Posted on 01/03/2020 4:06:31 AM PST by Kaslin
If Western elites were asked to name the greatest crisis facing mankind, climate change would win in a walk.
Thus did Time magazine pass over every world leader to name a Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg, its person of the year.
On New Year's Day, the headline over yet another story in The Washington Post admonished us anew: "A Lost Decade for Climate Action: We Can't Afford A Repeat, Scientists Warn."
"By the final year of the decade," said the Post, "the planet had surpassed its 2010 temperature record five times.
"Hurricanes devastated New Jersey and Puerto Rico, and floods damaged the Midwest and Bangladesh. Southern Africa was gripped by a deadly drought. Australia and the Amazon are ablaze."
On it went, echoing the endless reports on the perils of climate change to the planet we all inhabit.
Yet, from the inaction of the carbon-emitting countries like India, China, Russia and the USA, the gravity with which Western elites view the crisis is not shared by the peoples for whom they profess to speak.
For many First World countries, there are more compelling concerns. High among them is population decline, and, if birth rates do not rise, the near-extinction of many Western peoples by this century's end.
Consider. The number of births in Japan fell in 2019 to a level unseen since 1874, around 900,000. But there were 1.4 million deaths for a net loss of 512,000 Japanese. An even larger loss in Japan's population is expected this year.
Japan's population has been shrinking since 2007, when deaths first exceeded births by 18,000. And with 28% of its population over 65, and fewer births every passing year, Japan is aging, shrinking and dying -- with no respite in sight.
Across Japan, writes The New York Times: "Whole villages are vanishing as young people choose not to have children or move to urban areas ... The Government estimates that the population could shrink by about 16 million people -- or nearly 13 percent -- over the next 25 years."
South Korea has an even lower birth rate, and its population is expected to start diminishing this year.
But it is Eastern Europe where the population crisis is most advanced.
At the end of the Cold War, Bulgaria had 9 million people. By 2017, that had fallen to 7.1 million. In 2050, Bulgaria's population is estimated at 5.4 million -- a loss of 40% to death and migration since Bulgaria won its freedom from the Soviet Empire.
By 2050, Ukraine and Poland are each projected to lose another 6 million people, and Hungary will lose 1.5 million.
Lithuania and Latvia have seen serious population losses since the end of the Cold War and are in the front rank of European nations losing people at the fastest rate.
U.N. demographers project Russia's population may fall from 145 million today to 121 million by 2050. Such losses rival those that Russia suffered under Lenin, Stalin and World War II.
The Far East is home to some 6 million Russians who dwell on that vast tract that is so full of natural resources like timber, oil and gas.
"The population continues to decrease almost everywhere in the Far East," lamented President Vladimir Putin at an investment conference in Vladivostok: "The inflow is increasing, but it does not cover the number of people leaving the region."
In the Far East, Siberia and the Lake Baikal region, investors and workers from China are appearing in growing numbers.
The tribes of Europe, the peoples of almost every country of the Old Continent, are visibly aging, shrinking and dying. The population crisis of Europe is "existential," says Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.
Since this writer published "The Death of the West," nothing has happened to alter my conclusion as to where the West was destined:
"The Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen. It is a depiction of what is happening now. First World nations are dying. They face a mortal crisis, not because of something happening in the Third World, but because of what is not happening at home and in the homes of the First World. Western fertility rates have been falling for decades. Outside of Muslim Albania, no European nation is producing enough babies to replace its population. ... In a score of countries the old are already dying off faster than the young are being born. ... There is no sign of a turnaround. Now the absolute numbers of Europeans have begun to fall."
We are talking here about what historians, a century hence, will call the Lost Tribes of Europe. And if a people has ceased to replace itself, and the national family is dying out, it is difficult to generate alarm over the slow sinking of the Maldives into the sea, the melting of the polar ice caps, or the fact that Greenland is getting greener every year.
No politician does anything other than approving of your money becoming their money
Idiot, Population Decline is a positive, not a liability.
