A lot of this explosion is reliant on affordable fossil fuels. More than any time in the history, in India — China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia — children have a better chance than ever to avoid extreme poverty. Now is the best time to make some.
Even the United Nations estimates that the nine billion people expected by 2050 could be supported with the technology we already possess. What Malthusians never take into consideration are the efficiencies and technology we don’t have yet, which continually amaze us and undermine their dark vision of humankind’s future.
Also, imagine how history would have played out if humans “protected their kids by not having them” in times of calamity and tragedy? Here’s a provocative thought: Maybe it’s the best time in history to have children.
The real problem we face is sustaining population. The replacement rate is 2.1, and in places they fail to meet this threshold — parts of Europe and Japan, for example — they’ve suffered economic and cultural stagnation. Here in the United States we have, for a variety of reasons, long struggled with this problem, as Jonathan Last has argued. The success of developing nations also portends a similar slow-down for them.
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