When I was younger, I would occasionally hear from fellow environmentalists that the “real problem” was human overpopulation. (The standard answer, from the well informed, was: nope, it’s inequality, extractive capitalism, institutional inertia, patriarchal values, colonialism, et al. “Overpopulation” was a symptom, not the disease.)
The population-mongers have mostly faded since then, as the “demographic transition” argument has proven itself pretty convincing (people with greater opportunities for a real life end up having fewer children, and more and more countries have taken that path). And as most environmentalists have come to see the role of culture, politics, and economics in shaping our problems.
But I still find it stunning to see a diagram like this one, in a NY Times article from a few weeks ago.
It shows a range of projections of global human population growth, with almost all of them peaking in the coming decades — at 10 billion around 2085 — and then falling way, way down, in fact to below 110 million within a matter of centuries.
According to the author, Dean Spears, who is an economist at University of Texas Austin’s Population Research Center but who is working from data produced by leading demographic studies, “per year births” may have already peaked, as early as 2014, and “peak human population” is expected to be achieved between 2060 and 2090. (I find it hard to believe that we won’t hit 10 billion by 2050. I hope to be around to see.)
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