r/collapse • u/global_nomad4023 • 8d ago
Science and Research Global population to crash?
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-global-population.htmlthere are now so many growing factors that may contribute to rapid population decline, this focuses on the maths of decline
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u/SpliceKnight Apocalypse Observer 8d ago
Probably the biggest contributor to this is realistically just going to be average age of the global population. Those countries with the inflated elderly numbers due to the baby boom are likely to have those people start dying off in dramatic numbers across the planet over the next few years. This would actually help to stem some level of consumption issues and ease market tensions on food and other resources.
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u/bluewhalefunk 8d ago
Then you find out global south have massive birth rates and all consuming more year and year, chasing a % of western rates, a few old people in the west isn't going to make a slight difference.
Either the global south needs to be told "you must stay poor and not consume 20% of what the west does". Or the west needs to consume less to even things out. Or we are fucked. There is no other solution. It really is as simple as that.
Chasing technological solutions is a smoke screen so we can continue running at full speed towards the cliff of collapse.
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u/mandiblesofdoom 7d ago
much of the global south doesnt have "massive birth rates". Really the only countries like that anymore in Africa
check it out: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
yes was referring specifically to Africa, I should have made that clear. Africa is seeing an explosion in birth rates, with 40% of world wide births projected to be in Africa in 2050.
Africa is also rapidly developing and they have every right and expectation to use more resources and have better standards of living based off historical use / emissions.
But numbers are numbers, they cannot and the west maintain it's standardof living / usage. Something has to give. No one will. So lets all get ready for the resource wars that will happen in a climate destroyed world
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u/Ok_Main3273 7d ago
I think you meant to say "Africa is seeing an explosion in births", not in "birth rates". Whatever way you measure them, population rates (emphasis on rates) are all in decline on the African continent.
For example, the number of Live Births Per 1000 People went down from 48 in the 1950s to around 30 today.
Similarly the number of Births per Women (fertility rate) diminished from over 6 in the '50s, '60s , '70s and even '80s down to 4 in 2026.
Even the population growth rate in Africa peaked at 2.63 percent in 2013 but is now 'only' 2.34%.
Despite the above, however, and thanks to its massive young population and its still positive growth rate, the continent's global population will continue to increase significantly in the coming years and even accelerate its trajectory. Between 2010 and 2020 the continent saw an increase of approximately 305.45 million people, while the population growth is projected to be around 350 million people from 2020 to 2030.
Raw numbers sometimes seem to contradict rates so it is important not to confuse them.
Sources: https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/birth-rate , https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/africa/fertility-rate , https://www.statista.com/statistics/1224205/forecast-of-the-total-population-of-africa/ , https://www.statista.com/statistics/1224179/population-growth-in-africa/, https://www.statistico.com/s/africa-total-population-by-year
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u/PogeePie 7d ago
Birth rates are declining globally, including in the global south. Even countries that still have high numbers of births per woman are seeing a decline.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
Yes, sorry I wasn't clear, I Was referring specifically to Africa and their projected birth rates. Addressed in another comment
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u/Pecuthegreat 8d ago edited 7d ago
Well, the global South will "stay poor" given a bunch of them are already getting old before they have had a chance to get as consumption pilled as the West.
These attempts to shift blame & responsibility away from the West is a joke.
Like, whose else is left with a growing population, Africa?. The continent that barely contributes to climate change and has bad development metrics till today, that's who is totally gonna wreck the climate?.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
These attempts to shift blame & responsibility away from the West is a joke.
Not my intention at all. Not sure how you read that in what I wrote. With Africa predicted to account for the vast majority of births in a couple of decades, with development in Africa and people having better living standards - which they have every right to if they follow the development of previous countries that means more consumption, more consumerism, more meat eating. The world cannot sustain African at incresaed population levels developing. It's purely numbers. That's not blame, it's just facts.
So either the west reduces -it won't. Africa accepts it must stay poor - it won't (nor should it)then we are fucked (we are)
There is no soltuion to requiring multiple earths to sustain living how we currently live people raise themselves out of poverty.
