8.
One of the biggest social issues in Japan is the increasingly low marriage rates among young people and the low birth rates, which lead to an aging and eventually shrinking (萎缩) population. Most young Japanese women simply don’t seem interested in having many children.
Now what began in Japan is happening globally. As David Brooks wrote, birth rates are becoming lower in much of the world, from Iran-1,7 births per woman-to Russian, where low birth rates connected with high death rates mean the population is already shrinking. And this includes the US, which has long had higher birth rates than most developed nations. Aging countries will face the burden of caring for large elderly populations without a larger resource of young workers.
It’s true that global aging is going to present some major challenges. Who will take care of the elderly? Will an older world be less active and slower to change and adapt? It’s all true. Sometimes I worry about a coming generational war over resources, just as I worry about how Iwill take care of my own parents in their old age, just as I worry about who might take care of me.
But here’s the thing: an older world may have less pressure on the environment. As we all know, the environment is the real victim of overpopulation.
So maybe a world that grows slower and grows older will put less pressure on the environment, and buy us a few more years to ensure our energy use, along with our birth rates, reaches a sustainable (可持续的) level. After all, we’re supposed to get smarter as we get older. Hopefully that holds true for the planet as well.