The words of the epigraph title the book that we are going to comment today in this column of Planet Earth, of interesting content, which are sometimes disturbing. In it, issues are addressed for which we ask each other every day, given the news that comes from the media about that relegated science that is demography.
Precisely a scholar of her, Thomas Hollingsworth, commented on some occasion of “how knowledge with so much suspense, they don’t attract our attention.” And the same author said: “There are two elements in those issues that are death and sex, which can sometimes be treated with little morbidity.”
I continue with a series of questions that the author of “A world without people” (Editorial Almuzara), Rafael Puyol Antolín –Cathedratic of the Complutense University of Madrid, of which he was rector between 1995 and 2003 – that obviously I am not going to answer here: “Will we lose population? Have you ever thought how many inhabitants there will be on Earth in 2050? Is Europe threatened by Muslim immigration? Will the Chinese people die as old? Do millennials need boomers?
All this happens on the stage of global demography, from which Puyol’s book will surprise many with concrete situations that were not expected, and almost incredible forecasts. In that sense, at first glance it is a surprising fact that China has stopped growing in absolute population, staying below the 1,425 million that reached the highest number of inhabitants. India has surpassed the Popular Republic in the population, but soon its own culmination will arrive. Will the land stay without inhabitants? No, there are simply demographic cycles, but we will be less than we expected.
Read Puyol’s book, it is interesting, even necessary.
Bene: This article was written thinking of Moncho, 12-M.