Overpopulated – BBC

Very professional and well worth seeing documentary. Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker Hans Rosling and his optimistic message: don’t panic regarding overpopulation. Example of Bangladesh that managed to bring fertility down from 7 to 2.2 children per mother in forty years. Global fertility is now 2.5 children per woman, coming down from five, fifty years ago. Rosling believes that we are at the end of the period of fast population growth and that an equilibrium could be reached of ca. 11 billion people this century. There are now 2 billion children (0-15) in the world and this number will likely remain stable for the rest of the century. In other words, we are living in a period of “peak child”. Population growth in this century will result from people “refusing to die on time”, in other words, they live longer than before.

Rosling introduces the “population pincode“, that is the number of people (in billion) living in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Pincode 2014: 1114
Pincode 2050: 1125
Pincode 2100: 1145

No more growth after 2100. Rosling believes that there are enough resources to “live well” together.

Editor: upbeat message and as far as population growth is concerned a credible message. Not so sure concerning the resource situation. And what are the consequences for the development of the third world if the people who historically were responsible for all innovation are dramatically declining in numbers, as compared to the billions of newcomers? And then there is the strong possibility of another world war and/or financial collapse, making the ‘large investments’ Rosling is dreaming about a pipe dream.

UPDATE 20-12-2014:

[rt.com] – Global life expectancy rises 6 yrs in last 2 decades

Global life expectancy soared by 5.8 years in men and 6.6 years in women between 1990 and 2013. Life expectancy for both sexes increased from 65.3 years in 1990, to 71.5 years in 2013.

These findings are in line with the conclusions of Rosling: population growth is to a large extent the result of rapidly increasing life expectancy.