Guest Author • Aug 19, 2019 •
Brian Gill The fate of rats on a tiny New Zealand island is a story to retell as the world’s experiment with unlimited growth of human numbers threatens ruin. The world has too many people. As if more than 7,260 million souls are not enough, the population is in the dreaded phase of exponential growth, rocketing uncontrolled and uncontrollably to … Read More
Jean Balchin • Apr 12, 2018 •
According to a study published in the BMJ today, a significant increase in cigarette prices would aid millions of people around the world avoid poor health and extreme poverty. The study concluded that people on low incomes have the most to gain, and the researchers argue that modest action by many governments “could yield unprecedented health gains and poverty reduction.” Smoking … Read More
Michael Reddell • Apr 09, 2018 •
I noticed a few comments to another of my posts about possible links between population size and economic performance. My working assumption is that, on average, across all countries, there isn’t any such relationship. Apart from anything else, if there were a positive relationship – that was more than chance – it would suggest that two countries … Read More
Michael Reddell • Oct 01, 2017 •
I’ve written a few posts in recent months about the connections between our immigration policy – materially boosting our population growth rate – and New Zealand greenhouse gas emissions (for example here and here). New Zealand is unusual because, as the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) has highlighted: • we have a fairly high rate of trend population growth, … Read More
Michael Reddell • May 28, 2017 •
After my post the other day, I pricked up my ears when I heard on the radio that new data on greenhouse gas emissions had been released, and at the same time heard various industry lobby groups calling for more government support (money or regulation”) for this, that or the other mitigating measure. It is the costs of meeting … Read More
Guest Author • Jan 25, 2017 •
By Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University. This second decade of the 21st century is proving to be one of the most transformative globally and locally, especially in terms of demographic change. The consequences for the ageing of societies from the pipeline effects of the baby boom in the … Read More
Michael Reddell • Aug 02, 2016 •
There was an annoying story on the front page of the Dominion-Post this morning. The online version of the story is headed “The big squeeze: Wellington’s population could almost double in the next 30 years”, a proposition which appears to be based on nothing more than annualizing last year’s estimated population growth for the Wellington city area. I … Read More
Michael Reddell • May 31, 2016 •
New Zealand’s population is estimated to have risen by 11.8 per cent in the last decade (much of it in the last three years). The starting point for that estimate is reasonably well-anchored: I used the population numbers for the March quarter of 2006, and the 2006 Census happened in that month. The end-point (March 2016) is only a Statistics … Read More
Michael Reddell • May 28, 2016 •
The Herald’s editorial on Saturday was headed “Population growth is powering NZ economy”. It isn’t just a statement of the rather obvious, that a rapid growth in the population – particularly unexpectedly rapid growth – boosts total GDP. When there are more people, they all need to consume stuff, and they need houses, schools, shops, roads, offices etc. And … Read More
Guest Author • May 25, 2016 •
By Alexander Arkhipkin, University of Aberdeen Squid, octopus and cuttlefish populations are booming across the world. These fast-growing, adaptable creatures are perfectly equipped to exploit the gaps left by extreme climate changes and overfishing, according to a study colleagues and I published in the journal Current Biology. Humans have reached and in many cases surpassed sustainable fishing … Read More