A Simple Model of
Population Decline
To set
the parameters of our model, we need to answer the four questions I
posed above.
When Will The Decline Start?
This depends entirely on the timing of Peak Oil. My
conclusion that the peak is occurring now makes it easy to pick a start
date. The model starts this year, though a start date five or ten
years from now would not affect the overall picture.
When Will it End?
Given that oil is a primary determinant of carrying capacity,
the
obvious answer is that the situation will stabilize when the
oil is gone. The oil will never be
completely gone of course, so we
can modify
that to read, "When oil is unavailable to most of humanity." We
know that point will come, because oil is a finite, non-renewable
resource, but when will that be?
Based on the model in the figure above I chose an end date of
2082, 75 years from now.
How Much Control Will We Have?
Will we be able to mitigate the population decline rate
through
voluntary
actions such as reducing global fertility rates, and making the oil
substitutions I mentioned above.
I have decided (perhaps arbitrarily) that the oil substitutions would
not affect the course of the decline, but would be used to determine
the sustainable number of people at the end of the simulation.
Fertility rates are an important consideration. The approach I've
taken is to model the net birth rate, the
combination of natural fertility and death rates that give us our
current global population growth of 75 million per year. I
modified that by having it decline by 0.015% per year. This
reflects both a declining fertility rate due to environmental factors
and some degree of women's education and empowerment, as well as a
rising death rate due to a decline in the the global economy. I
do not
think that traditional humane models such as the Benign Demographic
Transition
theory will be able to influence events, given that the required
economic growth is likely to be unavailable.
How Bad Will It Be?
This question comes from the assumption that the decline in
net
births alone will not be enough to solve the problem (and the
simulation bears this out). This means that some level of excess
deaths will result from a wide variety of circumstances. I
postulate a rate of excess deaths that starts off quite low, rises over
the decades to some maximum and then declines. The rise is driven
by the worsening global situation as the overshoot takes effect, and
the subsequent fall is due to human numbers and activities gradually
coming back into balance with the resources available.
How Many People Will Be Left?
Taking the carrying
capacity effects discussed above into account, I initially set the bar
for a sustainable
population at the population when we discovered oil in about 1850. This
was about 1.2 billion people. Next I subtracted some number to
account for the world's degraded carrying capacity, then added back a
bit to
account for our increased knowledge and the ameliorating effects of oil
substitutes. This is a necessarily imprecise
calculation, but I have settled on a round number of one
billion people as the
long-term
sustainable population of the planet in the absence of oil.
Comments
The
model
is a simple arithmetical simulation that answers the following
question: "Given the assumptions about birth and death rates
listed above, how will human population numbers evolve to get
from our current population of 6.6 billion to a sustainable population
of 1 billion in 75 years?" It is not a predictive model. It
is aggregated to a global level, and so can tell us nothing about
regional effects. It also cannot address social outcomes.
Its primary intent is to allow us to examine the roll that excess
deaths will play in the next 75 years.
The Model
We will
start by graphing the net birth rate over
the period 2007 to 2082, incorporating a 0.015% annual decline:
As you can see, the net birth rate declines to zero by 2082.
Is it possible that this declining birth rate will get us
closer
to our sustainable population goal of one billion?
The following graph shows our population growth with the
effects of the declining net birth rate shown above:
As you can see, my assumption about declining birth rates
leads
to a stable population, but it's still 50% larger than today. In fact,
this projection is remarkably similar to the one produced by the United
Nations, which estimates a global population of 9.2 billion in
2050. The message of this graph is clear. If we need to
reduce
our
population, simply adjusting the birth rate is insufficient.
There will be excess deaths required to reach our target.
The following graph shows the excess death rate rising and then falling
as described above. I will reiterate that the origin of these
excess deaths is not considered in the model. It is sufficient to
understand that these are not the result of old age or the various
"natural causes" we have come to accept as a part of our modern
life. These deaths may be due to such things as rising infant
mortality rates, shorter adult life expectancies, famine, pandemics,
wars etc. Some of these
deaths will be from human agency, but most will not.

Applying the above excess death rate to our current population
yields
the following curve. As you can see, the number
of excess deaths per year increases
quite rapidly (consistent with the effects of overshoot) and then falls
off as the population comes back into balance with the resources
available. The peak rate of deaths comes much earlier than the
peak in the percentage death rate shown in the above graph because the
population starts to decline rapidly. A lower percentage death
rate acts on a larger population to produce a higher numerical death
rate. As the population declines so does the numerical death
rate, even when the percentage rate still increasing.

The final graph is the outcome of the full simulation.
It
starts from our current population and shows the combined effects of a
declining net birth rate and the excess death rate due to falling
carrying capacity as described above. The goal of
the model has been met: it has achieved a
sustainable world
population of one billion by the year 2082.
The Cost
The human cost of such an involuntary population rebalancing
is,
of
course, horrific. Based on this model we
would experience an average excess death rate of 100 million per year
every
year for the next 75 years to achieve our target population of one
billion by
2082.
The peak excess death rate would happen in about 20 years, and would be
about 200 million that year. To put this in perspective, WWII
caused an excess death rate of only 10 million per year for only six
years.
Given
this, it's not hard to see why population control is the untouchable
elephant in the room - the problem we're in is simply too big for
humane or even rational solutions. It's also not hard to see why some
people are beginning to grasp the inevitability of a human die-off.
Summation
One of the common accusations leveled at those who present
analyses like this is that by doing so they are advocating or hoping
for the
massive population reductions they describe, and are encouraging
draconian and inhumane measures to achieve them. Nothing could
be further from the truth. I am personally quite attached
to the world
I've grown up in and the people that inhabit it, as is every other
population commentator I am familiar with. However, in my
ecological and Peak Oil
research over the last several years I have begun to see the shape of a
looming catastrophe that has absolutely nothing to do with human
intentions, good or ill. It is the simple product of our species'
continuing growth in both numbers and ability, an exponential growth
that
is taking
place within the finite ecological niche of the entire world.
Our recent effusive growth has been fueled by the draw-down of
primordial stocks of petroleum which are about to deplete while our
numbers and activities continue to grow. This is a simple,
obvious recipe for disaster.
This model is intended to give some clarity to that premonition of
trouble. It carries no judgment about what ought to be, it
merely describes what might be. The model is
likewise no crystal ball. It offers no predictions and no
insights into the
details of what
will happen. It presents the simple arithmetic consequences of
one set
of
assumptions, albeit assumptions that I personally feel have a
reasonable probability of being fulfilled.
There are factors .that will affect the course of events that have not
been considered in the model. Readers may legitimately take me to
task for not considering or summarily dismissing the various ways
humanity is already trying to alleviate some of the foreseen
dangers. For instance, my model does not mention global warming
or carbon caps, and dismisses most alternative energy sources as
ineffective. The model also does not address the regional
differences that are bound to expand as the crisis unfolds. While
such criticisms are justified and are well worth exploring in the
context of oil decline, the purpose of this article is to take a
high-level look at the global population situation, considering
the entire planet as one ecological niche with a single aggregate
carrying capacity supported by oil in its role as a facilitator of
transportation and food production.
The model warns us that the
involuntary decline of the human population in the aftermath of the Oil
Age will
not happen without overwhelming universal hardship. There are
things we will be able to do as individuals to minimize the personal
effects of such a decline, and we should all be deciding what those
things need to be. It's never too early to prepare for a storm
this big.
© Copyright 2007, Paul Chefurka
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