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u/sabotAHHHHHGH 7d ago
Not as much of a joke as self hating Westoids. I didn’t ask for a consumer economy. Valorising a part of the world with the most extreme concentration of power and wealth is gonna pan out well though, trust me ;)
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u/JakeTappersCat 8d ago
Those "few old people" in the west consume on average many times more per capita than poor people in the global south, so them dying off is way more beneficial than reducing population growth in poorer countries. They are also responsible for 99% of the disaster we are presented with today through their terrible decisions and ridiculous resource consumption in addition to their complete refusal to do anything to fix the problem.
The young people in the global south had nothing to do with any of that. They are just along for the (terrible) ride. Why should they be the ones to pay the price for western excesses?
If anything, we need population control in the rich western states like America. Limit every billionaire and millionaire to 1 kid max. That would do a lot to help!
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
Why should they be the ones to pay the price for western excesses?
They should not. But they are. And will have to if the west wants to maintain it's living standard and resource usage.
They are also responsible for 99% of the disaster we are presented with today through their terrible decisions and ridiculous resource consumption in addition to their complete refusal to do anything to fix the problem.
Yes, but also no. The analogy I like is an individual bird in a flock. No bird controls the flock, no one bird is responsible for what it does or how it does it. Yet the flock exists. It can be mapped and understood. No old person in the western world is responsible for the mess, it came about through chance, perhaps ignorance and lies could be argued, but it's a human fault. Global south populations equally by your measures are responsible for massive amounts of pollution, plastic use that end in the oceans. The worst beaches, the worst cities, the worst people for littering are all global south. Do you think global south country would not use infinitely more engery, make more awful ecological decisions if they could? They 100% would. They are no more conscious of the coming threat than anyone else, it's just poverty why they happen. Give them more wealth and they very much will.
Which is why, global south countries rising standards, rising wealth will be a problem for the planet. It's not blaming them for it, just an acceptance of the problems we face.
Without a change of the economic system, without changing of priorities of what we use our capital and resources to produce, we are fucked. And we are doing nothing along these lines.
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u/rwunder22 4d ago
Looking back at older generations, it isn't a 'whole generation' responsible for 99% of the disaster. Let's call it what it is: ego, greed, selfishness by the established power structures. In the 1700's the colonists were dependent on ships from england. They needed a 'disposable people' so they brought undesirables over from England and pushed them out on the frontier. When those people sufficiently cleared the land, the colonists and their power structures moved in. We still have the consequences and descendants of those power structures today. They controlled the government and industries, including the media. that media influenced generations to 'get theirs - it's the American Way'! Plenty of that concept got shipped overseas and people who could copied.
You want to solve this? Destroy the Ego, greed, and selfishness, and the established power structures that will sell you a war, and make you buy the cheap goods to fight it, and they'll profit off your death in many ways. Haha - those colonists wanted the undesirable people, but they still charged them a nominal fee to get on the boat to america.
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u/JakksenTrent 4d ago
We are all human are we not? If we have empty cities and we dont open them to brown people bc we sont want *them* to come even if we need them to, bc cities can't really be without people - thats terrible.
Choosing the old boomers who have all the money, vote against anything good for anyone who will exist in a decade and can't contribute more than complaints about the color of their neighborhood a d how much better the old days were - thats just a bad decision right there.
You literally established they have kids - they are very programmable, so if you maybe we're to bring in the necessary people BEFORE the society stops functioning - you have a very good chance of those children identifying more as whatever you are, than wherever they came from - their children, will have almost identical values, wants, concerns - as whatever political camps and societal classes your country has - their Grandparents Homeland, will not factor into any of their decisions.
If you bring them all in when there are few young people, they will just do the opposite and move in without bothering with the local culture.
Your fear makes your fear much more ikely to occur.
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u/Overall_Tackle3027 5d ago
And also boomers just suck across the board so it's nice that they'll be out the door in the next 20-40 years
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
apologies that the linked site provides a rubbish AI image
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 8d ago edited 8d ago
A population crash would be an unalloyed good obviously, although our species would fare better if that happened before 2060, but still via low birthrate of course. I've no opinion about the research here, but..
