Population bomb to explode — well, never mind

OPINION:

We’re lectured daily that you’re an intellectual lightweight if you dare question the wisdom of “settled science.”

I’m not sure who determines what the settled science is. But you don’t have to go back to the days of the Flat Earth Society consensus to know that what is settled is often wrong.

There’s no better example than the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the settled science on how to respond was wrong more than right. Lockdowns killed five to 10 times as many Americans as they saved. Has anyone apologized? Dr. Anthony Fauci — who not only got the response all wrong but also lied — is still lionized by the media.

The other day, former President Donald Trump was attacked on CNN for his “discredited” theories on vaccines. His views run against the conventional wisdom and are questionable, but to say they are discredited is to do a disservice to science and the pursuit of truth. Two plus two equals four. That’s settled. Whether certain vaccines are good for your health is not.

This brings us to the myth of the population bomb. In the 1960s and 1970s, we were taught that if high birthrates around the world — which were two to three times as high as today’s — persisted, we’d be squeezed in elbow to elbow across the globe. Paul Ehrlich of Stanford prophesied that humans were breeding like field mice. All the resources on the planet would be gobbled up, and we would be doomed.

As a result of this false scare, hundreds of millions of women were advised that to save the planet, they had to stop at two children — or better yet, after just one.

Even as recently as 2014, we were told by the top scientific experts that — as one headline put it in big, bold letters: “Boom! Earth’s population could hit 12 billion by 2100.”

To stop this alleged crisis of too many babies, the U.N. and the U.S. government, funded with billions of tax dollars, brutish population policies — forced abortion, sterilization, infanticide and financial penalties for having too many children. The problem with Africa was too many Africans. Hundreds of millions of women worldwide had no children and were brainwashed into believing they were doing humanity a favor.

But now we learn that the population growth rate has been rapidly falling just over the last decade. It’s not so much that population control worked. Rather, as people got richer, contraceptives were more widely available and women had more economic opportunities, birthrates fell naturally. Capitalism turned out to be the best contraceptive.

So instead of the estimated population of 12 billion by the century’s end, the number is now expected to be closer to 10 billion. 

In just 10 years, the estimate has been lowered by about 20% and around 2 billion people. This would be like bowling and knocking down all the pins in the lane next to yours.

The original U.N. world population estimates for 2100 were: 

• 2014: 12.3 billion (upper bound)

• 2022: 10.5 billion

• 2024: 10.1 billion

Using this faulty logic, if this trajectory continues, there will be no people but Adam and Eve left on Earth by 2200.

What’s the lesson here?

First, scientific consensus is often wrong. Show some humility, please.

Second, forecasting the future is difficult, especially when trying to estimate 100 years out.

Third, have you noticed that the errors don’t seem statistically random? They always seem to be on the side of doomsday.

Climate change models have been similarly wrong in their forecasts for the past several decades. They are even less reliable than population forecasts. I just wish they’d just tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow or next week, not next century.

• Stephen Moore is a visiting senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.