YET ANOTHER EXISTENTIAL THREAT.
by Bob Ramsay
When I was a kid, the big fear, aside from a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, was too many people. The world’s population in 1960 was 3 billion, with predictions it would grow exponentially, until the earth collapsed from too many people living on its surface. Billions would starve or die of thirst.
That isn’t happening. In fact, the opposite is happening: the world is facing a catastrophic decline in population.
There may be more than 8 billion people alive today, but within just two generations, it’s predicted that the population will start to decline. Billions may starve or die of thirst. But for different reasons.
This very quick blow landed on my long-held biases last week via Ross Douthat’s podcast. The conservative New York Times columnist was interviewing the British sociologist, Alice Evans, on the decline in fertility around the world.
Said Evans: “Fertility is collapsing everywhere all at once, perhaps with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa. But across Latin America, the Middle East and North America, all those trends are going sharply down. Economically, this has catastrophic implications for middle-income countries.”
Douthat then pointed out that Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7. This means that over the course of two generations, the population will fall by 50 million to 20-odd million.
Said Douthat: “So when we use terms like population collapse, we’re not talking about a gentle slide from above replacement fertility to slightly below where you need to adjust the retirement age so that people stay in the work force five years longer. You’re talking about cities being emptied, buildings standing empty, economies grounding to a halt."
Let’s stop for a moment and gather our wits with some facts about Canada:
In 2023, Canada recorded its lowest-ever fertility rate of 1.26 children born per woman. (In the early 60s, it was 3.9). Today’s 1.26 rate is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to sustain the population without immigration. Said Statscan: "Canada has now joined the group of 'lowest-low' fertility countries, including South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan, with 1.3 children per woman or less.”
Today, 97% of Canada’s population growth comes from immigrants. But let’s say Canada allowed no immigrants. Over 40 years, if our fertility rate fell to 1.0, each generation would be about 60% of the size of the previous one. After four generations (80 years), our population would be 94% smaller. Again, this assumes few to no immigrants. Still, it is a shocking idea.
What’s causing this potentially catastrophic fall in fertility? And a fall that if you live in a big city like Toronto, you really don’t see. After all, 300,000 new people moved here in the last year alone.
As Evans calls it, there’s a crisis of coupling.
This means massive numbers of people are staying single – they’re neither married nor cohabiting.
Indeed, in the US, over half the people between 18 and 34 are neither married nor cohabiting.
In Canada, that number is even larger: 73%.
They have no desire to be married or have kids. Is no one having sex any more?
That is correct; we aren’t.
And what is the cause of all this sexual inattention?
We are spending more time with our phones than we are with each other.
And that’s a downside of social media that’s caught us all with our pants…well, you know.
Meanwhile…
1. A love-hate relationship. I love Latvia’s passport. I love Einstein’s begonia. I lovereal meritocracy and mad skills and church ads and I loved Alan Rickman. I hate Jeff Bezos’ yacht.
2. Artisanal skills. It seems that reading and writing, the acts of putting one word in front of the other in order to make sense of life, and understanding those words, also in order to make sense of life, could soon be obsolete. Or at the very least, practiced by a small elite. After all, mass literacy demanded centuries of redesign and struggle, and the “reading brain” is an unnatural, fragile achievement. Oh well, it’s been a great 5,000 years.
3. Is today April 1? Hoaxes fool us all, all the time. Just check this vast Wikipedia listingof the very best, and this sub-listing of Wikipedia hoaxes.
4. “As you graduate into the world…” This is commencement address season. Here are three remarkable ones: Jacinda Ardern at Yale; and Abraham Verghese at Harvard; and Jane Fonda at the USC Annenberg School.
5. Animal instincts. They make seals great at video games and sled-dogs the saviours of Greenland. They make otters avatars for the advance of AI, and London the capital of cat statues and snake oil the lubricant of America’s love affair with anti-science.
Speaking of animals, who would want to chop your finger off? A crypto kidnapper. The famed venture firm, Andreesen Horowitz, hired a former Secret Service agent to tell clients and us how to protect yourself in the world of crypto.