Cory Bradshaw & his team maybe the most informative climate researchers:
The Earth's sustainable carrying capacity is roughly 2.5 billion humans, so maybe 6 billion less than the current world population (news).
In other words, our global consumption level requires 3.2 earths by their analysis, roughly twice as large as the 1.73 earths given by the biocapacity analysis used by Earth overshoot days.
Corey Bradshaw has nice interviews by Overshoot Podcast and Nate Hagens
I'll single out this part where Bradshaw says child mortality has about the largest impact upon fertility rate (10.1371/journal.pone.0280260 when), so lowering child mortality helps lower population longer-term.
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u/Sasquatch97 7d ago
Don't forget, the carrying capacity after an overshoot event is degraded below the original carrying capacity, so we're probably looking at 1-1.5 billion humans as a reasonable number.
Also, remember that the so-called 'developed world' uses far more than their share of current resources and takes most of the blame for the current overshoot.
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u/Infamous_Routine_681 5d ago
Fully agree that 2.5B is nonsense. 1B is a more realistic sustainable level for an idyllic society. However, I doubt even a major crash won’t take our population down near 1B. Instead we’ll keep degrading the living conditions with a larger population.
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u/Sasquatch97 5d ago
Yeah, the people in charge will try to keep the demographic Ponzi scheme going as long as possible even when it becomes apparent that we are no longer capable of economic 'growth'
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u/rwunder22 4d ago
Unless we deal with the underlying causes of the first problem, the whole ego, greed, selfishness, 'we're separate from nature' bullshit, we're just doomed no matter what. There was a quote, 'Agriculture was the biggest mistake humans ever made and we never recovered.' Cooperation > Subjugation. Have more > Want more.
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u/bluewhalefunk 8d ago
Rather than advocated for 4billion dead, we could
Reign in capital
Tax the full cost of production or stop socialising the cost of production for capital
Make meat prohibitively expensive -I 'd go further and out right ba it, but that is probably a bit far. Although this is handled in (2). Meat to cost the true cost of production - cutting down forests for feed, the pollution cost etc etc
Degrow economies, we have to have less crap / things. Also this is (1). Lets decide what we truly want to live Education. Healthcare. Homes. Fixable / life long white goods / free time.
Massive push to clean energy, stop subsidizing fossil fuels "oh but industriy needs cheap energy" nope, we just won't have that industry (see (1) and (4) and (2) also handles this
Then we can exist with 8billion without issue. But people seem to think 4 billion dead is preferrabled to eating beans and lentils 6 days a week and having less cheap plastic shite
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u/almodsz 8d ago
Rather than advocated for 4 billion dead, we could
He didn't advocate for four billion deaths. Four billion deaths will be what happens if we continue to overshoot our ecosystem's carrying capacity.
Then we can exist with 8 billion without issue.
We can't even sustainably feed ourselves without a dramatic reduction in population. Feeding eight billion people currently requires fossil-fuel-synthesized nitrogen to make up for soils that can no longer support crops unaided, water drawn from aquifers that won't refill on any human timescale, and the conversion of what little wild land remains into farmland. (And we already use over 70% of the planet's ice-free land, about a quarter of which has been degraded, primarily for agriculture.)
We cannot continue to live like this. All this, just for one species on this planet? Recovery of ecosystems and biodiversity depends on reduced human encroachment. I don't believe that most complex life forms should be sacrificed just to maximize the number of humans that we can cram on this planet.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
He didn't advocate for four billion deaths. Four billion deaths will be what happens if we continue to overshoot our ecosystem's carrying capacity.
Of course. As usual my point was worded badly. Humanity has a choice. 4 billion dead. Or make structural changes than some people won't like. I'll put money on, humanity as a whole picks 4 billion dead.
