will be the maximum limit that modern civilization will be able to reach, before it goes down, and the reason is that modern civilization will not be able to sustain more people, not because of technological or capital constraints but because modern civilization is too fragile, too unstable. More people will lead to the need for more food, more energy, more consumer goods and so on.
If the world cannot supply those needs then the human population will stop growing one way or another. We are seeing it now with the reduction of food supplies just because of war in Eastern Europe and the sanctions against Russia. If the global system is that fragile then adding another billion to the global population will strain it even further.
The counterpoint to this is that more people will lead to more productivity. It is assumed that more people will lead to more productivity if given the right amount of capital and education.
But that is not really the case. In the modern world, productivity had more to do with technology, capital and energy than human input, and we are reaching the limits of those.
Another counterargument is that the world can put aside its differences and come together, which in practical terms means giving more power to global institutions, to create a global government in all but name. The problem with this is that these people are in the West. The most populous countries – China and India – are still very nationalistic.
The same is true with Russia as well as the Islamic World and various poor nations. These countries will not sacrifice their interests to feed North and Sub-Saharan Africa. So even if global institutions gain more power, its influence will have limits.
In short, I just don’t see how the world can sustain nine or 10 billion people. The system just can’t sustain it./PN
