[Scott] Coming up on "Energy Switch," global population and its connection to energy and environment.

- People create things and enjoy, but people also pollute and destroy.

And so it's really natural to ask whether more people means more environmental destruction and whether depopulation is what's going to come to the rescue and save us.

[Scott] Thoughts to add to that?

- Well, and that was everybody.

Go back and go back, and what he just said is exactly the issue.

What we're dealing with here is cultural change more than anything.

- Right.

- And we have a culture now of basically low birth rates.

And you can put in whatever incentives you wanna put in place, but they have marginal effects.

[Scott] Up next, whatever you thought you knew about population, be prepared to change your mind.

[Narrator] Funding for "Energy Switch" was provided in part by, The University of Texas at Austin, leading research in energy and the environment for a better tomorrow.

What starts here changes the world.

[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

The common narrative about global population is that it will grow forever, eventually overwhelming earth's resources, but this is dead wrong.

Demographic experts now agree based on incontrovertible evidence that human population will peak soon and begin to decline.

This will have profound impacts on every aspect of global society, including energy and the environment, yet few are talking about it.

Meet two experts who are.

Darrell Bricker is the global CEO of IPSOS Public Affairs, a polling research and analysis company, and author of six books including "Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline."

Dean Spears is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, an affiliate of their population research center, an expert on India, an author of the upcoming population book, "After The Spike."

Next on "Energy Switch," a paradigm shift on global population.

I like to start with a big picture which is, why should anybody care about these things?

I mean, what do people think about global population today?

When you've been out there, Darrell, what do you see?

- Well, I think there's a lot of misperceptions about what's happening with global population.

I think that one of the most popular memes in culture today is the expansion of the global population indefinitely.

That we're gonna keep growing into the future forever and the truth is that it's going to stop, and it's going to peak and it's gonna start to decline.

The only debate really is at what point is it gonna peak, at what level and then how rapidly will it decline after that?

- Right and I can't wait to get into some of that 'cause I think it'll be fascinating.

Anything to add to that?

- So, something that I find that people are surprised by or don't know, is that two thirds of people now live in a country where the number of births is below one birth per one adult.

If that continues, then that means that the size of the world population will, in the long run be falling.

But it's not actually that long of a long run, it's gonna happen within the life of children, people alive today.

We'll see the declining size of the world population.

- Well, how big is it today?

Where is our world today?

- Well, the UN tells us it's just over eight billion people, which is a huge expansion.

Back in 1950, it was just over two billion people.

So most of the human population growth that we've seen the expansion of the human population has been in less than a century.

- So we were adding about a, if I do the math right, about a billion people every dozen years or so for a while, but you're saying... - That's not what's gonna continue to happen?

We may get nine, we may not get nine.

I mean really that's the question.

- Yeah, thoughts on that?

- The projections that I've seen for example, the UN's medium projection has a peak in the 2080s at 10.2 and then continuing to stay above 10 billion within the 21st century.

EASA, Vienna Institute of Demography, they put it a little bit earlier.

IHME at UDAB, they put it a little bit earlier than that.

But I think if we concentrate on that disagreement about exactly what will happen, we miss the sort of more important picture which is that birth rates are falling essentially everywhere because we don't really see any sustained reversal of that trend, that, on the whole, the world is on this path where birth rates are falling, the size of the population will peak within a few decades and then begin to decline.

- This has a lot of implications.

- It absolutely.

- Why would our viewers care?

Why does this matter?

- Well, it's gonna change everything.

It's gonna change geopolitics, it's gonna change the economy, it's gonna change issues related to the environment.

But not only that, it's not just about the size of the population, it's the shape of the population.

- Yes.

- This is gonna be a much, much older population.

- Right.

- That's a different population than the one that we have on the face of the earth today.

- Are there other drivers of that falling like that that you would point to.

- Of course, the spread of contraception around the world has been critical in allowing people to choose when they parent, or the spread of reproductive healthcare.

That's all critical to letting people form their families in the way that they want and pursue the lives that they want.

But it's also the case that birth rates were falling for a long time before modern contraception.

- Interesting.

- When you look at a place like Uttar Pradesh where I work in India, a population where living standards still have a long way to go to reach what they are here in Texas, you see that even there, young women tell surveyors that they want an average of 1.9 children.

Thinking about the decisions people are making about what sort of lives they want and what families they think they can aspire to and are workable for them is really the big picture question about what's gonna happen.

- Education is really tied to this then, didn't it?

- Female education.

- Female education.

- Right.

So the two big reasons that people are reducing the size of their families, number one is choice.

- Okay?

- So people have decided they just don't wanna, in many instances, have kids.

They'd rather live a different kinda life.

The number two reason is they can't, which is mainly as a result of people waiting until pretty long in their birth capabilities, that window that you have available to have children, waiting till much later.

