 You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that and um... Hey there, Mr. Ruscha! So, we've looked at the physical geography and history of Europe. In this lesson, we're going to see how these have impacted Europe's population, culture, and its political and economic systems. First, let's look at the people of Europe today. What we find is they live in an extremely densely populated continent that is highly urbanized. Europe has a population density of nearly 188 people per square mile. That's over double what we have here in the United States. But just like we have in the United States, different parts of Europe are more or less dense than other areas. For example, countries such as Britain have a population density of over 700 people per square mile, while Iceland has a population density of just 9. Now across the continent, Europe has many large cities that service centers of culture and trade in each of its countries. An example of these include Moscow, London, Paris, Madrid, and many others. While many parts of the world have population growth rates that are quickly growing, that is not what we see in Europe. In fact, Europe's population growth rate is three times slower than the United States, with a growth rate that is less than a quarter of one percent every year. A look at Europe's combined population pyramid graphically shows why its growth rate is so low. The populations of many European countries are growing older, therefore there's not as many young people who are in their reproductive years making babies. Now if we look at some of the individual European countries such as Germany, we see that they actually have a shrinking population. But it's not just Germany. Of the top 20 fastest shrinking countries in the world, 19 of those are European countries. Yet the population of Europe is not just impacted by birth rates, immigration is also a major factor in determining Europe's population. Just as with other nations, Europe has long had the challenge of determining who might be allowed to come within its borders. For many years, it's attempted to deal with immigrants from Africa who flee economic and security turmoil and have come across the Mediterranean Sea for a better life. Then as difficult as this challenge has been for Europe and the last 10 years, it has had to deal with thousands if not millions of refugees coming from Syria, Germany, which is remember is facing a shrinking population growth, brought in nearly 900,000 Syrian refugees. To put it another way, that is 1% of Germany's population. Now not everyone in Europe agrees with countries such as Germany in bringing in these refugees. Terrorist attacks in France and Germany have only reinforced these attitudes of those in Europe who disagree with this type of immigration. Others also argue that bringing in so many Muslims will change the culture of Europe. While Turkey in several areas in the Balkans have been Muslim since the Ottoman Empire, the rest of Europe has seen an increase in the Muslim population. In 2016, nearly 4% of Europeans were Muslim. While the immigration of Syrian refugees raised Germany's Muslim population to 6.1%, the Netherlands and France actually have even higher percentages. When we look at the fertility rate of European Muslim women compared to non-Muslim women, we can expect that the percentage of the Muslim population in Europe to continue to increase even with lower immigration rates. Of course, the largest religion in Europe is still Christianity. Go into nearly any European city you're going to find churches everywhere. And as we discussed in earlier lessons, the type of Christianity worshiped is largely divided geographically with Catholicism in the South and the West, Protestantism in the North and Orthodox Christianity in the East. But just because you find many churches in Europe doesn't mean that they're full every Sunday. In Western Europe, 71% of people call themselves Christian. Yet only 22% of Western Europeans go to services at least once a month. Now, it's interesting that countries that were once under the atheist policies of the Soviet Union are actually more likely to be able to call themselves Christian. For example, 92% of the people in Moldova will call themselves Christians. And these Eastern and Central European countries are also more churchgoing. Many of these countries have the same rates of attending services weekly that Western Europe has attending services monthly. Now, one huge difference with religion in Europe than, say, religion in the United States is that European governments are much more involved in church business. In many European countries, such as in Germany, the government actually finances the country's churches. However, the way the government comes up with the money to do so is through a church tax that it levies on all church members. This is one of the reasons that some suggest that church membership in Europe has declined because you leave the church, you keep more of your money. Despite all this, with so many churches in Europe that go back hundreds of years, the history of Christianity still frames much of the culture in Europe. So, what language should you learn before you go visit Europe? One estimate notes there are 230 different languages that are spoken in Europe. However, 94% of Europeans speak one of three language groups of the Indo-European language family. These language groups are the Romance languages in the West and the South, the Germanic languages up in the North, and the Slavic languages into the East. However, English is widely spoken not only in Britain, but also as a second language in many of the countries in Europe, especially in Western Europe. For example, 90% of the people in Norway are proficient in English. To put this in perspective, that is actually a higher percentage than the people in Australia who speak English. This certainly doesn't mean that everyone in Europe speaks English, less than 30% of the people in Spain speak English, and even in countries such as France and Italy, less than half of the people speak English. But then again, money also talks, right? So, let's take a few moments to talk about Europe's economy. Collectively, Europe has a largest economy in the world. It also is the world's largest exporter and the second largest importer of goods. Now, two-thirds of Europe's 222 million workers work in the service sector, so it's easy to understand that Europe's economy is largely based on tertiary economic activities. Now, because the countries