Is the Population Bombing? Why Immigrants Will Empty the Boomers’ Bedpans

For decades I’ve thought about how some day, when Baby Boomers are in their twilight years, the borders would have to be opened in order to have enough people to empty our bedpans when we’re in nursing homes. I just couldn’t imagine there’d be sufficient staff to take care of the needs of this generation as their turn on the circle of life came to a close.

As it turns out, there has already been a large influx of immigrants staffing nursing homes today. Meanwhile there is another variable at play, a historic decline in our global population.

This weekend I was listening to a discussion with Nick Eberstadt about this topic and although I was aware that some European countries were seeing population declines, I had no idea how global it was.

For the first time since the Black Death (bubonic plague) in the 14th century, the world's population is poised to decline — not because of war, famine, pestilence, or disaster, but due to sustained below-replacement fertility.

 

Since the 1300s, global population has grown roughly 20-fold through steady (if uneven) growth, as birth rates consistently exceeded death rates. Today, however, global health and longevity continue to improve overall, but fertility rates are now falling below the ~2.1 births per woman needed for long-term population stability. Eberstadt suggests the world may already have crossed into net below-replacement territory.

 

When I went to college, the “big thing” was quite contrary. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb warned of explosive growth and mass starvation. Because of the Vietnam War, colleges were overcrowded because being a student was one way to get a draft deferment. How this impacted me personally was that some of the required 101-level classes were filled, so they created a catchall class called Zero Population Growth. I wrote the required papers, but never bought into the Ehrlich narrative. In hindsight the class was a classic example of academics telling us what to think instead of how to think.

 

It was a theory presented as fact. What was missing was that science, technology and free markets could solve the food issue and other issues as they arose, because that is the nature of Capitalism. See a problem, use your brain and imagination, and profit from solving the problem. 

 

The new reality is the opposite: fertility collapse, not overpopulation. This is a voluntary, peacetime phenomenon driven by cultural, economic, and social changes in childbearing patterns — described as “entirely new” in human history. Here are some stats that show how pervasive the issue is.

 

East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan)

By 2022, populations in all these countries were already declining. Regional fertility is about 50% below replacement — approaching or below 1.0 birth per woman in places like South Korea, Taiwan, and large parts of China. What this means is that each new generation of newborns is roughly half the size of the parental generation.

 

In China specifically, the one-child policy (1979) was relaxed in 2016 so you could have two childre, but births dropped by about half afterward anyways. Eberstadt sees this as a “massive vote of no confidence” in the regime — people aren’t having more children despite policy changes and incentives.

 

India

Overall fertility has fallen to sub-replacement levels. In Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), fertility dropped to around 1.0 birth per woman by 2021 — lower than in major German or Italian cities. This transformation occurred in roughly one lifetime, from roughly 5 births per woman in the mid-1970s to current low levels.

 

Europe (including Russia)

The decline has been occurring for half a century. In Russia there are 17 million more deaths than births since the fall of the Soviet Union. In the European Union (27 countries), births fell from 6.8 million in 1964 to just under 3.7 million in 2023.

There are fewer births in France today than in 1806 (during the Napoleonic era). As a result, much of Europe is now a “net mortality zone” (more deaths than births), with the gap widening.

 

Latin America, Caribbean, North Africa, and Middle East

There’s been a broad decline in birth rates across all these regions. Iran and Turkey, too. 

.

Broader Implications 

The decline is widespread and rapid on a historical timescale. East Asia and Europe are already experiencing absolute population shrinkage.The interview cuts off just as it appears to note that only limited parts of the world (likely sub-Saharan Africa) remain above replacement — setting up the follow-up segment I haven’t listened to yet.

Eberstadt frames this as a profound, under-appreciated turning point in human history: the end of centuries of growth and the start of an “Age of Depopulation,” driven by choices around family size rather than external catastrophes. The tone is measured but urgent, emphasizing how counterintuitive this is for those raised on overpopulation narratives.

 

Ironically, in the midst of Europe’s population decline amongst native Westerners, Ayaan Hirsi Ali draws attention to the growth of Islamic immigrant culture by means of both immigration and reproduction. Did you know that over the past two years the #1 boys name in England and Wales has been Muhammad? That's a whole 'nother story.

What are your thoughts on the world's population decline?

Feel free to leave a comment below.

From Population Bomb to Ethanol Mandates

Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

When I was in college around 1970, one of the books that shaped how many thought about the future was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The central fear then was stark and urgent: humanity was growing faster than the planet’s ability to feed itself. Mass starvation, we were told, was not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty unless something changed.

Whether Ehrlich’s predictions would prove right or wrong is beside the point. What mattered was the anxiety that framed the era. Food was precious. Arable land was finite. Population growth threatened to overwhelm fragile systems. Feeding people was the overriding concern.   

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture has shifted in ways I never would have imagined back then. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. And yet hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure, many of them acutely so. Hunger has not disappeared; it has simply become chronic, unevenly distributed, and easier to ignore unless it erupts into crisis.

At the same time, something else has happened—something that strikes me as strange. Vast amounts of productive farmland, particularly in the United States, are no longer devoted primarily to feeding people, but to growing corn that is converted into ethanol. This ethanol is then blended into gasoline—not to replace it, but to dilute it. We are using food-producing land, water, fertilizer, and energy to marginally extend a fuel supply, all in the name of energy independence.

This is where the dissonance creeps in.

I’ve written before about the ethanol debate and the political enthusiasm that surrounded it, especially after the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Ethanol was sold as a clean, patriotic solution to foreign oil dependence. And once embraced, it quickly became politically untouchable. Powerful agricultural and industrial interests ensured that mandates stayed in place, even as questions mounted about ethanol’s true energy balance and environmental benefits.