And that's really a product of the expansion of female education and women staying in the work, staying in the education system for longer because they want to be able to have, generate their own income and to be able to control their own.

- All of which is to the good.

Let's be very clear.

- This is what are.

- Not bad things.

- There are implications to all of this, but this is a good news story, right?

It's really about the empowerment of women being able to make choices about their families.

I mean, if you wanna find places where people have larger numbers of children, go to places in which women don't have the rights that they would have in a place like Texas since we're talking about that.

Places where there's a lot of poverty and places where there's a lot of difficulty in the world.

Those are the places that tend to have higher birth rates, but even those places are coming down.

- Talk about China.

I know they had a one child policy for a while and then it went two, three, I think.

Can you talk about what's happened?

- Basically is the irony in the one child policy is China's birth rate was already declining when they decided to bring in the one child policy and they just, this is one of the problems with social engineering.

You try to engineer human beings, you can end up with some unintended consequences.

But China has a huge problem.

I mean, even the most optimistic estimates have the Chinese population being reduced by about half this century, going from 1.4 billion people down to somewhere between six and 700 million people.

And what's left is gonna be very old.

[Scott] Interesting.

- Old populations are expensive populations and they're non consumptive populations.

They're not buying new cars, new houses, new whatevers that you are earlier in your life as you're raising your families.

These are gonna be very expensive populations.

And nobody's really digging into how you deal with that.

[Scott] Okay.

- And I think the first consequence is gonna be that.

- Have these-- yeah, sure.

- Before we move on from China, these sorts of policies we saw in the 20th century where people were worried about overpopulation.

There's China, there's the emergency in India.

These were a really big deal for people's lives.

Harmed a lot of people.

Prevented people from building the families and the lives that they wanted.

And so we shouldn't minimize that at all.

I just didn't want us to go through the one child policy and sort of not put a flag on.

- That's good, that's really good points.

- Because it's important because now that we're talking about a world of low birth rates, a real risk is that somebody could listen to us talk about the future and react badly and make a bad decision to try some sort of coercive population policy again.

There are lots of reasons not to do that.

- Either way, right?

- Exactly, and among them is that we shouldn't expect it to work.

- It actually doesn't.

- When has that ever stopped us?

- No, it doesn't, I mean, that's the thing.

I mean, what we're dealing with here is cultural change more than anything.

And we have a culture now of a low of basically low birth rates.

And you can put in whatever incentives you wanna put in place, they have marginal effects.

- So let me ask this a question.

Fertility rates, has it ever turned around?

Has it ever-- - Yeah, so well, I mean, one-- - You can argue with his, I'm gonna tell you, not for any enduring period of time.

[Scott] Okay.

- So if you look at the human fertility data, so the thing you'd wanna look at is something called completed cohort fertility.

- Completed cohort fertility.

- Completed cohort fertility.

It's a mouthful, but it's worth learning that mouthful.

'Cause usually when we talk about birth rates, we're talking about in one particular year, right.

Completed cohort fertility is, you have a cohort of people born, how many babies do they go on to have over their lifetime?

If you look in the human fertility database, which is the statistics on the countries that have the high quality data that we can learn about things like this from.

We can look at those records.

And the human fertility database has computed on average how many babies do people have over the course of an adulthood, which is what matters for long-term population change.

[Scott] Okay.

- And so, when you look at those statistics, you see that there are 27 countries where in cohorts born since 1950, the completed cohort fertility has fallen below 1.9.

And never in any of those 27 where the completed cohort fertility has fallen below 1.9, has it ever gone back up above two?

[Scott] Interesting.

- And so we see wiggles- [Scott] Yeah.

- But we don't see a big picture reversal in the statistic that matters for long-term population change.

- Right, and those who are completing those statistics tend to be more developed economies, wealthy economies, people with databases.

- You know, sometimes I hear this.

Somebody says like, "Dean, what about Finland?"

- What about what?

Finland?

- Okay.

- I'll tell you because in 2000 Finland had a year.

In 2000, Finland had a total fertility rate of 1.73.

In 2010, Finland had a total fertility rate of 1.87, right?

That went up, right.

So what are you saying, right?

- Well, Finland's about the population of Houston or something.

- Well, so right.

That's one thing.

But right now in Finland it's 1.4, right.

And a few decades before that in Finland it was two point something.

- You gotta look at moving averages.

- So exactly, you see these wiggles.

zero and 27 doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but it would be something unprecedented to see a long-term effect.

- Well, that was, everybody, go back and what he just said is exactly the issue.

But basically what we're talking about here are what are the incentive structures for people having kids?

I mean, because that's the good liberal argument that you want to have.

Most people want to have.

Well, it's, we don't have kids because they're too expensive.

We don't have the right kind of house.