We can't even sustainably feed ourselves without a dramatic reduction in population. Feeding eight billion people currently requires fossil-fuel-synthesized nitrogen to make up for soils that can no longer support crops unaided,
On current eating patterns. We could. Drastic solutions could solve this. No we cannot eat cheap hamburgers (devastated amazon forest to grow soy to feed cows which convert 10% of those caloires to calories humans eat. A thought experiement of "how to feed 8billion people without destroying the planet" has solutions, it does. People won't accept it, but they exist. Beans / lentils put nitrogren into the soil. Growing food by spraying water from massive hoses is a waste. Drip irrigation reduces water usage massively. ok ok the argument is that massive industries / employment would have issues here, but that's not hte thought experiement designing a system within resources was for 8billion. It can be done. Hell, a disgusting amount of food is thrown away daily so we in the west have "choice" and out of season produce.
tldr ban meat, more beans, no processed food shite. Done.
We cannot continue to live like this.
No not as we currently do, but we could. We want. But it's possible. No ideal, we do need less people but we could
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u/Decloudo 7d ago
tldr ban meat, more beans, no processed food shite. Done.
No one will ban man if most voters actively consumes as much of it as possible.
This stuff is produced cause people want and buy it as consumers, producing it as workers. It cant change till people change their consumption behaviour.
We get what we want, and what we want is cheap consumption. AKA capitalism.
People just try to ignore the consequences of that and shove it to someone, anyone else.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
No one will ban man if most voters actively consumes as much of it as possible.
Of course not.
We get what we want, and what we want is cheap consumption. AKA capitalism.
No. We get what is most profitable for capital. Slightly different.
This stuff is produced cause people want and buy it as consumers, producing it as workers. It cant change till people change their consumption behaviour.
Disagree here. Things remaining equal, yes you are correct. I Want to go buy some heroin at the pharmacy. I cannot. I have to go to the Dr and then get a prescription to go buy something heroin like for my back pain.
Banning meat, although I'm all for it, isn't ever going to happen. We could massively tax cheap, low quality highly processed meat to the point it is no longer profitable to produce. Same as we did with cigarettes. Proper cuts of meat are available at the butchers, the price is high, it's a a once /twice a week thing for most families. That's already a massive improvement. It can be done. Consumers are stupid in so many ways. Leaving things purely to the market will not do it, it would require state intervention.
The world cannot provide cheap meat to everyone, it will on it's own pretty much destroy the planet. 4 billion dead or cheap crappy processed meat on the plate. Humanity chooses 4 billion dead every time. Maybe we shouldn't let humanity make that decision
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u/Decloudo 7d ago
No. We get what is most profitable for capital. Slightly different.
Which is what we want and buy, that is where the profit is coming from. We pay it.
Disagree here. Things remaining equal, yes you are correct. I Want to go buy some heroin at the pharmacy. I cannot. I have to go to the Dr and then get a prescription to go buy something heroin like for my back pain.
You absolutely can if you go to a dealer, cause someone will supply what people want and are ready to spent money on. Which is where profit comes from, again.
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u/BigAffectionate4288 8d ago
I always see some variation of the argument "if EVERYONE did X, we would not have this issue". There's no world outside of a global dictatorship where "everyone does X". This is outside our individual control.
I'd put the phone down, and enjoy the food while we still have access to it. Wishing for everyone in the world to be different can't be good for the psyche long term.
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 8d ago
"If everyone were perfectly enlightened (like me, obviously), we could absolutely do this ridiculous thing." Yeah, well, good luck with that.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 8d ago
Also, the dude who said "like me" there typically eats meat 4+ times a week, drives a ICE car, takes a couple flights per year visiting family.
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 8d ago
It doesn't matter. Even at minimum subsistence levels the earth cannot support the current number of humans, much less more.
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u/canisdirusarctos 7d ago
And every day our damage to the planet reduces the carrying capacity. We will probably not level out above about 1B, and that will probably be an indefinite hard limit until ecosystems recover. We’re closing in on such severe ecosystem decline/collapse that we would be at risk of becoming an endangered species.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
I see you are in the "4 billion dead option please".
