Comments
Congrats and good luck!
Summary
- My new book with Mike Geruso on global depopulation, After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People, will be released this summer.
- If you’re here reading this, we bet you’re going to like the book. If you’d like to help others find their way to the book, preorders now are the best way to help. Preorders give an important market signal to booksellers and help books rise to wider attention via bestseller lists.
- You can preorder here: Amazon | Books-A-Million | Bookshop.org
About the book
After the Spike envisions, and is written to promote, an abundant future where people collaborate, give, and innovate to make lives better, longer, healthier, safer, and happier than they otherwise would be. It is concerned both with the wellbeing of the global poor today and with the long-term flourishing of humanity.
For decades, many have claimed that fewer people would be better—better for the planet, better for the people who remain. This book challenges the old tropes that still influence the public discourse, and invites a broad audience to consider the possibility that a key challenge for humanity’s future is not too many people on a crowded planet but too few to sustain the progress that has lifted billions out of poverty and reduced social inequality.
In the book, we make the case that depopulation is a global priority area. We do so through ethical arguments and by examining social scientific data. The book is written to be accessible to a broad audience, but is full of details and arguments that are likely to be new to even expert readers who think about long-term wellbeing.
Our publisher says we can’t post excerpts from the book at this time, but below we preview the Table of Contents for the first time, and we include comments from friends and colleagues who reviewed an advance draft.
PART I THE PATH TO HERE
- CHAPTER 1 The Spike
- CHAPTER 2.0 The dividing line between growth and decay
PART II THE CASE AGAINST PEOPLE
- CHAPTER 3 What people do to the planet
- CHAPTER 4 Population starts in other people’s bodies
- CHAPTER 5 Adding new lives to an imperfect world
PART III THE CASE FOR PEOPLE
- CHAPTER 6 Progress comes from people
- CHAPTER 7 Dodging the asteroid. And other benefits of other people
- CHAPTER 8 More good is better
PART IV THE PATH AHEAD
- CHAPTER 9 Depopulation won’t fix itself
- CHAPTER 10 Government control cannot force stabilization
- CHAPTER 11 Is cash the answer?
- CHAPTER 12 Aspire bigger
- The Repugnant Appendix
If you have questions about the book, ask us in the discussion here!
If you would like to help
What we hope for the book is that many people find it, read it, and discuss it. Making people aware that the book exists is the hardest part. Presales ahead of the publication date will help with that goal in two ways: (1) Exposure via bestseller lists and (2) affecting how many copies are ordered by retailers and printed by the publisher.
Pre-sales count as first-week sales for bestseller lists, so will improve the book’s chances to land on bestseller lists in its publication week. Bestseller lists create awareness of the book among a wider audience who may otherwise never be exposed.
Pre-sales also send a clear market signal to retailers about how many copies they should order and how they should stock their shelves. That signal feeds back to the publisher, affecting how many copies are printed. In this way, early pre-sales can help avoid a situation in which retailers run out of books. The early signal is especially important when publishers aren’t sure whether to expect a book to connect to a wide audience–like the case of a nonfiction book that discusses the long-term future, ethics, population statistics, the history of innovation and economic growth, and the lives of the global poor! If you are likely to read the book at some point anyway, it’s extra helpful if you order it now.
What some friends and colleagues have said about the book:
“After the Spike is a remarkable blend of empirical research and philosophical argument that has challenged, and changed, my thinking about population. I expect it will do the same for you.” —Peter Singer
“Spears and Geruso take us by the hand to understand the most dramatic period of human history—how a global population of millions became billions—but, importantly, what happens next. The insights and rigour—which come thick and fast—are matched by human and empathetic narrative.” — Hannah Ritchie
“What an eye-opener: Spears and Geruso masterfully weave together demographic data, economic theory, and vital moral insights into a gripping tale of loss to come. They explain where humanity is headed if we don't change course soon, and why it matters so much that we find a better path." —Richard Y. Chappell
“So few books can combine a big-picture vision for humanity’s future with such rigour, insight, and compassion.” —Toby Ord
“This is popular economics at its finest. Dean and Mike meticulously take apart all the myths and confusion surrounding the incoming demographic changes for our species, while making clear the enormous stakes for freedom, equal rights, and human prosperity. Rarely has such an explosive topic been treated with such a combination of urgency and patient explanation. I had my mind blown over and over and over, and you will too.”—Zach Weinersmith
"A fascinating introduction to one of the most important policy questions of our time. This engaging, informative book will make you question what you have heard about population. With depth and nuance, this book shows how parenting can be reclaimed as a progressive cause." –Maya Eden
“Breaking apart from the familiar natalism and anti-natalism debates, Geruso and Spears make a rousing case for population stabilization that is as stirring as it is thoughtful, rigorous and morally uncompromising. Pushing against the alleged self-evidence of the benefits of a declining population—to the environment, to women—After the Spike shows why a stable population is not just compatible with climate action, gender equality and a higher, equitably-distributed standard of living, but why it may just be their necessary condition.” –Anastasia Berg
“After the Spike is an important book. Demography is destiny; Spears and Geruso tell a surprising story and show us how to shape that destiny for a sustainable, flourishing world.“
—Anne-Marie Slaughter
I've been interested to see this book since I came across the idea. I think the argument for this being a problem from a variety of perspectives is pretty compelling.
There’s a nice post right now on the front page about the lifesaving power of immediate skin-to-skin (meaning right after birth, take a look here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bLZj9puhixeYajTJ2/promoting-immediate-skin-to-skin-contact-and-early-1 ) which reminded me that one thing to say about our book is that it also tells some stories from the KMC program that I’ve been involved with in Uttar Pradesh (it's a longer-term intervention, meaning days-to-weeks; I talked and wrote about it here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rwq8WqcQ9hxjxPmud/ask-me-questions-here-about-my-80-000-hours-podcast-on ).
That might not be what you’re expecting to find in a book that’s also about progress towards an abundant future and making parenting better—but we think it all hangs together and that the connections are part of where readers here might find something interesting. Preventing neonatal deaths is an important way that people have learned from other people. And! We indeed wrote in chapter 7 about why we might need many of us to work together to solve a big problem like a pandemic, decarbonization or, yes, maybe an asteroid.