We don't have this, we don't have that.

The truth is these have all been tried in Finland.

They've all been tried in the Nordic countries.

They've all been tried in the places where they have the capital to be able to try them and none of them have been able to do more than nudge it.

And the reason is because as I said before, they're up against those two things, culture and population aging.

[Scott] Yeah.

- And when you're dealing with those two things, you can make kids free, it doesn't mean that people are gonna have more of them.

[Scott] Right.

- And they're gonna make them money free, right?

- Make them money free.

[Scott] Yeah, they're not free.

- But this is usually these are usually the remedies that get trotted out by people who are kind of halfway into this conversation and haven't really explored it.

If we just had the right childcare program.

Well, I can tell you in Canada, they've introduced a huge new childcare program.

And when they first brought it in, the fertility rate was 1.6, today it's 1.3 in declining.

- Interesting, so let's talk about impacts.

[Dean] Yeah.

- So we have a peaking population sometime in the future, maybe around the-- - In the near future.

- Before the end of this century.

- Yeah.

- Or sooner, plus or minus.

- That's not that far away.

My grandkids will be alive.

By the way, everybody agrees it will be this century.

- This century.

- There's nobody who disagrees.

The only disagreements are over what the peak is going to be, how fast it's gonna occur and then what the tempo of the decline is gonna be.

Those are the only disagreements.

- Yeah, I mean I think one of the things that people often ask about when we talk about the consequences are about for the environment, right?

For energy, right.

So people create things and enjoy, but people also pollute and destroy.

And so it's really natural to ask whether more people means more environmental destruction and whether depopulation or low birth rates is what's going to come to the rescue and save us.

And I think that's the right question to ask, but I think the answer is surprising because it turns out.

- Let's dive into it.

- Yeah.

- Go ahead.

- Well, you know, there really isn't a straight line of the consequences between population size and the environmental consequences.

In 1986, we had the Clean Air Act that regulated leaded gasoline.

In 1987, we had the Montreal Protocol that regulated CFCs and then regulation of sulfur dioxide has meant that the acid rain situation isn't what it used to be.

In other words, the effects of people on the environment depend.

They depend on our policy choices, they depend on technology and that's why there's not a straight line.

That's why we could make and should make different policy choices not just assume that depopulation is gonna get us off the hook.

[Scott] Interesting, interesting.

- And we're also gonna see things like, for example, where people are living is going to change.

What we're seeing is the biggest migration in human history happening right now and it's people moving from the countryside to the city.

- Yeah.

- What we argue in "Empty Planet" is the first stage of what occurred in terms of causing the decline in fertility rates 'cause that's what the book is about, was massive urbanization.

We've gone in 1960 from about a third of the population being urbanized worldwide to today being close to 60%.

So it's a massive movement of people.

And it's happened lockstep with the decline of fertility.

And that's going to have implications for the environment and for the climate.

I mean, actually you want to go to places that are actually not that great for the climate and for the environment; it's usually rural places.

You have to drive a lot of places.

You have the way that you heat your home or cool your home, the way that you make your living, very despoiling and from an environmental perspective, I do find it ironic that we tend to go back to previous, more antique versions of humans and think that they were so much better for the environment.

Not really so much.

But when you move a lot of people to urban areas, you have an effect.

But also as we expand the middle class in various places, and that's what we're gonna be seeing in the developing world, that's also gonna have an environmental effect.

So it is exactly as Dean says, it's not a straight line.

- So if you look in the United States, also in Canada, also in Europe, emissions per person have been going down for 20 years or so in the United States.

And in fact, emissions per person have been going down in the United States of greenhouse gas from industry and fossil fuels by so much that even though the population's been growing, the overall emissions from the United States have been going down.

And the reason I'm emphasizing this is because I don't want population to be a distraction in talking about the environmental policy choices that we need to make.

- And see for me it's really just making sure that we have the right facts at the table and then we can work through what the implications of all of this are going to be.

- Sure, let's talk about flattening populations, peaking populations with poorer countries.

Could that help them develop faster?

Is there an advantage there to the population demographics in those that are just emerging and developing?

- India, the place that I know or Uttar Pradesh, energy demand and use is going to go up and that's all to the good.

I mean, I'm thinking of somebody having lights so they can study at night, or somebody having electrification so they can have a refrigerator that keeps their food safe.

I know friends who have gotten their first refrigerator since I've known them.

And it makes a huge difference.

And we want that to happen.

We want people to have alternatives to cooking on solid fuel over traditional stoves.

Not least because of the air pollution consequences of that too.

- I think we should expect energy demand to go up.

And so what does that mean?

Well, it means how, what form is that gonna take I mean.

And what is the rich world going to do?

Places like the United States could leave more of that carbon budget as space for poor countries and that would be one way to make things better.

