Global Population Debate - On Point Podcast

On Point's Tom Ashbrook recorded a segment about the global population debate a few weeks ago, and I thought it tied in well to what we've been talking about recently concerning the world's ever growing number of inhabitants.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/10/21/global-population-debate

Here's the link to the podcast - you can listen to the segment and check out the short youtube clip that's posted on the website, it does a great job of summing up what the podcast is about.

In the segment, Tom Ashbrook interviews a man by the name of Alan Weisman, senior editor and producer for Homeland Productions, author of "Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth," "The World Without Us." Mr. Weisman claims that if we don't dial back on the number of humans populating the earth, nature will do it for us. He suggests that we need to make it more desirable to have fewer children, concluding that a government telling people what to do will not work, but that the message can still be spread. Already, Weisman says, we are bursting the seams of the planet with over 7 billion people on the planet. This is one take on the global population debate.

The other guest to speak on the show was Steven Philip Kramer, professor of Grand Strategy at the National Defense University, author of "The other Population Crisis: What Governments Can Do About Falling Birth Rates." His take on global population was contrasting to Mr. Weisman's view - instead of seeing the rising population as a threat, Mr. Kramer sees a threat in human population actually decreasing. For individual nations, he thinks underpopulation will create a threat to national security. Kramer points out the fall in birth rates in certain countries such as Japan and Italy. So instead of focusing on the issue of growing human population, his view is that we should be concerned about countries with falling populations. Declining populations make it difficult to deal with things such as pensions - with more elderly people and fewer younger people, how are we going to be able to support those who are older.

With these two very different views on the global population debate, different factors are brought to light. In class, we've only talked about the side of the debate concerning too many people on the planet. What do you guys think about the point that declining birth rates can actually have negative impacts? Does this hold validity? Does the damage being done by our increasing world population override the negative impacts of individual countries declining populations?