What's the real danger, overpopulation or population decline? | Godfrey-Smith, Teller, Aaronovitch
87David Aaronovitch, Janne Teller and Peter Godfrey-Smith debate the risks of overpopulation vs underpopulation.
Are we too many or too few?
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The population crisis used to be about problems of exponential growth. Now, for many countries, it is about population decline. In Japan, Korea, and China, populations are already falling. At current birth rates, Japan's population, almost twice that of Britain, is predicted to fall below Britain's by the end of the century. Moreover, birth rates are falling across the globe. To maintain population levels, birth rates have to average a little over two. They are now less than two in the US and every European country. Some are almost half this level. Many explanations are offered, but the answer and its solution remain unknown. Governments facing decline have tried increasingly radical interventions, encouraging couples to have children with financial rewards and free child care, but with no success.
Will population decline lead to economic and social collapse, as some argue? Could technology come to the rescue, making it unnecessary for women to give birth? Or should we welcome the change as a means to contain the plague of humans that many believe threatens the planet?
#overpopulation #population #populationdecline
David Aaronovitch is an award-winning journalist and author, Presenter of BBC Radio 4's Briefing Room, and former long-standing columnist for The Times. Janne Teller is a critically acclaimed writer of novels, essays, and short stories. She was educated as a macro-economist and has previously worked for the United Nations on humanitarian assistance and conflict resolution. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of science. He is the author of Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness as well as Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. Hosted by Harvard's Rana Mitter.
The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! https://iai.tv/subscribe?utm_source=YouTube
00:00 Introduction
00:15 David Aaronovitch: The danger of aging populations
02:38 Janne Teller: Global population of 1 billion
06:49 Peter Godfrey-Smith: Population numbers self-regulate
10:35 Might population decline be good?
11:31 David Aaronovitch: We don't live in the globe as a whole
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