A global population Ice Age: Demographic Winter shows that Earth's population is poised not for an explosion but for an implosion, as birthrates around the globe plummet to all-time lows.

If you're like most alive today, you grew up with Paul R. Ehrlich's Malthusian idea of a "population bomb." It just seems like common sense that man will increase his numbers inexorably until, one day, we find ourselves living a real-life Soylent Green scenario, sans drama and Charlton Heston to sound that indelible alarm about the real source of a futuristic, overpopulated world's food supply, "Soylent Green is people!" Yet truth is stranger than fiction, and a work of reality, hour-long documentary Demographic Winter, is sounding its own alarm: the population bomb is a dud. It always has been. Instead, Earth's population is poised to implode as birthrates plummet on a scale heretofore unseen in the annals of man.

This may seem, well, counterintuitive. Isn't the world's population still increasing? Demographic Winter answers affirmatively, but also says the end of population growth is in sight. While man will add perhaps 1.8 billion more to his flock, it's only due to improved healthcare and increased longevity--the number of children in the world is already declining. In fact, the statistics are staggering. Birthrates are now below replacement level (2.1 children per couple) in approximately 70 countries; in Western Europe, the figure is 1.38, and in northern Italy and parts of Spain it is below 1. As a result, Europe's 65-year-olds now outnumber her 14-year-olds, and one German province had to close 220 schools in 2006. Children were present in 80 percent of U.S. households a century ago; that number is now 32 percent. And while this phenomenon is most acute in the developed world, other nations are beginning to follow suit. Amazingly, for instance, Mexico's birthrate is declining at an unprecedented rate.

Demographic Winter possesses a quality that can be either a strength or a weakness, depending on your audience and goals: it avoids moralization or religious pronouncements, approaching the issue from a scientific, databased perspective. And while ' many featured experts obviously care about population implosion, most are not pro-family activists but hail from academia, The majority are social scientists--a group not known for religiosity or moral absolutism--and most are not conservatives. The worldwide experts consulted during production include demographer Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It; Patrick Fagan, psychologist and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services; Harry S. Dent, president of the H.S. Dent Foundation; and Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker, Ph.D.

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It is an impressive list, but still, why should anyone fret about declining population? Doesn't it simply mean more pristine landscapes and elbow room for the rest of us? That is the knee-jerk reaction, yet there is another side to this story. As Phillip Longman observed, "The ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st century." Without a doubt, warns Demographic Winter, it may portend economic decline and the death of the West.

First, rendering demographic-based economic forecasting, Harry S. Dent tells us that when the enormous baby-boom generation moves beyond its peak spending years--which end at age 48--its reduced spending will cause an economic contraction, one the smaller generation following it will not be able to forestall. We will then follow in the footsteps of Japan, which had no baby boom, grayed before us, and experienced an economic meltdown in the 1990s (which Dent predicted). During this period, the Nikkei stock exchange lost 80 percent of its value, real estate depreciated with it, and Japan has wallowed in continual recession ever since. Of course, a major non-demographic factor falling outside the scope of this film--Japan's stifling corporate socialism--was also at play. Nevertheless, the film makes a compelling case that aging populations have a huge negative impact on the economy, whether in Japan or elsewhere.

In our own country, our baby boomers will begin crossing the threshold into retirement in 2010. Yet that is just the tip of our demographic winter iceberg. As the old increase in number relative to the young, there will be fewer workers to drive the economy and fund Social Security and Medicare. As a result, the latter may be taxed more heavily and, in turn, work less and have even fewer children, creating ...