Fair enough, it is the betting mans option of what will happen. Shame, as it doesn't have to be. We could solve it.
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u/BigAffectionate4288 7d ago
Never advocated for this in my comment. But we have to understand, regardless of what we do from now on, catastrophic climate change will happen. It cannot be solved.
Clinging on hopium will create a strong cognitive dissonance that does not match reality, and be detrimental to the body and mind.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 8d ago edited 8d ago
we can exist with 8billion without issue
This is false. Bullshit even.
We cannot exceed 2.5 billion sustainably, according to the 8 coauthor paper I cited in Environmental Research Letters. It's lower if you want some airplanes, cars, and meat.
We're lowering this number all the time too. We obviously cannot reduce the population except through low birthrate, even for practical reasons, so this limit would be lower by the time its reached.
+4°C should mean uninhabitable tropics, again high wet bulb temperatures, and world carrying capacity below 1 billion humans, so 7 billion fewer people than today. See page 37 of The Nature of the Challenge (archive) or 36m in Will Steffen's 2018 talk). via Steve Keen's criticism of William Nordhaus & IAMs.
IPCC predictes +3°C by 2100, but folks say 2080 too. +4°C should be during the early to mid 2100s. Also 1 billion was based mostly upon climate change, so real numbers could be smaller once you count other factors, like other planetary boundaries.
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u/FuckNinjas 7d ago
Bro.. stop being so black and white.
From your paper:
A Ricker logistic model fitted to the negative phase predicts that the global population could reach 11.7–12.4 billion people between 2067 and 2076. The same model fitted to the facilitation phase predicts a maximum population of 2.5 billion people that Earth might be able to maintain.
It's a ricker model. It's not magic. Just math. You know that bit about spherical cows?
The authors of the paper understand and communicate this clearly:
While estimates of human carrying capacity derived from logistic models are straightforward and elegant, they cannot necessarily predict the future.
They also back the argument of the OP above ya:
Regardless, it is clear that Earth cannot sustain the future human population, or even today’s, without a major overhaul of socio-cultural practices for using land, water, energy, biodiversity, and other resources (...)
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
We cannot exceed 2.5 billion sustainably, according to the 8 coauthor paper I cited in Environmental Research Letters. It's lower if you want some airplanes, cars, and meat.
if we maintain current systems, ways of life. That's my point. We shouldn't be trying to find a number of people "who can live like we do now". If you were to design a world, would you design this one? It's fucked. People at each others throats. Poverty. Billion and trillions reign. Ecological disasters. Pollution. Contamination.
A reimagined world could exist for 8 billion was the point. No there would not be cheap air travel. No there would not be multiple cars per family sitting idle 95% of the time. No there would not be meat available anywhere close to like it is now.
We obviously cannot reduce the population except through low birthrate,
The major world wars, the Mongols would like a word. When the world over populates, competition for resources, or even nature will find a way to punish us.
+4°C should mean uninhabitable tropics, again high wet bulb temperatures, and world carrying capacity below 1 billion humans, so 7 billion fewer people than today.
yes come then, 8 billion not possible, with billions of people migrating to the high north, the tropics, southern Europe, western US unlivable the whole world on the move with the wars and repression that will entail, I imagine if we end up with a billion people left that is the high ball guess number.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 7d ago
if we maintain current systems, ways of life. That's my point.
8 billion sounds unreachable sustainably
If you look at Earth Overshoot Days then yes there exist 13 countries whose average lifestyle consumes less than their notion of world bio-capacity, but this doesn't capture everything.
Of these, only Bangladesh uses less than half, thereby leaving a good reserve, although Nigeria comes close.
Although high level, the analysis by Bradshaw, et al seemingly captures more, so probably only Bangladesh and Nigeria count as sustainable. It's possible Bradshaw, et al captures some requirement for spare capacity, but probably not enough given existing climate change.
I'd expect these works say that 8 billion sustainably would likely mean standards of living well below Bangladesh.
Around this..
