{"id":2768,"date":"2012-01-30T22:07:02","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T03:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=2768"},"modified":"2012-01-30T22:10:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T03:10:33","slug":"japans-birthrate-crunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2012\/01\/30\/environment\/japans-birthrate-crunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s Birthrate “Problem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan’s health and welfare ministry has released another lugubrious report<\/a> on the nation’s declining population.\u00a0 If current trends continue, it will decline by a third in the next 60 years, and 40 percent of the population will be over retirement age by 2060.\u00a0 Of course, many other industrialized countries\u00a0face a similar problem, if you can call\u00a0it that.\u00a0 I question whether it’s really a problem.<\/p>\n

Why, after all, would Japan want to maintain a population of over 100 million?\u00a0 The\u00a0ultimate cause of all our environmental problems is, after all, excessive population and Japan certainly has her share.\u00a0 The overcrowding there is extreme, or certainly seems so to anyone who isn’t used to such a high population density.\u00a0 Then there’s the question of whether\u00a0such a large population is really sustainable in the long\u00a0run.\u00a0 Go to any graduate library and look up stories about Japan that were printed in the political journals between the wars, and you’ll find that the problem of feeding her people seemed insurmountable at the time, when her population was only about half what it is now.\u00a0 The modern, high yield rice strains that have given Asia some breathing room had not yet been discovered, and, with her\u00a0limited agricultural land already fully exploited, it seemed\u00a0inevitable to many, especially in Japanese ruling circles,\u00a0that she would gradually starve unless she could secure more territory overseas.\u00a0\u00a0The aggression this\u00a0fear inspired and the\u00a0disaster the country suffered as a result of it are familiar to anyone who has read a little history.\u00a0 Is it really impossible that a problem that seemed so insurmountable within living memory should recur?\u00a0 What if there is another collapse of world trade as occurred\u00a0during the\u00a0Great Depression, and Japan can no longer afford to import sufficient food or the fertilizer to maintain production at home?\u00a0 What advantage will\u00a0a large population be then?<\/p>\n

What\u00a0problems will she face if her population declines as expected?\u00a0 A shrinking economy for a time?\u00a0\u00a0She suffered a far more severe “shrinking” of her economy during World War II, but somehow managed to\u00a0not only survive that, but thrive in its aftermath.\u00a0 A reduction in benefits for her\u00a0retired citizens?\u00a0 Will their lot be any better if the problem of overpopulation is\u00a0simply allowed to fester\u00a0until\u00a0a major economic crisis comes along, as it eventually will?<\/p>\n

Global warming, overfishing, polluted water supplies, and all the\u00a0other environmental problems we face may appear more or less severe depending on ones ideological predilections.\u00a0 Regardless, the fact is that the ultimate cause of every one of them is overpopulation.\u00a0 Instead of panicking over declining birthrates, I suggest it might be better to consider them a boon.\u00a0 Instead of gambling that the fragile environment of our planet will continue to sustain an ever increasing population, would it not be better to step back for a while and give it time to recover from some of the damage we’ve already done to it?\u00a0 Given that this is the only planet we have to live on for the time being, does it make sense to take such absolutely unnecessary risks?<\/p>\n

As for Japan, she is likely to benefit more than most countries from the “problem” of declining population.\u00a0 Given her history and culture, it\u00a0is unlikely that her\u00a0rulers will be driven to the irrational extreme of importing masses of alien workers to\u00a0“solve” it.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this “solution” is already being tried in\u00a0several other countries, and is likely to end in disasters far worse than the problem it was intended to\u00a0cure.<\/p>\n

Of course, I do not mean to imply that you, dear reader, should have fewer children.\u00a0 The fecundity of the readers of this blog is unlikely to contribute substantially to the global population problem one way or the other.\u00a0 If we get to that point I will let you know.<\/p>\n

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Japan’s health and welfare ministry has released another lugubrious report on the nation’s declining population.\u00a0 If current trends continue, it will decline by a third in the next 60 years, and 40 percent of the population will be over retirement age by 2060.\u00a0 Of course, many other industrialized countries\u00a0face a similar problem, if you can … Continue reading “Japan’s Birthrate “Problem””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-population"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-IE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2768"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2774,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions\/2774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}