6. Come home, Elon. The “Letter to Shareholders” is invariably written by the CEO. But last week at Tesla, their Chair of the Board got a “Letter from Shareholders.” It’s the ultimate Back to the Office note, and not one any Board or CEO would want to get.
And when Francis Fukuyama, of all people, takes you down because of your oligarch thinking (“I’m great at one thing. That must mean I’m great at everything”) and Jennifer Rubin exposes your very public drug use, it’s time for an intervention.
7. Overtourism. Last week I wrote: “...thousands of Canary Islanders marched against the 18 million tourists who visit the tiny Spanish island chain each year.”
Ann Layton replied with this elegiac note:
I had the enormous privilege of living in the Canaries (Tenerife) as a teenager from 1978 to 1980. It was paradise. Everywhere I went people called me “La Canadiense” because I was the only Canadian they had met. I lived in Puerto de la Cruz and went to school at the Universidad de La Laguna (University of the Lagoon?!) learned to speak Spanish in discos and on the beach and made friends all over town.”
“If I was late to the bank the manager would unlock the door for me - I only ever took out enough pesetas for one day to keep myself on a budget. I sipped cortados in the palm covered Plaza Charco beside old men playing chess. We used to exit the clubs at 4 am and go to the port to get some fresh tuna being grilled on little bbq’s by the water’s edge then go bang on the side door to the bakery and get warm buns right out of the oven to make the best tuna sandwiches on the planet. Every day after school ended at 8:30 pm my Swedish roommates and I took disco naps and got up again when the clock struck 11pm to head to places called “Discoteca Joy” or “Discoteca Bali”. Best places to learn a language!”
“Days were spent on the beach where Carlos the lifeguard would let me go body surf in the (enormous and dangerous) waves even on the Red Flag days because I was young and showy- offy. We camped on an empty spot between Playa de Las Americas and a beautiful old town called Los Cristianos and surfed and swam in volcanic rock pools. It was magical.
“I returned just a few years later and found a place so transformed I actually sat down at one point and cried.”
“Our camping spot was now wall to wall condos. Ugly time- share ones at that. The glorious old palms at Plaza Charco were chopped down to make way for Burger King and Pizza Hut. The beach where I once swam was totally gone - erosion perhaps? The lovely Paseo Maritimo where we used to stroll and get ice cream and German cakes was now full of Touts and cheap souvenir shops. There was a grand hotel I used to sneak in to for a swim on occasion - it had the most elegant Olympic pool. That was torn down replaced with a grotesque all-inclusive right out of the British TV show Benidorm. Similar clientele.”
“I was lucky to experience a magical place before it was overwhelmed by tourism. Those two years changed my life. I don’t think I can go back…”
8. When you just can’t take it any more. But…you’re a surgeon in the middle of an operation or an air traffic controller on the job at Pearson, try the NASA Tax Load Index. Here’s the back-story.
Speaking of scientific experts, what’s driving the expertise crisis? Class. And finally, there’s bowling alone, and then there’s glamping alone.
9. Make Music Day. Held on the longest day of the year, it’s a very big deal in dozens of countries, though new to Canada. Part of it is a global online event concert. This year it features ten choirs from nine countries on three continents. Each county performs for ten minutes and then all the choirs come together to sing Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds. Like last year's streaming concert, Hugh’s Room is doing the Canadian bit. You can come to Hugh’s Room at noon on June 21 and sing (Bird on a Wire and Heart of Gold), or sing along on your computer or phone. The more the merrier. Here’s what it is, and how it works and the link to the global stream.
Speaking of local/global events, the Toronto International Festival of Authors hosts MOTIVE, its mystery book festival from June 27 - 29. TIFA has just announced the authors.
And of course, there’s Pride from June 26 - 29 across Toronto. Here’s how they do it in Oslo.
10. Nature Talks Back. In 1855 Chief Seattle of the Duwamish Tribe in Washington State sent a letter to US President Franklin Pierce, setting out a different view of who really runs things. Last week at the Ramsay Massey Breakfast in Toronto, British nature writer Robert Macfarlane did the same.