Falsely expecting population decline

Jonathan V. Last wrote a population book called What to Expect that says:

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years.

This is only part of the story, as what he says is only true about Europe. Current United Nations population projections show Third World population increasing for at least a century.

These arguments are currently being used to say that Germany should be repopulated with Moslems. Last denies (in this recent podcast) that is his intention, but he seems oblivious to how the 2015 migrant crisis is caused by overpopulation.

While we have not run out of oil or food, we are seeing other consequences of overpopulation. It is hard to see how Europe will survive, unless it uses military force to protect its southern borders from migrant invasions. Hungary is building a border fence because it says that 35 million migrants are currently trying to get into Europe. A Gallup poll says that about a billion people in the Third World want to move to the First World.

Last has some other odd views. I checked his last column at The Weekly Standard:

Say what you will about the Romney 2012 campaign, but Stuart Stevens is bright, perceptive, and candid—always worth listening to. So I was struck by his observation about Donald Trump during the course of an interview with New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman: “For Donald Trump to win, everything we know about politics has to be wrong.”

This strikes me as exactly true. In order for Trump — or Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina — to win the GOP nomination, everything we know about American politics would have to be wrong. Think about it: In order for the same electorate which nominated Mitt Romney four years ago to switch to Donald Trump, the voters would have to undergo some sort of paradigm shift in preferences.

This is a very strange opinion, as it seems to me that Donald Trump is the candidate most like Mitt Romney.

Both are super-rich, and can claim to be not owned by wealthy donors. Both are primarily businessmen, and not politicians. Both could thus appeal to those who are disgusted with Washington politics, and to those who believe that the Presidency is like a CEO job where business skills are crucial.

Both made a strong effort to appeal to conservative Republicans, even tho both have a track record of contrary positions, and both were accused of not being true Republicans.

The appeal of Trump is that he believes in America first, he is anti-immigration, and he has a backbone. Romney had a similar appeal.