The Last Fight, 2: Excessive demography

Excessive demography works twofold. First is the multiplying effect, to feed and house 10 billion people in 2050, we will need twice what we used in 1987 when we were only 5 billions. That means we will need double floor space, double cars and smartphones, double oil, copper, iron, and cereals. And, probably, double CO2 emissions. Run away demography lets every problem grow bigger, not smaller, every day, making the wall come at us while we are running to it.

Then again, do we have a cure to our demography problem? China did try, for many good reasons, with its single kid plan. China gave it up in 2018, also for many good reasons: cultural choices created a gender imbalance, which is now causing women in neighboring countries to be needed for the excessive men population; elders, culturally accustomed to have their numerous children take care of them at old age, may find themselves alone and without resources; some psychologists add that social relationships between only single children is much more difficult.
Japan is experimenting a drop in population, population aging at high speed; Germany is the other OECD country with an eroding population; both countries are associated with high culture, high education youths, and little immigration. This cannot be the scheme for the rest of the world.

Do we have twice the arable land we had back in 1987? No, the figure is 14 million km², and this figure does not change much from one year to another. Shall we have double crop efficiency? Neither. Do we have twice more fish? No, we now have half the wild fish we used to have, and their figures are still headed down. So what is the plan? There is no plan, merely exchange the current 800 million undernourished people for 1,5 billion.

This multiplying effect merely is the easy part of the problem. The tough one is the mammal behavior: put a few mammals in a cage with food, they will behave happily with occasional hierarchical skirmishes. Put a load of them in the same small cage with the same amount of food, and you reach a number when all attack all, until a “satisfying” number of survivors is obtained. We will have this same reflex; the two world wars of the 20^th century, which made 100 millions victims, will be nothing compared to what will occur by the end of the 21^st century, with a possible billion victims. No-one knows how such a horrendous number can be reached; but the “war” will look quite different from what we know, it will be everywhere.

Globalisation created much wealth, and much inequality, on all continents. Those who have nothing always outnumber those who have a little, who also outnumber those who have much, etc. There is no need for these people to organize a fight, create a party or whatnot: when you have nothing, anything is better. All societies of the 21^st century will harbor ultra-poor people, who will stop at nothing merely for food. While power and order will always be in the hands of the rich, they may or may not want to use their power only to save the lower classes; the larger fights will take place between the poorest classes, with guns these classes never had in past history; these fights will become commonplace in most countries, creating the bulk of the one billion victims.