As pointed out in email

[james_davis_nicoll]

India’s declining fertility rate, now only slightly higher than that of the United States, is part of a global trend of lower population growth. Yet the media and many educated Americans have entirely missed this major development, instead sticking to erroneous perceptions about inexorable global population growth that continue to fuel panicked rhetoric about everything from environmental degradation and immigration to food and resource scarcity.

In a recent exercise, most of my students believed that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) was twice that of the United States. Many of my colleagues believed the same. In actuality, it is only 2.5, barely above the estimated U.S. rate of 2.1 in 2011, and essentially the replacement level.

Comments

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I will mention in passing that the Perennial California Water Shortage has been going on longer than many of us have been alive, and shows no sign of ending any time soon. But by the same token, it might not be getting particularly worse, either.

Much of the problem can be traced to two factors: plopping down major cities into deserts, and turning other deserts into irrigated farm land. Humans are unlikely to give up either Las Vegas or the Imperial Valley.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing about 35 years ago that the next great national crisis after the Energy Crisis was going to be the Water Crisis. Every few years, somebody predicts an American civil war over it.

I eventually went out west and realized that over there it's the Water Crisis all the time. But it doesn't quite get to the shooting stage.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Hardly ever. (I think it did a few times in the Old West era.) But the water quotas have been over-committed to supplying more water than actually exists since at least the 1930s, and by now everyone's used to it.

Floridians panic when it snows. Minnesotans, not so much.