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Overpopulation in Numbers

by Fjordman

12,000 years ago, we were all hunter-gatherers. The population at that time has been estimated to be probably less than ten million human beings.[1] A single major city such as Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Karachi, Mexico City, Lagos, Mumbai or Cairo now has more inhabitants than all the continents combined back then.

With the Neolithic Revolution and the beginning of agriculture, the number of humans grew gradually for thousands of years. In the last couple of centuries, after the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern medicine, the global population has virtually exploded. It is now almost eight times larger than it was in the year 1800.

Overpopulation is one of the greatest problems facing our planet. It has a negative effect on the lives of many humans and causes very serious environmental problems. Quite a few animals have been pushed to the brink of extinction due to human activity and the loss of their natural habitat.

If you move people from countries with a low technological level to countries with a higher technological and economic level, they will consume more natural resources. This will only make the environmental problems worse. Migration cannot solve the issue of overpopulation. It must be addressed locally.

According to a United Nations (UN) report from June 2017, the current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.[2] We surpassed the 1 billion milestone for the first time shortly after the year 1800. It took all human populations hundreds of thousands of years to grow into one billion people. Now, we add another billion people every few decades.

The UN is hostile to nearly everything Europeans do to limit immigration, even illegal immigration, or preserve their native homelands. The UN has discussed “replacement migration” as a possible solution for Europe.[3] Peter Sutherland, who until 2017 was the UN’s special representative for migration, has stated that the European Union (EU) should” do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states.[4]

While the Japanese, Germans and other technologically advanced nations have low birth rates, some of the least developed countries on the planet have very high birth rates. The world’s population growth is mainly concentrated in the global South, especially in Africa and many Muslim majority countries. Africa alone is expected to grow by several billion people in this century. That is several times the combined population of the entire European continent, from Russia and Ukraine to Portugal and Ireland.

Roughly 83 million people are now added to the world’s population every year. If we use the official estimates made by UN demographers in 2017, the world population grows by about 227,246 people per day. That equals more than 1.59 million per week, over 9,468 per hour, 157.8 per minute and 2.63 per second.

If you spend 38 seconds picking up something cold to drink, there will be 100 more human beings on the planet during those few seconds. If you go to bed at night and sleep for seven hours, the Earth’s population has grown by over 66 thousand people by the time you wake up in the morning. In about four and a half days, there will be one million more mouths to feed. One million more people to provide with water, food, shelter, jobs and education. This situation is clearly not sustainable.

Population estimates for the Roman Empire at the beginning of our era range from 45 million to over 100 million people.[5] A relatively common estimate is 60-80 million. The world population is thus growing at a rate of roughly one Roman Empire every single year. Today’s mass migrations are much larger and faster than the Migration Period in Europe that we associate with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Water demand globally is projected to increase by 55% between 2000 and 2050. Much of the demand is driven by agriculture, which accounts for 70% of global use of fresh water. Food production will need to grow by 69% by 2035 to feed the planet’s growing human population. Many of the world’s freshwater sources are now being drained faster than they are being replenished. The Ganges Basin in India is being depleted, due to population and irrigation demands. Some believe that increased water shortages around the world could lead to wars.[6]

India will surpass China as the world’s most populous nation by 2024. Nigeria is projected to overtake the USA and become the third most populous country in the world before 2050. From now through 2050, half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the USA, Uganda and Indonesia. The populations of 26 African countries are expected to at least double before 2050. One African country, Niger, has exploded from 3.5 million people in 1960 to nearly 20 million today. 80% of its citizens live in poverty and are close to the brink of starvation.[7]

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland in 2017 have a combined population of nearly 27 million people. That number already includes several million recent immigrants who did not live in this region 40 or 50 years ago. By early 2017, an estimated 29 million people were unemployed in Nigeria.[8] A single African country thus has more unemployed people than there are people living in all of the Scandinavian and Nordic countries combined. Nigeria is considered to be Africa’s regional economic powerhouse.

Polls conducted in Nigeria show that 40 percent of people there would emigrate to the Western world if they could.[9] With about 190 million people living in Nigeria in 2017, there are 76 million potential migrants from just one country. This number keeps growing rapidly.

There are many Nigerians among the boat migrants in the Mediterranean headed for Europe.[10] Other illegal immigrants come from Bangladesh in South Asia.[11] There is no war in Bangladesh today, just Islam and overpopulation.

