One of the “constructive hobbies” that I have taken up in old age is reviving my French. I have never (despite years of instruction in high school and college) been able to speak it, but I once learned to read it well enough to pass a language requirement for a graduate degree. However, I had long forgotten even the basics, and it has taken Duolingo a couple of years to get me to the point of trying to read/translate texts which interest me. I started with Candide (a little too challenging), and have stepped back to The Little Prince (just my level). Reading/translating the text slowly has given me a new appreciation of an old book – but more on that in another blog.
I get distracted easily (you might have noticed), and when the aviator is describing the Earth to the little prince, he says that there are about 2 billion grande personnes (adults) on the planet. That got me looking up population statistics. Now, The Little Prince was written in 1943, and there were no good demographic numbers during WWII, but the UN started keeping records after the war, and in 1951, the year I was born, the world population was estimated at 2.5 billion (presumably including children). In 2024, the same organization estimated the population at 8.1 billion – an increase of 224% in my lifetime. Compare this with the world population estimates for the nineteenth century, when over 100 years the population only increased by 60%.
The increase in the USA has not been quite that dramatic. In 1951, there were about 150 million people in the United States; in 2024 the population was hitting 342 million – an increase of 128%. There seem to be more people everywhere, though the increases are not evenly distributed. Florida, for example, grew by almost 700% in my lifetime. Massachusetts, where I currently reside, has only grown about 52% over the same duration. In our rich country, populations have migrated to warmer climates, shorelines, desirable suburbs. We all know this. When I was growing up, my family had a summer place on a large island in Rhode Island. It was almost a shack – no insulation, no telephone, plywood flooring. The island was dotted with summer people like us and local fishermen (who lived in stouter dwellings). Most of the island was shrubs (bayberry and blueberry) and small freshwater ponds. Now there is not a vacant lot, shacks have been replaced by McMansions, and the freshwater ponds and their diverse habitats have been overrun by invasive species fed by the runoff from lawn treatments. It is crowded, and it is so very different than it was. You all know places like this. It breaks my heart.
Almost nowhere is exempt. Roads are crowded, tourist destinations are often unbearably swarming, and resources of all kinds are challenged. Old people feel this particularly, as they can remember when it was otherwise. Childhood must be very different when there are no wild places to explore. Along with the increase in population of course, we have also seen an increase in the resources required to fuel a rising standard of living. And poor Mother Earth is moaning under the weight of so many people. (Disclosure here – my own family is contributing to this problem; we have three children and eight grandchildren. We are more than replacing ourselves.)
And yet, we have a cohort of people moving into Washington who think that a decrease in the rate of population growth is a problem. One of them recently tweeted, “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.” This sidesteps the probability that population increases are a major reason for global warming, and also the facts of science, which contradict the hypothesis of “population collapse.” But these are people who never let science get in the way of fearmongering.
The fact that life expectancy has increased by about 11 years since I was born has contributed not only to the population increases, but also to major changes to age distributions, which create problems in themselves. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that burdening our society, our planet, with an ever-increasing population would have beneficial results. And if we really want more people in this country, why don’t we let in more immigrants?
Left alone, Nature takes care of overpopulation. On that island in RI – severed from the mainland except for one small bridge – the rabbit population sometimes grew tremendously fast. Rabbits everywhere. Then the foxes would arrive, and the next year we would have no rabbits. Soon the foxes – without prey – would presumably trot over the bridge and go elsewhere. Within a year or two, the rabbits would return, and the cycle would continue. It is not at all clear that Nature will take care of the human overpopulation problem, however. Or that she will not be thwarted if she tries.
To many of the old, myself included, the world seems too full of people and yet devoid of any real human beings to interact with. Try calling your doctor’s office. Real trees have been replaced by phone trees; real people have been replaced by AI. Housing is scarce and therefore expensive; driving has become onerous – don’t attempt to navigate the highways on either coast of Florida in the winter. I am not a scientist, but it does not seem to me that we should be worried about increasing our population; I think we should be worrying about the quality of life (not lifestyle) of the people we already have.
Most of my statistics either came from the US census or the UN. A very good site that compiles these statistics and is considered to be accurate is Worldometer.com. I apologize for any inaccuracies and will gladly accept any corrections!
When I Come To Be Old 