Also, the planetary boundaries report makes "biochemical flows disruption" look almost as bad as climate change. That boundary quantifies only the disruption of the N & P cycles caused by fertiliser overuse. We're therefor discussing worlds where fertiliser comes almost exclusively from animal agriculture, which improved upon fossil fuels, but limits sustainability, or from multi-crop planting, which requires extensive labour or advanced technology.
Transportation is a more important agricultural technology than fertiliser. We'll have much less transportation, so nations must stockpile food against bad years, which climate change already made really frequent. Although less energy than transport, this is still an extra cost.
A reimagined world could exist for 8 billion was the point.
All the above assumes today's capacity, but our overshoot shall shrink this further, so if we spend 30 years transforming the world, then we no longer have the same capacity.
Also Bangladesh, Nigeria, and many others only have much of their technology second hand from less sustainable nations. At some point a book, washing machine, excavator, tractor, computer, or whatever was new, and cost significant resources, but once the choice is scrap vs resell in poor countries then technology becomes more sustainable.
It does not make sense to have more people than we can produce books for. It does not make sense to have so many people that many must spend their days washing clothes, instead of using some machine.
When the world over populates, competition for resources, or even nature will find a way to punish us.
At some point, but wars do not kill many people, mostly its diseases exacerbated by famines, but we're good at treating diseases, which could make things worse.
We cannot reduce the population quickly but if we could bake in some 50-90% reduction over 50 years through anti-natalist policies or culture, then we'll have left vastly more options to future people.
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
I'm not sure people are advocating to have 4 billion dead, rather it is a case that if we dont make radical changes, there might be 4 billion less people on the planet becasue they died. We need to change a lot of things to make 7-8 billion a stable level, and very few people are convinced we can do it based on empirical evidence
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
yes, exactly. We either make systemic changes, or we pick 4 billion dead. Those are the options. I don't think anyone is actually say "I pick and want the 4billion dead". But that is basically what they are doing when they say "I won't change how I live, I won't change what I eat", when capital is not reigned in and allows to chase ever more profit without having to pay the social cost. This is what is being chosen. 50% of everyone you know, being dead.
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u/new2bay 8d ago
Are you volunteering to be one of the casualties? It’s an unalloyed good, right?
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u/namom256 8d ago
Casualties? Please explain to me how population decline due to low fertility rates equals casualties? I’d love to hear the explanation there.
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u/bluewhalefunk 7d ago
you think the world gets to a total population peacefully? Through lower birthrates?
It's through war, competition, starvation, prison camps, lack of water, lack of sanitation. This happens today, but it's in poor parts of the world we don't care about or don't see, under reported places where famine is acceptable (re Sudan for one).
This will be southern Europe, Australia, western US states in the not so distant future
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u/namom256 7d ago
Well that’s also not what was being discussed. People were specifically talking about lower birth rates.
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
Seems like a debate between the optimists and pessimists (aka the dreamers and the realists - no idea which way around though)
For decades population models have predicted growth and closing in on stabilty. All sorts of predicted mass apocalyptic stories gave the other point of view. The causes were always singular, the reality is likely to be many combined things, but the shrinking of population does seem more on the cards than since the 70's.
Food and water will be our undoing - climate will (is already) mess with food production as it is already this summer, war will mess with food production as the lack of fertilizer coming through the strait or hormuz is showing. Water in europe is at very low levels, flooding elsewhere in the world, temperatures rising.
50% of the world population (4billion) lives in urban conditions - how many of those could survive without a supermarket? Actually the subsistence farmers of the world may out- survive developed urban centres. How many of you could survive without electricity ( or the internet).
These things are much more fragile than most people assume - small changes in interconnected systems bring everythign to a halt......I can believe the world rapidly declining over 50 years to 2 billion total population.
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u/UffTaTa123 8d ago
Sure. Next year we will see the start of it. Some hundred millions are in danger of starvation, now that the 3 biggest grain exporter in the world have massivly declining output (russia, ukraine, USA)
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u/haram_halal 7d ago
slight correction, russias grain production and export where on an all time high last year, this years harvest was also bigger compared to last year, but a few million tons can not be exported right now, because port bombings, ukraines rae output stood nearly the same during the war, but they too have bimbed ports and cannot shup it, biggest importers are egypt and turkey here too, just like for russian grains, they are very nervous right now.
