According to a new study commissioned by the Club of Rome, the world’s population will grow less than expected. Moreover, the population will peak before the middle of the century and shrink again.
That is good news for the climate, although it does not solve all problems simultaneously.
The so-called “population bomb” may not go off, write the new study’s authors, published Monday. Just last year, the United Nations predicted that the world’s population would reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and continue to grow for several decades.
However, the new projection from the Earth4All collective, comprising several leading environmental science and economics institutions, paints a different picture. If current trends continue, the world population will peak as early as 2046 at 8.8 billion. By 2100 it will decrease to 7.3 billion.
The researchers also tested an even more optimistic scenario. This assumes that governments are actively raising average income and education levels, two factors influencing birth rates. In that case, the peak is at 8.5 billion, and we will reach this as early as 2040, after which the population will shrink even faster. That situation would significantly reduce the pressure on our natural environment by the middle of the century and reduce political and social tensions.
Although the first scenario is also better than previous predictions and no “total climate collapse” will follow, this would not be enough to solve the environmental problem. “We have to make a lot of effort to tackle the current paradigm of overconsumption and overproduction,” said Ben Callegari, one of the report’s authors, to The Guardian. In addition, a declining population can create new problems, such as a shortage of workers.
Be First to Comment