Message-ID: <3485C9D3.5958@erols.com> Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 16:06:27 -0500 From: John Daly <mailto:dalyj@erols.com> Subject: Re: Megadeath To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Jonathan Sanford wrote: >
> Some time ago, we had a discussion about population/environment/ etc.
> Somebody said a great die-off of people (megadeath) was almost inevitable if
> the world was to get back to its carrying capacity.
Jay Hanson responded citing the Meadows "Beyond the Limits" date of 2030 for the "human die-off".
I don’t know what will happen in the year 2030, but the "World Development Report" for 1997 puts the 1995 world population at 5.6 billion. It puts life expectancy at birth at 67 years, which corresponds to a death rate of something like 1.5 percent per year, or 87 million people per year. Life expectancy in high income countries is about 77 years. If the rest of the world had this life expectancy, then there would be something like 75 million deaths per year. Thus the world has something like 12 million more deaths per year than it would if low-income countries had the same mortality rates as high-income countries. The number would be larger still if we used death rates for the affluent in high income countries as the standard. Still, 12 million a year for 80 years (just the period from 1950 to 2030) is about one billion.
How vulnerable are human populations? It has been estimated that native American population decreased by 95 percent after Europeans came to this continent, primarily due to infectious diseases. The population of Europe has been estimated to have dropped by one-third as a result of the Black Death. In the former Soviet Union it has been estimated that life expectancy dropped by between five and ten percent in the early 1990s, as a result of the disruption of economic and health conditions. Even without discussion of the carrying capacity of the earth there are grounds for concern about potential health risks. The discussions of the mortality impact of global warming seem to have often focused on direct effects such as heat prostration, but since most of the excess death in low income countries is associated with poverty, it might well be that the economic dislocations due to climate change will indirectly cause more mortality than the direct impacts of the weather. New and emerging diseases are clearly important since HIV alone is currently killing millions; suggestions of how social and environmental changes lead to emergence of new diseases add weight to the concern.
What megadeaths are you worrying about?
-- ------------------------------------ John A. Daly (301) 460-6364 ------------------------------------