Empty: The Risk of NO Kids

Cloudy with a Risk of Children

Imagine a world without kids – or at least one with far fewer of them.

Darrell Bricker, co-author of Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, joins the podcast to discuss the profound demographic shift sweeping the globe — a seismic change that will leave us with a much greyer world populated by significantly less children.

Fifty years ago, 3.5 billion humans populated the planet; and there was enormous concern that people were on the edge of outstripping the ability of the planet to support them all. Paul Erhlich, who authored The Population Bomb in 1968 and who more than anyone else fanned the flames of hysteria around imminent mass starvation, campaigned tirelessly for “Zero Population Growth” policies to minimize human suffering.

Ehrlich and his disciples were spectacularly wrong, of course: human populations instead exploded, to north of eight billion people today — and rates of famine and starvation have never been lower.

But will the world’s population continue to skyrocket? Are we headed to 10 billion? 20 billion? 50 billion?

The answer is a resounding “No”.

We’re closing in rapidly on “Zero Population Growth”, and then we’ll experience rapid population decline — not because of Ehrlich-style policy prescriptions, but because people all over the world over have decided to cut back on having kids (or simply to have no kids at all) even as humans live far longer than ever before.

Without doubt, children born today will inhabit a world far different from any that we’ve experienced before.

What will that mean for their lives and their prospects?

How can a shrunken cohort of young people be expected to support a huge population of old people?

What are the implications for human innovation, ingenuity, and flourishing?

Join us as Darrell offers his insights on these issues and more.