In July 2017 the American business magnate Bill Gates, founder of the software giant Microsoft, warned in an interview that Germany and other European countries cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who want to make their way to Europe. The policies many European governments have followed will motivate more people to migrate to Europe. Gates stated that Europe must make it more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes. At the same time, he also encouraged more aid to Africa.[12]

The Italian politician Antonio Tajani is President of the European Parliament. Hundreds of thousands of boat migrants from Africa and the Islamic world have flooded into Italy and the EU for years. Many of them have been picked up near the coast of Libya, in a form of ferry service. Tajani warned in July 2017 that millions more illegal immigrants are ready to enter Europe. He thinks that there will be an exodus “of Biblical proportions” in the coming years that will be “impossible to stop” if Europe does not confront the problem now. He claimed that the only solution to this is a massive investment in Africa to stop people from leaving in the first place.[13]

It is good that prominent members of the Western elites now finally voice concern that mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East is more than Europe can handle. Some observers warned about this years earlier, but we were not listened to by the ruling classes.

However, the suggestion that mass immigration will end if Europe invests more in Africa is highly questionable at best. Some information indicates that migration could even increase if the level of income increases slightly. More people will then be able to pay for transportation and possibly people smugglers. If this is true, then more Western money to Africa and the Middle East will not stop the migration waves from these regions. It will simply drain our limited resources even further.

Europeans constitute a rapidly shrinking part of the global economy and population. Europe has many internal problems to deal with, and may face serious conflicts due to ethnic and religious tensions over Islam and immigration. Besides, Africa is a big continent. It is three times larger than Europe and full of oil, gold, diamonds and other natural resources. Africans should take care of themselves.

Some regions of Africa can barely feed themselves even today. They cannot base their societies on the hope that outsiders will continue feeding them. This could lead to a humanitarian disaster.

If the Islamic world and Africa were to send 300 million immigrants to Europe in the next five or six years, the population of these regions would still be growing. Yet a number of European nations would probably collapse.

From 1996 to 2016, Egypt grew by about 30 million people. That was the increase in a single Arab country in just one generation.[14] Egypt is projected to have 119 million inhabitants in 2030. The country’s population in the year 1900 was just over 10 million.[15] Egyptian officials warn that the rapid population growth cements poverty and unemployment. It presumably also fuels more Islamic religious fanaticism.

The only possible way for Egypt to improve the quality of life for its citizens is to actively reduce its population growth. The same goes for most of Africa and the Islamic world. External aid to these regions should be specifically aimed at reducing birth rates there. That would be good for them and good for the rest of the world.

Notes:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates#Deep_prehistory Some estimates extend their timeline into deep prehistory, to “10,000 BC”, i.e. the last glacial maximum, when world population estimates range roughly between one and ten million. www.worldhistorysite.com/population.html discovermagazine.com/2012/oct/100-000-years-of-dramatic-population-changes 100,000 Years of Dramatic Population Changes. October 18, 2012. 2. www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. 21 June 2017. 3. www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? 4. www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18519395 EU should ‘undermine national homogeneity’ says UN migration chief 21 June 2012 5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_demography#Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire 6. www.bbc.com/future/story/20170412-is-the-world-running-out-of-fresh-water Is the world running out of fresh water? April 12, 2017. 7. www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/15/why-have-four-children-when-you-could-have-seven-contraception-niger Why have four children when you could have seven? Family planning in Niger. 15 March 2017. 8. allafrica.com/stories/201706121136.html Nigeria: Rising Level of Unemployment. 12 June 2017. 9. www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/a-mass-migration-crisis-and-it-may-yet-get-worse.html A Mass Migration Crisis, and It May Yet Get Worse. OCT. 31, 2015. 10. www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/nigeria-ranked-second-of-migrants-origin-on-sea-route-to-europe/195687.html Nigeria ranked second of migrants origin on sea route to Europe. April 30, 2017. 11. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-migrants-bangladesh-libya-italy-numbers-smuggling-dhaka-dubai-turkey-detained-a7713911.html Bangladesh is now the single biggest country of origin for refugees on boats as new route to Europe emerges. 5 May 2017. 12. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4665198/Bill-Gates-warns-open-door-migration-overwhelm-Europe.html Bill Gates warns that Germany’s open door policy to migrants will overwhelm Europe and urges leaders to ‘make it more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via current routes’ 4 July 2017. 13. www.express.co.uk/news/world/826356/Migrant-crisis-Europe-EU-Italy-refugees-Tajani-warning ‘Exodus of biblical proportions’ Millions of migrants to arrive after EU’s woeful response. July 9, 2017. 14. www.memri.org/reports/egyptian-economic-crisis-leads-increased-calls-reduce-countrys-birthrate Egyptian Economic Crisis Leads To Increased Calls To Reduce The Country’s Birthrate. December 5, 2016. 15. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt Demographics of Egypt

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