From: damarkley@gmail.com   
      
   On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 12:23:58 PM UTC-4, a425couple wrote:   
   > On 9/13/23 15:01, David P wrote:    
   > > Delusional population projections lead us sleepwalking into catastrophe    
   > > By Jane O’Sullivan, Sept 13, 2023, The Overpopulation Project    
   > >    
   > > The Elon Musks of this world think there can never be enough humans. When   
   we fill up Earth, we will conquer the Universe! But most people think   
   population growth is not a problem because it’s stopping soon anyway. Those   
   â€œpopulation alarmistsâ€�    
   must be naïve, or motivated by racism. But what if growth is not stopping as   
   soon as we think, and what if those extra numbers make it impossible to avoid   
   widespread famines and run-away climate change?    
   > >    
   > > In a newly published paper, I show how the UN projections have   
   consistently underestimated global population growth this century. According   
   to the UN’s 2022 data, there were 253 million more people on Earth in   
   mid-2022 than the UN expected there    
   would be in its projection from the year 2000. While they then estimated an   
   annual increment under 80 million and falling, the actual increase has been   
   roughly 90 million per year, with no sure sign of diminishing.    
   > >    
   > > [CHART]    
   > > Figure 1. The UN’s estimate of world population, given in 2010, 2012,   
   2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 revisions (solid pink line) and the projected   
   population from each of those revisions (dashed blue lines). For full   
   citations, see Jane O’Sullivan,    
   Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections   
   and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures.    
   > >    
   > > There are several rival projections, the most widely known being the   
   Wittgenstein Centre (the “shared socioeconomic pathwaysâ€� or SSP series),   
   Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the Stockholm   
   Resilience Centre’s “Earth4All†  
   � project. All three anticipate far more rapid deceleration and lower peak   
   population than does the UN. Hence, all are even further from reality.    
   > >    
   > > Worryingly, these unrealistically low projections are being used in   
   research efforts to model sustainable futures, which explore what it would   
   take to avoid dangerous climate change and meet everyone’s needs within   
   planetary limits for resource use    
   and environmental damage. The SSP projections are particularly widely used in   
   modelling. They then present sustainability as a viable (if highly   
   challenging) possibility, when greater population numbers would breach   
   environmental limits even under the    
   most techno-optimist scenarios.    
   > >    
   > > [CHART]    
   > > Figure 2. Projections of world population by the UN, Wittgenstein Centre   
   (SSPs), IHME and Earth4All. For full citations, see Jane O’Sullivan,   
   Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections   
   and Jeopardising Scenarios    
   for Sustainable Futures.    
   > >    
   > > One reason for this underestimation is attributing fertility decline to   
   socioeconomic circumstances, such as reducing infant mortality, improving   
   girls’ education, urbanisation and industrialisation. None of the models   
   assigns any importance to    
   deliberate interventions such as voluntary family planning programs. While   
   family size does correlate with each of those factors, all of the models treat   
   fertility as the ‘dependent variable’, not considering how family planning   
   programs might have    
   contributed to lowering infant mortality, improving girls’ access to   
   schooling and accelerating industrialisation and income growth.    
   > >    
   > > The UN’s model is calibrated over the decades in which family planning   
   programs were well supported and many countries had relatively rapid fertility   
   transitions. However, since this support was withdrawn in the 1990s, fertility   
   declines slowed    
   globally and even reversed in a few countries. The UN doesn’t seem to have   
   adjusted its calibration to account for this slow-down. On the contrary, it   
   has recently recalibrated to increase the rate of future fertility decline,   
   with no apparent evidence    
   to back this change. Its rhetoric flatly denies that past family planning   
   programs played any role at all, and is silent on its own projections’ poor   
   record at predicting growth over the past two decades.    
   > >    
   > > Regular readers of this blog might recall my critiques of each of these   
   projections (here, here, here, here and here). In my most recent paper, I   
   bring these together in the context of scenarios for sustainable futures.   
   While few such studies have    
   explored the influence of different population assumptions, those that did   
   have found it impossible to achieve sustainable food systems and low enough   
   emissions to avoid more than 2oC of global heating, no matter how rapidly and   
   universally we change our    
   production technologies and consumption behaviours, if the world population   
   exceeds 10 billion. Yet, at this point it seems that only massive calamities   
   will prevent the human population exceeding 10 billion.    
   > >    
   > > Letting nature do the culling for us is not in anyone’s preferred   
   playbook. Nobel Laureate Henry Kendall once said, “If we don’t halt   
   population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by   
   nature, brutally and without pity—   
   and will leave a ravaged world.â€�    
   > >    
   > > If we go down in wars, famines and environmental disasters, we will take a   
   great deal of biodiversity with us. Hungry people eat the roots of plants, the   
   bark of trees, and anything that crawls, digs, swims or flies, if they can lay   
   their hands on    
   them. Protected areas become a meaningless concept. Hunger soon gives way to   
   violence and failed states.    
   > >    
   > > What would it take to avoid these calamities? The only answer is a much   
   faster fall in birth rates in all high-fertility countries than is happening   
   now. Such fast transitions have happened in the past, but only when   
   contraception and small families    
   were strongly promoted through active family planning programs.    
   > >    
      
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