Derb’s post on Nicholas Eberstadt’s population paper makes a number of points.

First, he’s correct about the importance of “localized numbers”. Population is the most obvious example of why we should be suspicious of universalizing problems and demanding they can only be solved globally through the UN. There are two significant trends: an accelerating demographic decline in Europe, Canada and other advanced societies, coupled with a huge demographic surge in places like Niger, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. To combine these and talk airily about “global population” is like arguing that, because the couple at 24 Elm Street is heterosexual and the couple at 26 Elm Street is homosexual, the neighborhood as a whole is 100% bisexual.

Second, I understand Derb’s point about “aesthetics”. It’s hard to accept you have a demographic crisis in China, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands or Britain because by comparison with the US these are very crowded places, and the idea of losing, say, 20% of the population and freeing up a bit of space sounds very appealing. The difficulty is the bit you lose. In Europe (I happen to be in Spain at the moment), it’s very weird to go to a Mediterranean wedding with tons of aunts, uncles, gram’pas, gran’mas, but no kids, or to a German suburb built for families and to hear no children playing in the street. Yes, you’ll have more space, in the sense that a poor mill town has more space after the mill’s closed: the young folks have fled but at least ol’ Bud and Earl won’t have to wait for stools at the lunch counter, assuming it hasn’t gone out of business.

Third, to take Derb’s example, why do Londoners now feel “lost in a sea of people”? Not because Londoners are having kids: The UK fertility rate is about 1.8 – ie, if it were down to the Brits, they’d already be in population decline. But Britain’s population is increasing dramatically because of immigration: if you’ve got a functioning society (especially one with generous welfare provision), plenty of people want to live in it. So don’t delude yourself: If the English and Belgians don’t want to have children, it won’t mean a return to bucolic pastoral vistas, it will just mean the places of the kids you never had will be taken by immigrants. If Yemen cuts its fertility rate, Yemen will empty out. If Britain cuts its fertility rate, Yemen will move in.