of Europe are developed nations, life is good. Now, when we look at the UN's Human Development Index, remember this is the index that measures how developed the country is. We find that nine of the top 15 countries in the world are actually found in Europe. See, European countries tend to be among the best in literacy per capita income, mortality rates, infant mortality rates, and even in education. These countries have high income taxes, but in turn they also have free health care, education, and other public services. Now, these advantages are largely due to most European countries that have free market economies that are able to support these type of services. Now, even in Eastern Europe, the countries that are once allied with the Communist Soviet Union, they have also moved towards a free market economy. Now, despite Europe largely having free markets, some nations do have socialist policies in which the national governments have taken over what is known as the means of production. These include oil and gas production running the railroads and controlling the other industries. For Russia, oil is the most important commodity not only due to economics but because it is a tool of power. Now, Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia and one of the first things he did was to nationalize the oil and gas industry in Russia. Now, not only was he able to greatly increase oil and gas production but many other European countries have now become dependent upon Russian oil and natural gas. Now, this is given Putin an advantage as he has on several times, usually during the winter, shut off or at least threatened to shut off gas to these countries if they didn't give in to his political demands. Now, an interesting economic story is Switzerland and Luxembourg. These are two of the 15 landlocked countries that we talked about earlier. And as we previously discussed, landlocked countries usually have poor economies as it is more difficult to be able to trade without a port to the sea. Yet, Switzerland and Luxembourg are the two richest countries in the world in terms of gross domestic product per capital. And why is that? Well, both countries have built a very strong banking and finance industry based upon their favorable tax laws to people and corporations who deposit money into their banks. These two countries truly are your fat cat rich bankers. Now, when you realize that Europe literally invented democracy, it shouldn't shock you that the countries in Europe are democracies. Now, some countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, and Spain and Denmark have constitutional monarchies where their king and queen largely do ceremonial duties where the laws are passed and administered by parliaments. Now, unfortunately, we've seen that the story of Europe is one of conflict but has also led to alliances. Now, we saw in our history lesson that the end of World War II saw Europe divided between the Soviet-dominated Communist East against the free market West in what was known as the Cold War. With the rise of the Soviet Union's dominance over Eastern Europe, Western European countries in the United States became worried that the Soviet Union would continue their march westward into Europe. So, in 1949, several countries to include the United States and Canada established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO as a mutual defense treaty. Essentially, the treaty established the idea that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all of the members. Now, the Warsaw Pact was the USSR's reaction to NATO in 1955. It, too, was a mutual defense treaty of the Soviet Union in seven of its satellite countries. A satellite country is a country that is formally independent but is under heavy political, economic, and military influence of another country. In this case, it was the Soviet Union. Now, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved at the end of the Cold War and today many Warsaw Pact countries are actually members of NATO. Now, although the Warsaw Pact and Cold War came to an end in 1991, NATO still continues with 30 nations in its charter. Now, NATO not only still provides member states with that promise of a mutual defense, its forces regularly train together to make sure that their armed forces are more capable. But, NATO has also stepped off of Europe to conduct military operations. Now, it deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 to establish the International Security Assistance Force to assist Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban and it ran ISAF until 2014. It also led counter-pirate operations off the coast of Somalia in order to protect maritime trade. But European alliances have not only been military. After World War II, several European countries realized that countries that depend upon each other for trade are less likely to fight each other. This led to a series of economic agreements that culminated in 1992 with the creation of the European Union or the EU. Now, the goal of the European Union was the eventual establishment of common economic, foreign, security, and justice policies. With a combined economy of the EU, it is able to match the economy of the United States and negotiate on a more equal footing than its individual countries would be able to do on their own. Now, one of the different things that the EU does is it has a common currency called the Euro that is the official currency in most of the European Union countries. Also, due to the Schengen Agreement, you can move between EU countries just as easy as you can move between the States and the United States, all with no border controls. Now, the EU did have a setback in 2016 when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. After four years of negotiations, it finally left on the first day of 2021 in what was known as Brexit. Now, while the Cold War came to an end with the Soviet Union, the actions of Russia in the last 10 years suggest that we might be headed for another Cold War. In 2008, Russia invaded the Transcaucasian country of Georgia. And in 2014, Russia supported the invasion of the Ukrainian Peninsula of Crimea and took it as its home and moved troops into eastern Ukraine. And most recently, there is speculation that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election. Okay, what we have done in this lesson is we've gone over the major elements of Europe's population, culture, economic, and political systems. All right, until next time, keep on learning.