By Zaldy Dandan – Variety Editor
SOMEONE once said that the secret to writing a bestseller is simple: convince people we’re doomed.
My own take is that we are “fascinated” by the idea of doomsday because of our awareness of our own mortality — and our reluctance to imagine this world continuing without us.
In 1798, British scholar Thomas Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” a work that became an “absolute sensation” and “didn’t just sell well — it set the intellectual world on fire.” Malthus predicted apocalyptic scarcity. He argued that population grows geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16…), while food production increases only arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4…). This so-called “Malthusian Trap” suggested that poverty and famine were inevitable.
What followed, however, was a series of technological advancements — most notably the Industrial Revolution — that dramatically boosted food production.
170 years later, American biologist Paul Ehrlich revived Malthus’ grim thesis with a more sensational title and a far more dire warning. In “The Population Bomb,” Ehrlich declared: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate….”
The book became a bestseller and a cultural phenomenon that captured the spirit of the 1970s environmental movement. Ehrlich’s influence extended beyond academia and publishing into popular culture; he appeared on “The Tonight Show” more than 20 times at the invitation of Johnny Carson.
Governments around the world heeded the grim message. In 1967 — a year before the book’s publication — world leaders, including Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., signed a “Declaration on Population,” acknowledging population control as a key factor in economic development. In 1969, Marcos created the Commission on Population to develop a national population program. In 1971, he signed a law making family planning a national development strategy. In 1972, after declaring martial law, he issued a decree allowing the commission to “provide, dispense and administer all acceptable methods of contraception….” By the mid- to late 1970s, one of the most famous bands in the Philippines was even called The Family Birth Control Band.
China, however, pursued the most radical social experiment of all to defuse its own “population bomb”: the one-child policy. Like many radical ideas that promise a “once-and-for-all” quick fix, the policy was devised by highly intelligent people — in China’s case, actual rocket scientists.
Its disastrous consequences call to mind the old joke: “If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” In China, government scientists took control of population policy, and now what was once the world’s most populous nation is facing a demographic crisis.
Just over a week ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that “China’s Birthrate Sinks to Record Low; Population Shrinks for Fourth Consecutive Year.” Decades of the one-child policy, which ended in 2015, have contributed to a rapidly aging population with fertility rates well below replacement level, threatening future economic growth, the Journal stated. While Chinese leaders have rolled out initiatives such as child-care subsidies to encourage births, demographers largely believe such measures are unlikely to reverse population decline at this stage, the Journal added.
In the Philippines, meanwhile, recent data show that Filipinos are now having fewer children than needed to replace the current generation. The days of the Philippine “population bomb” are officially over. As journalist Mei Fong noted in her 2016 book “One Child,” it turns out that “it is possible to support population control without embracing anything so brutal as a one-child policy.” Her book documents the sheer inhumanity — if not the imbecility — of what amounted to a “final solution” to a problem that ultimately proved illusory.
In his 2018 book “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think,” Swedish physician Hans Rosling observed that United Nations experts “are not predicting that the number of children will stop increasing. They are reporting that it is already happening.”
Sadly, this remains “news” to many people today.
Why is this happening? “As billions of people left extreme poverty,” Rosling said, “most of them decided to have fewer children. They no longer needed large families for child labor on the small family farm. And they no longer needed extra children as insurance against child mortality.”
He added that the dramatic drop in babies per woman is expected to continue as long as more people escape extreme poverty, more women receive education, and access to contraceptives and sexual education expands. “Nothing drastic is needed,” Rosling wrote. “Just more of what we are already doing.”
Yet many of us seem to require a looming catastrophe — something to fear. Today, if it is no longer “overpopulation,” it is “climate change,” which, not surprisingly, demands big, coercive government and a fundamental rethinking of our daily habits, economic systems, and personal choices. From the food we consume and how it is produced, to how we commute, heat our homes, and use water, nearly every aspect of modern life is implicated.
But consider these headlines/news stories from more than 50 years ago:
• “Scientist Predicts a New Ice Age by 21st Century.” — The Boston Globe, 1970
• “Spy Satellites Show New Ice Age Is Coming Fast.” — The Guardian, 1974
• “Telltale signs are everywhere… Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.” — TIME, 1974
• “The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.” — Newsweek, 1975
As the 1970s were ending — and with no great freeze on the horizon — The New York Times pivoted to climatologists warning that the North Pole might melt. “There is a real possibility that some people now in their infancy will live to a time when the ice at the North Pole will have melted,” the paper reported, “a change that would cause swift and perhaps catastrophic changes in climate.
Fast forward to 2006, when former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned that unless drastic measures were taken, it would be “game over” by 2016. The following year, Rajendra Pachauri, then head of the U.N. climate panel, declared that 2012 was the point of no return. “If there is no action before 2012, that’s too late,” he said. “This is the defining moment.”
The list of such end-of-the-world predictions is long. As Chris Bennett aptly put it, “Therein lies the beauty of doomsday predictions: when one fails, make another.”
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Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the NMI Society of Professional Journalists’ Best in Editorial Writing Award and the NMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His four books are available on amazon.com/.
