I met Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake (Volksbeving in Dutch) yesterday in Utrecht, for an interview. For those who are not familiar with Pearce: he is one of Britain's leading environmental journalists and authors.
In Peoplequake he exams all aspects of demography. I interviewed him mainly on the future of European cities. There's a population crash coming towards us and we're pioneering it in Western Europe.
The fact that the whole global population will reach a tipping point about midcentury and go into a rapid decline isn't mentioned a lot in the media. Pearce tells me why: "Demographic researchers tend to hush it up. They say it would endanger their funding." The population crash is politically incorrect and even taboo as a topic.
As for Europe, Pearce says: "we will have to redesign the whole concept of cities and make them work for a shrinking, greying population."
The main reason for the continuous drop in fertility is the feminist revolution. Pearce: "Women can now choose between a career and children. Increasingly, espcially in countries like Italy and Germany, they go for their careers. Our main goal should be to complete the feminist revolution with adequate facilities that make it possible for women to combine career and children and an attitude that makes it possible that both partners share parents' responsibilities."
Fred Pearce compares the differences between Italy and the Nordic countries. "In Scandinavia these theings have been taken care of. Fertility in the Nordic countries is down only to 1.8 child. This allows for a gradual and copable decline in population. In Italy it's 1.3 child - a catastrophe. You can imagine what this will mean for the sustainability of cities in the long run."
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