The title of this book, The Great Population Spike and After: Reflections on the 21st Century, requires some explanation. The Great Spike is illustrated in the figure that serves as the book's frontispiece.1 The figure plots the rate of growth of global population from 8000 B.C. to 8000 A.D. In highly stylized form, it exhibits an average growth rate of zero except for the period between 1776 and 2176. In that interval, the spike occurs: the growth rate rises to a bit over 2% per annum in 1976, and then falls to zero again in the next century. Falling growth rates for the global population, the downward part of the spike, are already upon us. I should emphasize the word "stylized." The world's population growth rate was evidently not static at zero from 8OOOB.C. to the middle of the eighteenth century, nor will it remain static for the 8,000 years after the spike. It will fluctuate with the vicissitudes of history. But despite the illustration's oversimplicity, its message is significant. Figure 1.1 shows, in absolute terms, the leveling off of the global population, which will take place gradually. Global population will attain, according to present estimates, an absolute level of about 10 billion people as opposed to about 790 million in the mid-18th century. This rise, along with the rise in income per capita, is a rough measure of what the Industrial Revolution has achieved since the 18th century, but the industrialization of the globe also set in motion forces that will bring about a decline in the rate of increase in population. The demographic transition decrees that after a certain point the birth rate will fall as income per capita rises. These negative forces will come to dominate the 21st century. Thus, this book concentrates on the period from the 1990s to around 2050, set against the background of the past several centuries. It deals, in effect, with both sides of the Great Spike. It is suffused, however, with the proposition that the 21st century, if it proves relatively peaceful, will soon face a period in which a rising population and effective demand in the presently developing nations will strain technologies and existing resources, followed by a long period in which the Industrial Revolution will have been largely diffused around the world.
ANALISIS PERMINTAAN KEDELAI DI INDONESIA
