The human population has just surpassed seven billion. How can we feel good about a crowded planet?
The rate of population growth is half of what it was in the 1960s. It has come down from over 2 per cent to just about 1 per cent a year. At this rate, it looks like we will only increase human population by one and a half times in the second quarter of this century. We quadrupled it in the 20th century while rapidly increasing the amount of food per person. If we can't do that again with the technology at our disposal and the enormous gap that we know exists in the productivity of land in places like Africa, then we really have no business being here.
Is coercion to have fewer children a good tactic to slow population growth?
Well, we did that in China, but it turns out we did it just as well in other countries without coercion. We got it down through public-health measures so kids didn't die – which people think makes it worse but which actually makes it better because people plan smaller families – through economic growth, so there are real jobs to go to, which again makes mothers try to produce educated kids rather than lots of kids, through education and through female emancipation. And if we look at what's happening in Africa at the moment, in terms of economic development and public-health improvements, the retreat of AIDS and malaria at quite rapid rates, I suspect we're going to find that the demographic transition – which is already begun in Africa whereby birth rates are falling – may well accelerate much more than we think. The lowest population estimate the United Nations produces may end up being more realistic, which has us down to 6.2 billion by end of century. That's less than we are now.
You decry government intervention in your book, insisting that markets deliver the greatest possible benefits to society when left to their own devices. And yet, arguably, that was disproved by your own experience at Northern Rock. You were non-executive chairman of the U.K. bank when it neared collapse in 2007 and had to be bailed out by the British taxpayer to the tune of £27-billion ($50-billion).
I fully accept that I should have seen our business model was too reliant on liquidity in the markets. I would love to turn the clock back and ask more searching questions. But did anyone else see this coming? No. Did all the other mortgage banks in the U.K. end up in exactly the same boat? Yes. So I did a terrible job, and I regret that, but I did no worse than the much more experienced bankers running other banks.
Sorry, I have to ask: Are you always contrarian at home? Does anyone in your family ever win an argument with you?
Better ask my wife that. She would certainly see where you are coming from.
Sarah Hampson is a Globe and Mail writer.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
