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Comments: We always get a wave of new traffic

I just finished reading the above interviews. The one from Tladi John Ndlovu was extremely heartwarming, nice to see that he is feeling change in SA...lets just hope it continues in a positive direction.
Either way, I am glad to have discovered the daily summit. Thanks.
Interviews like some of the ones above can give you faith to do the right thing!

Posted by Andrea Hamann on August 26, 2002 01:19 PM

In your 'furnace or bonfire' article on Malthusian gloom you quote:

'Warren Sanderson, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, is one expert who believes the final total may be considerably lower...

'We don't have any examples of countries coming down from high rates, hitting the 2.1 barrier and stopping there, he says.'

But they can rise again. Immigration and deferred child bearing after some event make projections complicated. Here's a decent Economist article on the subject - http://www.economist.co.uk/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1291056

Posted by back40 on August 26, 2002 11:46 PM

It is, indeed, an excellent article - and a good illustration of how demographers are caught out time and time again by changes in birth rates.

The Sanderson research, however, remains interesting. As I understand it, his criticism of the UN population figures is that they fail to allow for any developing country birth rates dropping below replacement level - which seems to me to be a serious limitation in their population modelling...

Posted by David Steven on August 27, 2002 12:06 AM

The UN is a political organization, conservative in the sense of supporting the status quo. On issues of population, environment, food and energy the status quo is misguided, based on the politicized pseudo-science and culture wars of the previous century. They are changing but are perhaps a decade or two behind and likely to remain so.

Population was one of the most politicized issues of the last century and they can't yet bring themselves to confront the errors of their previous views. To their credit they have repeatedly adjusted their estimates though they have not yet challenged the assumptions of their models. The modelers haven't finished eating all those crows yet and there are still a lot of NGOs fighting rear guard battles to justify their existence.

Posted by back40 on August 27, 2002 06:26 AM

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