Our Shrinking Planet E-Book

Massimo Livi Bacci

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 242

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In the space of another generation, the population of the earth will rise by 2.5 billion. Yet the real problem we face is not so much the increase in numbers as the fact that growth will be highly uneven. Whereas rich countries will see aging populations with little growth, populations in poor countries will double or even triple, having a much higher percentage of young people.

Against this backdrop, demographer Massimo Livi Bacci examines the implications of this disproportionate demographic development for domestic social stability, international migration flows, the balance of power among nations and the natural environment. Covering 10,000 years of human history from the Stone Age to the present, Livi Bacci shows how the space available for every inhabitant of the planet has decreased by a factor of a thousand. The notion of limits to the world's capacity - which once seemed a remote matter - is now among the most pressing issues we face, and the need to create effective global mechanisms for sustainable development is now more urgent than ever. 

An indispensable book for anyone concerned with the moral and political implications of our ever more crowded planet.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Author's Note

Introduction

1: Growing and Shrinking

Notes

2: Land, Water, Air

Notes

3: Adaptation and Self-Regulation

Notes

4: Sustainable … for Whom?

Notes

5: Geodemography and Geopolitics

Notes

6:

Homo sapiens

,

Homo movens

Notes

7: Long Lifespans Have Their Cost

Notes

8: Few Prescriptions for Many Ills

Notes

Epilogue: Our Shrinking Planet

Note

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Table 1.1    Population of the continents, China, and India in 1820, 1913, and 2020

Table 1.2    Parameters of demographic transition across the continents, China, and India

Table 2.1    Land area cultivated per capita

Table 2.2    Distribution by use of Earth's land area (million km

2

)

Table 2.3    Population in low-elevation coastal zones, by region and continent (2000)

Table 3.1    Mean number of children per woman in various regions and large countries

Table 3.2    Recourse to contraception in various regions and large countries

Table 3.3    The crisis's demographic effects on Italy: 2008 and 2016, compared

Table 4.1    Population in Germany and Nigeria, by age group (in millions), 2015 and 2050

Table 4.2    Metabolism (extraction of basic resources) in the rich world and in the poor world, from 2000 to 2050

Table 5.1    Ranking of countries by population, production, development assistance, and other indicators of ‘power’

Table 6.1    Active age population (20–65 years of age, in millions) and its development, 2015–2050

Table 6.2    GDP per capita, in international dollars, in rich and poor countries, 1950, 1980 and 2013

Table 6.3    International migrant stock 1960–2013 (people born abroad and residents of foreign nationality)

Table 7.1    Age structure for stationary populations with life expectancies of 40, 60, 80, and 100 years

Table 8.1    Energy supply in various regions of the world, in 1990–92 and 2012–14 (per capita daily calories)

Table 8.2    Index of the adequacy of energy supply, 1990–92 and 2012–14

Table 8.3    Percentage of children under 5 suffering from wasting, stunted growth, underweightness, and mortality per 1,000 children of this same age

Table 8.4    Number of children per woman in Africa and the rest of the world, 1950–2015

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1    World population growth (in billions of people)

Source

: United Nations,

World Population Prospects

: The 2012 Revision, New York, 2013 (at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm)

Figure 1.2    The demographic transition or revolution

Source

: http://www.trunity.net/sam2/view/article/177749

Copyright page

First published in Italian as Il pianeta stretto © Società editrice Il Mulino, Bologna, 2015

This English edition © Polity Press, 2017

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1583-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1584-4 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon Roman

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Author's Note

The data cited in this book come mostly from official sources, from the United Nations to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank. More specifically, the population data from 1950 onward are drawn from the UN's World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision (esa.un.org/unpd/wpp), unless otherwise indicated. The data subsequent to 2015 are drawn from the same source, on the basis of the so-called ‘median variant’ of UN projections (there is also a ‘low’ and ‘high’ variant). In practice, the median variant is based on reasonable, widely accepted hypotheses as to how demographic variables will develop in the future. It can be used as a genuine prediction, ignoring the UN's own semantic subtleties in distinguishing between ‘prospects’ and ‘predictions’. In the text I have used the expressions ‘developed countries’, ‘rich countries’, and ‘western countries’ interchangeably, and so, too, the opposite expressions ‘developing countries’, ‘less developed countries’, and ‘poor countries’. According to the UN classification, the developed countries are the countries of Europe and North America as well as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. All the others are ‘less developed countries’ (even if some of them are quite developed today). In the text I often make reference to two overall indices: the mean number of children per woman; and life expectancy at birth. The former measures the average number of children born to a woman who survives through the entire fertile life cycle (and thus it overlooks mortality). Life expectancy (understood to mean life expectancy at birth, unless some other age is explicitly mentioned) represents the mean number of years lived by a newborn during her life, subject to the risks of death prevalent across all age groups at the moment of birth.

Introduction

1Growing and Shrinking

♦ Eros, Thanatos, and the demographic balance in the ancient world

♦ From biological-instinctual conditions to individual choice

♦ The world's changeable geodemography

♦ Revolution and demographic transition: From 1 to 10 billion in two centuries

Men and women of the Homo sapiens species have not long been on this Earth: only for some 100,000 years. In the long arc of the world's biological evolution, this is a very short time indeed. Like other animal species, humans are motivated by a strong survival instinct. The concept of instinct is controversial and lends itself to various different interpretations. In more simple terms, we could define it as the constant attempt to avoid suffering and put off the unpleasant event that is death. The reproductive instinct is helpful to us in this sense, because the existence of family descent and the solidarity between parents and their offspring strengthen our capacity to survive. Children unable to take care of themselves survive thanks to parental care, just as old people unable to take care of themselves survive thanks to the care their children provide. The reproductive instinct and the survival