Dean's World

Recently, over at Big Arm Woman's blog, there was discussion of people who trash others for having "too many kids." I agreed with them that the trashing was vulgar. It's also irrational. It reminded me of an essay I wrote a year or so ago. I've been meaning to re-post it since the formatting got messsed up on the original so here it is again:

Overcrowded Planet?

Our friend Dowingba has been after me for some time to do this. So here's a present for him.

Below is the map of a beautiful country named Canada. I'd like you to take particular note of one of its many fine provinces: Alberta. It's in dark green, with the famed Castle wilderness preserve marked with a star:

Now. Let's ignore Alberta for a little bit and let me point some things out to you about crowded living conditions among humans.

The City of Chicago--a beautiful city full of rivers, ponds, lakefront property, huge parks, zoos, sporting arenas, universities--houses 2,886,251 residents, at least according to 2002 figures. This is not counting the hundreds of thousands of people who commute in and out of the city every day. Let's round it off and say that on any given day, as many as 3 million people may be in that fine, beautiful city. The city encompasses 234 square miles. (All figures cited from Wikipedia.)

Doing a little simple math (3 million divided by 234) and you can determine for yourself that Chicago boasts a population density of (drum roll please):

About 12,821 people per square mile.

This in an area which, as I've said, includes parks, rivers, ponds, sporting arenas, shipyards, museums, libraries, tree-lined neighborhoods, and world-class universities. Also stock yards, train depots, factories, airports, amusement parks, hotels, and shopping centers. There's even a working farm within the city limits, at an agricultural college.

Mind you, it's not America's most crowded city, let alone the world's. Far from it. As far as major cities around the world go, it's only average.

The City of Tokyo, one of the world's most populace cities, has a population of 12.275 million people, and takes up only 0.6% (barely 1 half of one percent) of Japan's total land space. This enormous city covers about 844 square miles. That gives it a population density of 14,544 people per square mile. All jammed in to barely one half of one percent of Japan's total land space--and also including parks, ponds, zoos, universities, museums, sporting arenas, and so on.

The city of New York, New York has a population of 8 million, spread out over 320 square miles. Giving it a population density of about 25,000 people per square mile, distributed among its many parks, museums, sports arenas, universities, and so on.

The city of Paris, France, universally hailed as one of the most beautiful on the planet, encompasses a shockingly tiny 41 square miles (105 square kilometers). It houses over two million people in that area, giving it a population density of (dig this) 48,780 people per square mile, marking it as quite possibly the most crowded city on the planet.

Here's a quick look at some other world cities:

London: 11,475 people per square mile

Rio de Janeiro: 16,495 people per square mile.

Moscow: 29,016 people per square mile.

Seoul: 42,194 people per square mile.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to look up what other beautiful, highly livable cities like Vancouver, Seattle, Mexico City, and so on look like.

Now, the United States encompasses about 3,717,142 square miles. The world population is currently estimated at well over 6 billion and is projected to reach 7 billion in 2010. Depending on whose estimates you believe, the total world population will either peak around 2050 and then begin to decline or, according to more aggressive estimates, may go as high as 11 billion some time after the year 2100. This is depending on whether you believe people around the world will continue to grow wealthier and more prosperous, which they have been throughout most of the world (except in totalitarian regimes) for the last 100 years, because a documented fact is that the more prosperous and healthy people become, the fewer children they tend to have.

Okay, so current estimates have the world population hitting 7 billion in about 5 years. Let's go with that figure. And like I just said above, the current land space in the United States is 3,717,142 square miles (a bit over 9,600,000 square kilometers). This means that if you took the entire world population in 2010 and forcibly relocated every man, woman and child to the United States, we would have a population density in this country of (drum roll, please):

1,883 people per square mile.

This would be about twice the population density of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin (813 people per square mile), or about two thirds of the population density of New Albin, Iowa (2,635 people per square mile).

In other words, it would be about average for a small rural farming community.

Now, remember where we started this little journey? Oh yes: Alberta. The Canadian province of Alberta, that great nation's 4th largest province, encompasses approximately 260,000 square miles.

Which means that if you took the entire world population in 2010 and forcibly relocated every single one of them to Alberta (we plan to make everyone Canadian, eh!), Alberta would have a population density of 26,923 people per square mile.

