The population crash will kill our economy – good news for the planet

And ageing is the new way of the world. You wouldn't guess it from the public debate so far about the seven billion landmark, but the average woman in the world today has half as many children as her mother or grandmother did 40 years ago: 2.5 children, compared to five. And the number keeps on going down. Dozens of countries are already below two, including Iran, Burma, Vietnam, China of course – and much of southern India, too.


In the long run, that's not enough to keep up numbers. Many expect world peak population by mid-century, and decline thereafter. Whether it happens then or later, mass global ageing is now a certainty.


I suspect that the global economic binge of the 20th century was a product of a booming, youthful population. It will die as we age. Japan's lost decade, and its likely repetition now across the western world, is perhaps the first sign. About time too. We all know that we cannot go on as we have. The planet cannot stand it. The party is over.

The population crash will kill our economy – good news for the planet

Revisiting Population Growth

Some analysts, ranging from scientists David Pimentel of Cornell University to financial advisor and philanthropist Jeremy Grantham, dare to underline the possibility of a darker alternative future. Defying the optimistic majority, they suggest that humanity long ago overshot a truly sustainable world population, implying that apocalyptic horsemen old and new could cause widespread death as the environment unravels. Most writers on environment and population are loathe to touch such predictions. But we should be asking, at least, whether such possibilities are real enough to temper the usual demographic confidence about future population projections.

Revisiting Population Growth:
The Impact of Ecological Limits

Let's see, water shortages, food shortages, war... all predicted with peak everything and climate change even if you are conservative.

It's too complicated to model, so we'll just run this experiment in the lab called Earth.

State of the World

Only one of the graphics in a comment by aangle over at TOD which is totally worth a read. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Dick Smith's Population Crisis

Food prices- again

The prices of staple foods, which have already reached record levels in 2011, could more than double over the next two decades, a new Oxfam report says. According to the report, Growing a Better Future, a combination of factors — including climate change, diminished natural resources worldwide, population growth, and an increased use of crops for biofuels — could trigger a new era of permanent food crisis.

Staple Food Prices Could More than Double by 2030, Oxfam Says

Why we need to all become vegetarian

Repost: Why we need to all become vegetarians