But step back from the technical arguments for a moment and look at the larger picture. We once worried that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now we grow food to burn it. This is weird to me. 

I don’t mean that as a slogan or a condemnation. It’s simply an observation—one that feels increasingly difficult to square with the world as it is. In many parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food insecurity is not theoretical. It shapes daily life. It fuels migration, political instability, and despair. And yet it rarely stays in our media spotlight for long. Hunger that is constant does not make for compelling headlines.

What we see instead are debates about fuel blends, mileage standards, and subsidy structures—important questions, perhaps, but questions that often unfold in isolation from broader human consequences.

None of this suggests that biofuels are inherently evil, or that farmers are villains, or that energy transitions are unnecessary. It does suggest, however, that priorities can drift in subtle ways. Policies designed for one moment can harden into assumptions, even when the conditions that gave rise to them have changed.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not the existence of ethanol mandates, but how little we seem to reflect on their implications.* We live in a world where hunger persists alongside abundance, where farmland feeds engines while people go without, and where the moral weight of those choices is rarely discussed.

Back in 1970, we were taught to fear a future defined by scarcity. Today, the problem looks different. It is not that we lack resources. It's that we struggle to decide what they are for. And that, to my mind, is a far more troubling question.

* * * 

When I considered the title for this post I was tempted to replace the word Mandates with Madness. I left it as is because I didn't want to be accused of having a clickbait title. The topic is too important to be trivial about it.

* * * 

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

*Another negative feature of blending ethanol into gasoline has to with how it damages small engines due to "phase separation." Phase separation in ethanol-blended gasoline occurs when the ethanol absorbs moisture from the air or environment, causing the fuel to split into two layers: a water-ethanol mixture at the bottom and pure gasoline on top. This happens more readily in humid conditions or during long storage periods.

            The problem for small engines, like those in lawnmowers, chainsaws, or boats, is that the watery layer can corrode metal parts, clog fuel lines, and cause starting issues or engine failure. The separated gasoline lacks octane, leading to poor performance and premature death. Using ethanol-free fuel or specialized additives helps prevent this damage, but you seldom hear anyone talking about this.

Two Things I've Heard All My Life That Don't Make Sense

Even though we're closer to Armageddon than we were 50 years ago, somehow it seemed like the real "Armageddon Fever" took place a half century ago. Maybe it was Hal Lindsey's 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth that stimulated the subsequent firestorm of pop-Apocalyptic lit. Or maybe it was simply the turbulence of the times--assassinations, Viet Nam, cities burning--that spawned the belief that humanity was doomed.

While Christians were reading about the end of the world and looking for their Lord's return, secular readers were engaged with books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and doomsaying by groups like the Club of Rome. And let's not forget the angst generated by the somewhat intangible, though ever present, threat of nuclear holocaust as presented in books like On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

From those times to the present I've observed a few statements by pundits that never seem to go away. They may lay dormant for a season or two, but pretty soon they are being recycled again.

The first: In 10 years we will be out of oil.
This declaration was always accompanied by hand wringing about oil running out and the need to cut our dependence on oil. The latter is noble, though when I was young the statement emphasized cutting our dependence on foreign oil. There is so much oil under U.S. soil that you can't even imagine it. For some reason this off limits and that is off limit and those folks should be permitted to use their oil rigs and that pipeline has to be shut.... Bottom Line: It's empty rhetoric.

The real moral of this story is: Repeating silly pronouncements with specific dates or numbers will diminish your credibility

The second: There are too many people to feed. The world can't sustain any more.
In 1960, the population of the world was 3 billion. By 1974 it had grown to 4 billion. As of this moment, August 2023, there are 8 billion people populating our planet. 

Paul Ehrlich's book predicted mass starvation of the global population by the end of the 70s. 

What I remember most is that despite the troubling rise in population, technology was also advancing to make production of food more efficient and human life sustainable.

Now here's what I don't understand. After decades of handwringing about not being able to feed the world population as it grows, these very same people are diverting food crops for ethanol. And they are eliminating cattle in the Netherlands because of flatulence. (Ireland and Canada are pushing 30% cuts as well.) And I just heard that even more cropland is being eliminated for solar panel farms.

What happened to the concern about hunger?

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

Sometime around 20 to 25 years ago Popular Science magazine had a detailed breakdown of the costs and benefits of turning corn into ethanol for car fuel. By the time you grow the corn, harvest it, transport it, convert it, distribute it.... There has been absolutely no gain. It uses up as much energy to create ethanol as the net gain from using it. In short, it is a waste.

Here's something else they don't tell you. E-10 gasoline (E-10 means 10% ethanol) can cause damage to small engines if not handled properly. It's too technical for this blog post, but you can look into it. The problem is called "phase separation." 

So what does our Minnesota leadership do? They are now pushing the use of E-15 instead of E-10. Moving forward with ethanol is ridiculous. Lawmakers close their ears to the experts who point out the silliness here. First, ethanol can damage older engines because it is a solvent which can dissolve some of the plastics, metals and rubber components used in older engines. Second, it has a lower energy content than gasoline. The result is lower fuel economy, the exact opposite of the increasingly stringent fuel economy objectives pressed by the EPA through CAFE regs. Third, because ethanol evaporates more easily than gasoline, it can contribute to smog formation. So why is Governor Walz celebrating the increased use of E15?

Why are we decreasing food production to increase production of a form of fuel that is less efficient and creates more smog? Whatever happened to all that concern about not being able to feed the masses?

*

A couple stats about corn in Minnesota. According to the USDA, Minnesota farmers planted 8.5 million acres of corn in 2021. 31% of this corn crop was used for ethanol. That's slightly more than all the acres used for cities, towns and roads in Minnesota. 

*

It's time to take a walk.