In other words, roughly the population density of New York City or Moscow, and considerably less crowded than cities like Paris, the famed City of Lights.

Which means that we could comfortably squeeze the entire world population in 2010 into this massive red area:

The rest is for whatever else we want: growing food, wilderness conservation, and so on.

As an exercise for the reader, I invite you to calculate what it would look like if we jammed everybody into Ontario or Quebec instead.

Here's the truth: Penn & Teller like to say "everybody got a gris-gris," by which they mean, almost everybody has something they are absolutely positive must be true even though it simply is not. This is one that practically everyone has: fear of overpopulation.

* Update 2005 * I'd like to add a few further observations, to meet common objections.

First off, what about all those poor areas that are so horribly overcrowded in the third world? I invite you to look carefully: in any country that is generally free and features a generally democratic government (say, as ranked by Freedom House as a 4,4 or better), no matter how poor that country is, you will find that the areas within it with the greatest population density are the ones with the highest standards of living and best incomes. No? You don't think so? Find me the exception.

Another challenge: of nations ranked at least partly-free (again, using the Freedom House data set), find me a single one that ever experienced a famine while it was ranked as at least partly-free. You can't do it. Know why? Because it's never happened. As in, never. "Close" does not count. Neither do cases of "malnutrition," which can be anything from vitamin or mineral deficiency to overconsumption of calories causing obesity. "Famine" means the real thing: throngs of emaciated, withering away people, bodies rotting in the streets wasted away from hunger. Free societies do not experience this, ever.

You may also complain about traffic jams and such, which may fool you into believing that in "overpopulation." But consider that logic: it's like saying that if the jellybean jar on your desk is overflowing, the jellybean manufacturers of the world have overproduced. If you regularly experience traffic jams, that is overcrowding in one area--or, much more likely, poor urban planning and insufficient mass transit.

Besides, most people are rational: why would they commute every day to those highly populated areas? Because that's where the most money's to be made, that's why.

Why do people move to the suburbs by the way? Except in cases where a poorly-governed city (like, say, Detroit) has turned schools to garbage, the main reason most people move to the suburbs is because you can buy more more housing for less money. The tradeoff is extended commutes.

Except for poorly-governed ones, the cities are more expensive to live in. Why? Why would it be more expensive to live in a horribly overcrowded hellhole that no one wants to be in? Answer: it wouldn't be. People who opt to live inside the nice neighborhoods in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and so on pay exhorbitant rent or huge mortgages, often for surprisingly small places, because they're very nice and very convenient places to live.

Indeed, just look at New York City: the single most crowded part of that burgeoning metropolis is Manhattan, which is absolutely jammed full of people. It's also one of the most expensive places on Planet Earth to live. Take a look, for example, at this cozy little 4-room, 700 square foot duplex condominium with such lush amenities as a washer/dryer, air conditioner, and private balcony. Perfect for the young single or the retired grandma who just needs a little place.

Look at the price tag. Only $895,000.00. Ya think the schools are any good there?

But what about the bad neighborhoods in the cities? You'll usually find that they're the ones with the abandoned buildings, the gutted out stores, poor police protection, and schools being closed because of declining enrollment. In other words, they're areas people tend to leave if they can.

When people move to major population centers, their incomes tend to go up and their tendency to have kids goes down. Once the average income passes a certain point--and it doesn't have to be a lot--very few people choose to have more than one or two kids, and many choose to have none. Indeed, were it not for immigration, the United States would have shrunk dramatically in population over the last 50 years. The occasional family of 6 or 8 or even 10 or more notwithstanding, few people opt for more than a couple of kids. Which means we can easily bear families that choose to have more.

Check the census bureau if you don't believe it: by the best estimates available, the world population will begin to shrink by 2100 at the latest, peaking out at no more than 11 billion or so. Most estimates show the peak at closer to 7 or 8 billion people by 2050, with a worldwide decline beginning after that.

The world isn't overpopulated. We aren't in any danger of overpopulation. In a free society, more people means more resources, more opportunities, and better standards of living. Those are not mushy feel-good sentiments, those are facts.

But here's the funny thing: if you tell most people all that, they won't believe you. Indeed, some even get angry about it.