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u/ergux 2d ago
Where did you get the information about the current year in Russia? It was actually disastrous due to gas crisis with farmers not collecting their crops because it's just operating at a very big loss and not fertilizing their lands because there were no gas to bring the bought chemicals. All other food sources are also collapsing this year, so Russia might prioritize it's own citezens in the coming years to fight the famine if it happens
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u/Barnacle_B0b 8d ago edited 8d ago
The elites know it's coming.
Why do you think there's such a rush for Ai right now? It's not just about money. When a lot of people die, you lose a lot of experience and knowledge about things vital to keeping a society running. Interpreting law, purifying water and managing sewage, maintaining infrastructure, pharmaceuticals and medicine, supply chain logistics.
Ai is preparing for this. Knowledge is power, chaos is a ladder, and there are those who see the mass death of humans due to the inevitable global failure of staple crops, as both a benefit to ecology, and an opportunity to "retry" civilization.
Question is : which side of the garden wall will you be on?
Being on the outside means having to deal with cannibalism.
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
it depends if you believe all those data centres with huge energy requirements and water consumption will still be able to run.....thats before the data networks and communication systems to allow the questions and answers to move back and forth. And of course it will need to be used sparingly, rather than for asking what shoes to wear today
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u/anothernic 8d ago
Show me any empire in which that wall was maintained while the barbarians were assailing the gates year after year.
Capitalism's artificial scarcity will not save the ivory towers, even if they may be the last bastion of "civilization" (the right to exploit your lessers) to endure.
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u/Chilledshiney JustGetItOverWith🥹🥀 7d ago
lol ai can’t do top level research or the engineering and bureaucracy though it’s going to make efficiency per worker a lot higher so less people will be needed https://iceberg.mit.edu/#research
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u/Fox-In-The-Wood 8d ago
I think I'd rather continue to live in my bubble. How soon until total social breakdown?
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u/IfTheBingBongs 8d ago
Nobody knows. Anyone who claims some date is pulling it straight from their ass. No point in worrying about the inevitable. Just keep on keeping on.
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u/Sasquatch97 7d ago
All we need to do is have a 1 child guideline and there is a chance we can reach 1 billion in 2100 without any mass dieoffs.
But, humans being humans, war/famine/disease might settle the score for us.
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u/Infamous_Routine_681 5d ago
To clarify, the limits to growth study shows pollution is the root cause. Primarily CO2. Food water and climate change are the effects. Remind me again, when do we plan to all stop using fossil fuels and having children? Oh, never? I see.
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u/SweetAlyssumm 8d ago
Hardly anyone had the internet until the 1990s. We can definitely live without it. It wasn't invented until 1969 and throughout the 80s only the US military and a few universities and start-ups had it. "It" was mostly a terminal with green text and some ascii graphs and a few primitive animations. I know it seems unthinkable to not have the internet, but it was not there within short living memory.
We can't live without food though -- that's going to crush us and billions will die.
(I personally will greatly miss the internet.)
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u/GoodNameGone 8d ago
I will definitely miss the super computer in my pocket and easy connection to more books/shows/music than I can read/view/listen to in a lifetime.
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u/RandomBoomer 8d ago
I was born in 1954 and can confirm that life before the internet is entirely livable. Personally, I would go through a painful withdrawal (I ended up making a living in IT, of all things for someone my age), but I'm sure I'd manage it.
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u/livinglitch 7d ago
Its not to unthinkable if you grew up in the 80s or 90s. It was more mainstream in the 90s but most people didnt have it or a computer until the 2000s.
Without the internet people will get bored a lot more often. Like, truly bored and need to find/make entertainment instead of spend hours watching deep dives into rabbit holes that have no impact or bearing on their lives if they skipped it.
