By Donella Meadows

–July 9, 1998–

Thirty years ago Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb and I paid no attention.  I was engrossed in biochemistry research and preparing to go on a year-long trip halfway around the world.  I doubt if I could have listed more than the top two of the world’s ten most populous nations.  They were, in 1968 (with populations listed in millions):

China – 730

India – 524

USSR – 238

USA – 201

Pakistan – 123

Indonesia – 113

Japan – 101

Brazil – 88

Germany (West) – 60

Nigeria – 52

The trip halfway around the world took me through four of those countries and woke me up on the topic of population.  Ten years later, in 1978, I was testing my students’ knowledge of the planet by asking if they could list the ten most populous countries.  The list had changed.  Brazil had just grown past Japan.  Bangladesh had split off from Pakistan but both still made the list, knocking Germany off.  In ten years China had added more than the whole population of the United States.

China – 972

India – 661

USSR – 261

USA –  226

Indonesia – 145

Brazil – 116

Japan – 115

Bangladesh – 84

Pakistan – 81

Nigeria – 68

By 1988, I was no longer teaching full time, but I was still keeping track of the top ten population nations.  Pakistan had outswelled Bangladesh, and the numbers were getting astonishing.

China – 1,122

India – 818

USSR – 285

USA – 249

Indonesia – 177

Brazil – 143

Japan – 123

Pakistan – 112

Bangladesh – 106

Nigeria – 97

In the past 10 years the USSR broke up, pushing Russia down the list.  The Nigerian population has more than doubled since 1968.  Though China’s and India’s birth rates have plummeted, they are still adding more than 100 million per decade.  Japan has nearly stopped growing.  There are 70 million more people in the USA than there were 30 years ago.  The 1998 numbers are:

China 1,242

India 989

USA 270

Indonesia 207

Brazil 162

Russia 146

Pakistan 141

Japan 126

Bangladesh 123

Nigeria 122

I look at the 30-year evolution of these numbers and I see an enormous event happening so slowly that it never makes the news — yet it is constantly in the news.  The instability of Nigeria, the bankruptcy of Indonesia, the kowtowing to China, the fear that drives India and Pakistan to nuclear bombs, the growing number of endangered species, the fires burning out of control in Indonesia and Mexico and Florida, the changing climate.  Population growth is not the single cause of any of these happenings.  But it is an inexorable driving factor behind all of them.

Looking almost as far ahead as I have just looked behind, assuming neither a great catastrophe nor a great awakening but a continued steady decline in birth rates, here is the medium UN estimate for the ten most populous nations of 2025.  Russia and Japan are both expected to lose population; Japan will fall off the list; Mexico will take its place.

China – 1,561

India – 1,441

USA – 335

Indonesia – 275

Pakistan – 258

Brazil – 208

Nigeria – 203

Bangladesh – 165

Mexico – 140

Russia – 134

This last set of numbers is ahead of us, not history, not destiny, but an excruciating combination of luck and choice.

Copyright Sustainability Institute 1998