Pat Buchanan wants us all the live inside a crowded, communist SKYRISE. What a dirtbag.
The West is partying its way to extinction. The dominant media culture celebrates this as sophisticated.
Pat Buchanan is a lot smarter than you are.
no he isn’t
With medical advancements, the lifespan increased and the population grew. Within my lifetime, the population has grown by about 2.5 fold. The resulting increased population densities results in a fall in the fertility rate, as well as societal pathologies which we have all been witnessing.
The effect of overly high population densities has been studied in rodents, in a series of studies called “The Mouse Utopia experiments.” The applicability of the rodent experiments to human society can be assessed by looking at modern cities, where pathologies are the norm, rather than aberrations.
Our small towns are still healthy and functional. As the population decreases, look to the small towns and rural areas for humanity’s future (and that of Western civilation).
Good post. This is cultural. Marriage and fatherhood in the United States could not be more disincentivized. I suspect it is similar in other countries.
As for Central Europe, once folks got the freedom to leave what was for a long time a very bad place, they left. This doesn’t surprise me.
South Korea and Japan? Cultural again. One thing I see among our East Indian friends - family is a great big deal. I see this in the US and in other places - they travel, live, and experience things as a family group. I’m absolutely sure it isn’t perfect, but I’m not hearing about population decline in countries that are patriarchal.
Unfortunately, that would include Islamic countries.
Please, do some research on Minimum Viable Populations.
Persons of European decent are among the most threatened species on the planet.
Oh, bother. I didn’t proofread well enough.
The resulting increased population densities results in...
Should be:
The resulting increased population density results in...
Pat Buchanan is not impressing me—he just can’t think deeply. Very surface.
Ad Hominem is the cream of ignorance.
The GREAT REPLACEMENT MIGRATION ongoing is White genocide.
Whites lost their will to survive.
It has nothing to do with population.
It has everything to do with foreign invasion.
Whites will not live in Communist Skyrises that are being created to conquer us. The dwellers are landless people to sway the vote, specifically targeted to electoral location.
Buchanan is a dirtbag.
You posted a load of crap.
Whites’ biggest problem White Guilt. Call you a “racist” and you cringe in fear. Next thing they are destroying your country. You gotta get over that and call them racist back or else fight back verbally.
These one line responses are for pansies.
Got to self educate yourself. You are being exterminated.
A population that is not expanding may have positive aspects, in terms of demands on natural resources, trends towards automation in business & industry, etc. However, a rapidly declining population has been used by some as justification for uncontrolled immigration (with all of its attendant difficulties). I imagine that Mr. Buchanan failed to connect those dots for the reader, simply because he's tired of being labeled a "RAAACIST!!!"...
Unfortunately, there is something about the consumerist lifestyle in the West (& Western-like countries in the East) that causes people to forgo having children.
Interesting take on what is happening and not at all wrong, though I am admittedly not up to speed on Communist Skyrises. I’m not sure what part of that Buchanan would disagree with, apart from where you called him a “dirtbag” after saying “Ad Hominem is the cream of ignorance.”
It’s not that the world population is shrinking, although it may, eventually, it’s that the only groups in the world who have shown the capability to allow their people to live free are disappearing, and will soon be snuffed out by the others, once the population discrepancy becomes too great.
But, I guess, on the bright side, most of us won’t be around for that day.
The GREAT REPLACEMENT MIGRATION ongoing is White genocide.
Whites lost their will to survive.
It has nothing to do with population.
It has everything to do with foreign invasion.
Whites will not live in Communist Skyrises that are being created to conquer us. The dwellers are landless people to sway the vote, specifically targeted to electoral location.
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I completely agree with every point you’ve made here, with one reservation: I don’t believe whites have lost their will to survive, but what a huge number of them have lost is a reality-based understanding of the existential threat they are facing. IOW, sheer ignorance of this threat is the real problem.
You posted a load of crap.
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I agree with most of what he posted except for his characterization of Buchanan, who in my view usually presents cogent and persuasive analyses of his subject matter.
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