The massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is to be welcomed. Despite the
environmental damage it has already done -- with more to come -- it is only
this sort of event that has a chance of demonstrating to most of the
car-driving public that there really are limits to the cheap energy that
has sustained the advanced world and allowed its people to buy more and
more consumer goodies in the last 300 years.
Paradoxically, however, populations of advanced countries had already --
unconsciously -- come to the same conclusion. They had already decided that
the modern world was not sufficiently attractive to bring children up in.
For several decades, the fertility rate of women has been declining in one
advanced country after another. In every advanced country the total
fertility rate (TFR) has been less than the replacement rate of 2.2
children per woman and even now is plunging further. Some are close to 1
already. Once the present bulge of old people has died in Europe, America,
Japan and even in fast developing countries like Brazil and China then
populations will go into decline, and an ever-faster decline at that. Even
in countries like India, the TFR is declining steeply.
Never mind that the present world population is already far too large at
present, caused by the lag in family-size adjustments of previous
agricultural cultures, the underlying trend is downwards. We are, without
any shadow of doubt, heading towards extinction if present trends persist
and if the undeveloped world becomes developed.
In any other species, extinction is caused by environmental stresses of one
sort or another. Usually, this would be several stresses because a single
stress can often be avoided by a minority of the population experiencing a
genetic mutation that either evades or overcomes the stress. The minority
then have more offspring than the replacement rate and, within a few
generations, become the new majority.
We -- those of us who live in advanced countries -- are obviously under
extreme stress. But what precisely is this stress or stresses? It is not
the present credit crunch -- with the additional fear of long-term economic
recession to follow -- because the decline in TFR started occurring in boom
times when all classes in advanced countries were prospering.
You would have to be a very wise person to point to which precise stress or
stresses are unconsciously at work in the minds of two people who decide to
live together to have, or not to have, a family. All that we can say with
certainty is that we are now living non-communal, highly individualistic
lives which are far removed from our predecessors' millions of years of
living as small groups on the African savanna -- and our genes having been
fine-tuned by that experience.
If we have any pride at all in our rationality and use of logic, then
mankind faces extinction well within three centuries, and probably two.
Even small minorities such as the Old Amish in America or the few remaining
hunter-gatherer groups in New Guinea, with distinctly positive TFRs, will
inevitably become tempted -- as everybody else has been -- by the gewgaws
of modern society well within the next two or three centuries.
But could there be -- or is there already -- a mutation that is quietly
making its way among a minority of advanced people that will cause its TFR
to rise? Actually, it doesn't have to be triggered by a specific genetic
mutation. A cultural change can occur first in a minority -- which will
then inevitably cause appropriate genetic rearrangement as they tend to
marry among themselves.
I think there might be. The evidence for this is very slim at present --
detectable only at anecdotal level, picked up here and there from
newspapers and magazines. I detect that among what used to be called the
middle-class of advanced countries -- but which I now call the new
international meta-class -- a distinct change in family culture. I detect
that high-powered career women are increasingly deciding to retire before
the menopause and have children. I detect that among the meta-class (and
particularly high-level politicians) there is a desire to have larger families.
I may be totally wrong. Even if I'm right, the trend is yet so small that
it would not be measurable by any halfway objective demographic analysis
for many years to come. If I'm right, then man is not going extinct. If I'm
wrong then our extinction seems inevitable.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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