Famine, low living standards, unemployment, political instability and ecological destruction. Society… must seek ways to curb population growth…
— Scientific American, 1993
These are exciting times, if you — like me — are an advocate of solving the world’s problems. Many problems have already been solved, which gives us hope that the rest can get straightened out eventually.
Mosquitos, for example. They used to be a big problem, even though they were very small. Humans experimented with smearing their bodies with pork fat, and with burning cedar bark, but scientists finally discovered DEET, which has pretty much put mosquitos out of business.
Another challenge we’ve tackled: getting to work on time. That used to be a problem, five days a week. Then scientists invented alarm clocks, and now we can wake up in plenty of time to get the car warmed up and gulp down a cup of coffee before heading to the office. The clocks worked so well, we can now work seven days a week, which solved another problem: what to do with ourselves over the weekend.
But overpopulation… that was a problem that seemed insurmountable, even for scientists.
Actually, it hadn’t been a problem until relatively recently. For almost all of human history, humans were killed by disease, wars, and wild animals just as fast as new babies could be born, and that kept the population at less than 200 million, for thousands of years. Then scientists figured out ways to cure diseases and exterminate wild animals, so we only had wars left to kill people, and as a result, the global population started growing at an exponential rate.
Obviously, when scientists solve one problem, they sometimes create an even bigger one.
I came across a graph the other day, on the website OurWorldInData.com, showing the population explosion since about 1700. The blue line is the estimated populations up until 2023, and the pink line shows estimates about the future by the UN Population Division. They predicted a peak global population of about 10.4 billion, with a declining population after 2086.
This graph was apparently created in 2023. Even COVID couldn’t put a dent in the problem.
But it’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Circa 250 BC, Chinese philosopher Han Fei Tzu wrote:
People at present think that five sons are not too many, and each son has five sons also, and before the death of the grandfather there are already 25 descendants. Therefore people are more and wealth is less; they work hard and receive little.
As we note, Han reckoned only “sons” in this warning. Daughters didn’t even count as people in those days. Still, we had to wait until 1700 before this whole overpopulation thing really took off.
But now, we know more than we did then. In particular, Republicans know more than they did then. And they aren’t even scientists.
Earlier this month, the Heritage Foundation — the same conservative think tank that gave us ‘Project 2025’ — posted a special report by Roger Severino, Jay W. Richards, Emma Waters, Delano Squires, Rachel Sheffield, and Robert Rector, entitled: “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”.
In order to save America and its economy, we need to have actual Americans to save, and to do the saving. Which means, we need babies to be born. And traditionally, babies resulted from marriages between men and women. The only way we can save America, according to this special report, is by saving “the Family”.
From that report’s introduction:
On July 4, 2026, Americans will remember how the Founding Fathers won their freedom and established ordered liberty through a system of limited government, federalism, and the rule of law. In understanding their crowning achievement, Americans must recognize that the Founding Fathers were, quite literally, fathers: Fifty-four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence married and had a total of 337 children among them — an average of six each.
I believe the Heritage Foundation authors are including both sons and daughters in this total, but that’s just an assumption.
250 years later, we’ve solved a number of serious global problems, but a relatively new problem has raised its ugly head. American fathers aren’t trying hard enough to be fathers, and mothers aren’t trying hard enough to be mothers.
From the report:
Total fertility — the number of children born per woman — had been falling steadily since the Industrial Revolution but recovered significantly after the Great Depression and through the baby boom. It then cratered in the 1960s. By 2024, it hit a record low of 1.6 lifetime births per woman, which is far below the 2.1 required for a population to replace itself.
If these trends continue as expected, deaths will outpace births within a decade… Put plainly, the [projected] future of America consists of far fewer Americans.
The Heritage Foundation authors perceive a connection between declining “total fertility rate” and the declining popularity of marriage, and the rising rate of divorce. Americans aren’t making families like they used to. Granted, making a family and raising children is hard work. Especially, marriage is hard work. Ask me how I know.
And Americans generally dislike hard work.
But we have this graph.
Scientists got us where we are today by eliminating diseases and wild animals, and thereby allowing population growth to get totally out of control.
Then they squashed the “total fertility rate” by inventing birth control.
Seems like they can’t make us happy, no matter what they do.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.