This hypothesis is materially impossible

There is no doubt that developed countries have seen their rate of population growth decline in recent years. It is therefore our hope that the same process will take place in developing countries. Thus, the world population would eventually stabilize.

This saving reasoning masks a sad reality: the irrefragable fact that the resources available to humanity are limited. The current number of “developed” consumers already exceeds what the biosphere can support. Since the 1980s, we have been living on credit, that is, the global ecological footprint of humanity exceeds the planet’s biocapacity.

However, if developing countries are to be able to achieve progress that is supposed to stabilize their population, they must begin to “eat” as we do. If 700 million European consumers need an entire planet to support them, 7 billion will mathematically need ten planets.

In addition, it will take time for the demographic explosion caused by the improvement of living conditions to lead to population stabilization. The population growth rate in Western Europe was only 0.14% before the industrial era. Then the population of the United Kingdom, the first country to be industrialised, rose from 6 million to 21 million in a century (multiplyed by 3.5 between 1750 and 1850). That of the United States, which was undergoing a later industrial revolution, was multiplied by 15 between 1820 and 1950!

Things will probably go faster today, given the globalisation of transport and information (television, internet etc.). But if it took around two centuries for the population to stabilize in the West, it will obviously take a few generations in developing countries, if only because of the age pyramid.

Assuming that the population has multiplied as much as it has done in our country as a result of progress, we would soon have not about ten billion bepeds around the world, as the demographers predict, but 6 billion current candidates for development times a factor of at least 3.5 (see the cases of the United Kingdom or France), plus the billion already existing consumers, or 22 billion. That is, it would take 30 times the planet to support everyone!

The advancement of green technologies will never be able to compensate in time for such a development. All the more so since countries in the process of industrialization will tend to delay their application in order not to penalise their own growth (cf. over-consumption of coal in China, industrial pollution in India, etc.). Agricultural production will also be exceeded, especially if land wear is taken into account as a result of intensive methods designed to ensure sufficient production.

Thus, the solution to which the demographers cling proves mathematically impossible. The first phase of demographic transition will multiply populations far beyond what the planet could bear. And when a change in habits could lead to a reduction in the fertility rate, it will be too late: the planet will be depopulated for a long time.

Specialists seem to have forgotten that a sphere is round and finished. We are locked in a small ball of 12600 km in diameter, and we cannot do anything about it.

It would be aberrant to expect the world population to spontaneously adjust to renewable resources. If we do not want our descendants to end up starving and killing each other, we must take the bull by the horns and control in urgent human reproductive instinct.

This involves knowing all the mechanisms of interaction between culture, nature, sexuality and demography, which is far from the case…