Columnist Don Feder spoke to the Family Research Council's Washington Briefing about the "demographic winter" of falling birth rates.
He said that unlike global warming, demographic winter is very real. Humanity is failing to reproduce itself in sufficient numbers.
Feder said 2.1 is the number of children the average woman has to have just to replace current population. In less than 40 years, birth rates have fallen worldwide by 50%. In 1979, the average woman had 6 children; today she has 2.9 children. By the 2050, it is estimated we will be below replacement levels worldwide.
In the European Union it is 1.5. With a birth rate of 1.3 or below, a nation will lose half of its population or more in 40 years.
Feder pointed to Russia as a "sneak preview." Russia is losing 3/4 of a million people a year. He wondered what it would look like for 77 million people to try to hold onto a nation with the world's largest landmass.
He said in Europe there are four working people for every retiree; in a few years, in 2050, it will soon be two working people for every retired persons.
Feder asked how our nation would defend itself without adequate manpower for our military, or how our economy could maintain our current level of prosperity when we will not have enough workers to sustain it. He said there has never been a nation in history where living standards rose while population diminished.
Worldwide we kill 42 million people a year through abortion each year, Feder said. For the first time in history, just under half of the world's population uses some form of birth control. He said the historic and natural order of marrying and having children is no more. Divorce and the decline of marriage through cohabitation is also contributing.
Ironically, Feder pointed out that the only form of marriage (and he said he used the term "marriage" somewhat loosely) our society is pushing is the one kind that cannot produce children.
He said our current culture senses no obligation to the past and no responsibility to the future.
Feder said people need information to do something about this. He said the documentary "Demographic Winter" is a good start. He said that when the snow of the demographic winter is piled up outside our doors, it will be too late, so something must be done now.
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