David A. Swanson
Total number of comments: 124
Recent Comments by David A. Swanson
Maybe it is time to resurrect the "Radio Yerevan" jokes that went around the USSR and its satellite countries back in the day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_joke ).
As an example.
Original:
Listener: Is it true that socialism is the shining example of the golden age?
Radio Yerevan: Indeed, but all that glitters is not gold
Revised for Bellingham on the Baltic:
Listener: Is it true that Bellingham is the city of subdued excitement?
Radito Yerevan: For sure, but all that is un-responsive is not titillation.
And in a "rejoinder" to the "panic" over falling birth rates , you should check out the story below in regard to work by done by members of the Population Association of America. While I am not panicked by the extinction of Homo sapiens, as apparantly some are, I believe their argument about "no reason to panic" is misleading in that US birth rates are declining rapidly and like the countries further down the path, will end up at the same place. That is, the US population may hang a bit longer than the populations in Europe and East Asia, but it will also join the 99.99% of the other world species that are no longer part of the undirected evolutionary process we call life.
As noted by Carol Follet, if those who are panicked wanted to actually do something they would convince decision-makers to go along with the policies she recommends and get the "rulers" onboard. The current legislation by the Trump administratio to offer a $1,000 baby bonus as the pro-natalist policy that will "fix" things, is as absurd as the "Big, Beautiful Bill," hyped by the acolate of Roy Cohn.
PAA Members in the News on Falling Birth Rate Fears
PAA members Leslie Root, University of Colorado Boulder, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Shelley Clark, McGill University, (with support from several other PAA members) produced this brief in The Conversation about “population panic” that is accompanying low birth rates in the U.S. This brief touches on several key demographic concepts and issues related to fertility rates, population projections, and the potential consequences (and solutions) to addressing shifts in population structure. Read the brief: Fears that falling birth rates in US could lead to population collapse are based on faulty assumptions
Leslie Root and Nicholas Mark, University of Wisconsin-Madison, were interviewed by PBS NewsHour as part of a look inside the pronatalism movement encouraging Americans to have more children. See video.
Thanks for your comments.
Migration has been a major factor in the growth of Washington since WWII (See, the Washington State Census Board and Its Demographic Legacy: https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Demographic-SpringerBriefs-Population-Studies/dp/3319259474 ). The tradtional (and new) "sending areas" of migrants to WA are experiencing low fertility themselves that is expected to go lower. Hence, the pool of potential migrants to WA is drying up and, regardless of economic condiitons, will eventually be unable to serve as a resevoir from which migrants would flow to WA.
In regard to the "momentum" issue, the baby boom was approximately from 1946 to 1964, when the early boomers (born between 1946 and 1954) reached adulthood and started having children, there was a "baby boom echo" even though their fertility rates were far lower than those of their parents. These echos eventually subside when fertility remains low and especially when it continues to drop (See, e.g., "Population, Resources, and Development: Riding the Age Waves," the first volume of which can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Population-Resources-Development-International-Studies/dp/1402038216 . This will lead you to the other two volumes in this series, the final one of which is co-edited by Anne Gauthier, who was formerly a faculty member at WWU). The path to extinction initally "jumps around" but then smoothes out. This 3rd and final volume discusses the effect of "de-population" on global economies, and, yep, they will not work well.
Turning back to "momentum" the projections Jeff and I ran for the world as a whole show the total population initially increasing under the "declining fertility" scenario, but then it declines and picks up speed as it does so: The jumpoff population in 2024 is 8.056 billion, which climbs to 8.756 billion in 2044, then declines to 8.741 billion in 2049 and by 2084 is down to 6.713 billion. By 2124 it is down to 2.773 billion, in 2224 only 16.7 million remain and by 2399 the final handful of people aged 110+ are gone. As we wrote in the article,the end will come sooner.
Re sustainability, read Henry Gee's (2025) book. It will do more than make your teeth itch:
The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why our species is on the edge of extinction:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Henry+Gee&i=stripbooks&crid=247IKNA298SXQ&sprefix=henry+gee%2Cstripbooks%2C164&ref=nb_sb_noss_2