Some of the poorer places should have longer runways to net zero than some of the richer places.

And that's not only better for human development, it's not only better for poverty, it's not only better for inequality, it's also better for the environment, for climate outcomes.

Because we don't want the United States to be continuing to have net emissions as long as we want Sub-Saharan Africa to.

[Scott] Sure, interesting.

Yeah, so thinking about it differently and other thoughts on that Dean, I mean to help me and others comprehend what this really means in a century.

- I mean, I don't think any of us should claim to know exactly what global depopulation is going to bring because it's unprecedented, right.

Not only for all of our lives has the size of the world population increasing, for all of our parents lives, our grandparents lives.

Right, any generation you can name the people of, the size of the world population has been increasing.

But in these past, you know, 100 years or 200 years, when so much of the progress has happened that's helped keep children alive at the start of life, that's brought more literacy, all this revolution in living standards we've had, this great escape from premature death and hunger as the economic historian Robert Fogel put it, that's all happened at the same time that we've had not only a prosperous world, but a populous world.

There are good theories and arguments and evidence from the sort of economists who study long-term population growth, that that's not a coincidence.

And so now when we have a few decades until the peak, when we're looking forward to something that could be a few decades from now, it's time to start learning.

It's time to start talking about it so that we're generating more understanding, we're having an inclusive conversation and we're learning about responses that might be possible.

- Right.

- And more and more people are now coming around to this and it has to find its way though more into a popular conversation.

- Yes.

- Because there's too much I would say, kind of apocalyptic language around some of these things in which people are making absolutely the wrong assumptions about what's happening, which is distracting us from having the real conversation that we need to have, which is how are we gonna manage this?

And the thing about the population aspect of this is, this one has a level of predictability that's beyond a lot of other things.

Simply because the decisions were made by your grandparents, they were made by your parents, they were made by you, by the 2030s, the entire global baby boom is gonna be 65 years of age or older.

- Yeah.

- By the 2040s and '50s, they're all gonna be living this mortal coil.

We just know that already.

You can mark it on the calendar like I said.

So we need to get ready for it.

- Final thoughts, if you want our listening audience, which is a good one to take away a couple points from this, what would that be?

- It makes a lot of sense to ask about the consequences of depopulation for the environment, for climate change, for land use, for particle air pollution.

But it's important not to think that low birth rates or depopulation are going to come to the rescue or get us off the hook.

We have urgent challenges especially around decarbonization and those challenges need to be met more quickly than population change is going to come.

There's no straight line between population and the environment, it depends on our other choices and so that means there's work to do at making good policy choices and developing the solutions we need.

- Yeah, good, excellent.

Darrell, your final thoughts?

- I think the first thing I would say is, what we're talking about is not speculation.

This is happening, get used to it.

The second thing I would say is start evaluating the decisions that you're making about everything in your life based on the trends of what we're seeing.

And by that I mean not just the decisions that you make about your own financial situation or your own family situation, but the political choices that you make.

Because we're gonna be facing a whole series of challenges that are gonna be related to this, that we're gonna have to have the right people in charge to lead us through this process.

It's not gonna be easy.

But I think the human species has existed for a very long time, I don't expect that it's going to disappear, but this is a challenge we've never confronted before.

- Right.

- And we will see how able we are to deal with it.

- Hopeful that we can.

- Sure.

- I am hopeful that as we start to see this population decline, we will work our way through it and it will have some consequence that are very positive, positive on nature, positive on less consumption.

Cities, people in cities use less.

And we won't strain our resources like we have, so I hope we figure out the social pieces of that.

But as a resource person, I kinda wish I could live long enough to see how we're gonna do it.

And I really have enjoyed our conversation.

[Dean] Thank you so much, I've enjoyed it as well.

- Thanks for being on the show with us Dean, Darrell, thank you.

- Thanks for having me on.

- You bet.

- Thanks Dean, appreciate it.

- Scott Tinker, "Energy Switch."

According to every agency that studies it, global population will peak this century, perhaps as early as 2060 at 10 billion people and possibly, lower than nine billion.

After that, experts agree it will begin to decline, but disagree on the rate.

Some think it may fall rapidly.

Countries like China have already peaked and are expected to lose half their population before the end of the century.

The global population will be much more urban, as many as 80% of people will live in cities and the population will be older, with different spending habits and potential broader economic effects.

It's tempting to think that fewer people will mean less environmental impact.

However, for billions of the world's poor, their standards of living will continue to increase, a good thing but with higher energy and resource demands.

Much will depend on our energy and environmental policies.

We should be making those and all other decisions, our guests argued, within this very different paradigm of a declining global population.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Funding for "Energy Switch" was provided in part by The University of Texas at Austin, leading research in energy and the environment for a better tomorrow.

What starts here changes the world.