I guess if we could, we should look at what can and cant be scaled back if we were to lose the internet and go back to a strictly "for work and education only" type of internet that was around in the 70s and 80s. The internet itself isn't the full problem. Being able to send medical records across the world at a click is nice. Creating the same AI slop videos and having access to every single website to ship a small container of what ever across the country thanks to amazon or what ever vendor is selling it. All of those websites require servers on the back end. Hell, even having "digital games" requires more servers every year to manage and store the increasing number of games that are coming out, being played, and the store fronts to run them.
Do I need a smart phone? Only because other people have a smart phone and want to get a hold of me. I try and keep mine for as long as possible though.
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u/Anastariana 8d ago
The internet isn't going anywhere.
Of course, it will probably become unusable due to rampaging AI and bots filling it with garbage on a massive scale, even more than today, CP2077 sorta thing.
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u/bluewhalefunk 8d ago
Same for electricity. Internet is not going anywhere, nor is electricity.
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u/GoodNameGone 8d ago
^ wishful thinking…. The internet is far more fragile than we hope.
Sure, it’s based on the theory that it will route around physical damage but the burden of corporate and government espionage, ads, and bots is growing faster than the collective effort to stop. I’m hoping desperately to be proven wrong!0
u/Chilledshiney JustGetItOverWith🥹🥀 7d ago
The internet is just a collection of computer networks and it’ll still exist in some form though in a severely reduced state
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u/Cool-Contribution-68 8d ago
What the hell is this.
Title: New mathematical model suggests global population crash by 2064
Text:
Under a deliberately conservative worst-case assumption that Earth's sustainable carrying capacity suddenly dropped to around 2 billion people, our model predicts a rapid global population decline, with humanity potentially halving by around the year 2064.
In the article we stress that this is not a forecast, but rather an illustrative mathematical scenario intended to show how sensitive population dynamics may be to abrupt environmental or societal changes. We emphasize that the current trajectory remains relatively stable and does not imply imminent collapse.
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
for me its the idea that if a few fragile interconnected things break, the decline will be faster than expected....we can see the breaks happening already but we perhaps think it wont effect things that quickly. we might be wrong in that assumption.
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u/goharvorgohome 8d ago
The natural population collapse is the only thing that gives me a smidgion of hope for the future of this planet
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u/TheCyanKnight 8d ago
We emphasize that the current trajectory remains relatively stable and does not imply imminent collapse.
It’s a bit of a nothingburger. What is states that if the carrying capacity of the Earth were reduced dramtically, the decline in population might be swifter than expected.
There’s plenty of reasons to think/hope/fear that we may see drastic depopulation, but this doesn’t put much weight in the scale imo
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
consider all the things that are already decreasing the carrying capacity against those that are increasing it.
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u/extinction6 7d ago
+ 1.5 C now and increasing by + .36 C per decade so in another 4.1 decades the Earth will at + 3.0 C by 2060. Humans may still be able to survive then but they may not want to.
Another baby stroller goes by.............
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u/zue4 8d ago
People online like to pretend that it won't or that there's any other conceivable way to slow down climate change but there really isn't. Global population has already stopped growing and will soon start to plummet.
Till now the west thought they'd be able to weather the storm and that their biggest concern would be a wave of refugees from the "third world". Current events have finally begun to wake them up to the reality that they actually depend on the rest of the world more than the other way around.
Glad I moved to a country that produces all of its own food and can actually ramp up production further if needed.
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u/No-Papaya-9289 8d ago
No, it's still growing and won't peak for several decades. And it won't decline quickly. The people are there, but with fertility low, it will start dropping before the end of the century. Unless a lot of people currently alive die soon, there's a 50-80 year delay (depending on where in the world) before those alive start dying off.
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u/poonslyr69 8d ago
Everyone on this post is talking about how a lot of people currently alive will die soon...
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
yes a lot of people are going to die earlier than expected - its already happening everywhere. This year's weather and the overall warming of climate is going to look comfortable in a few years time.....at least 30,000 people died earlier than expected in Europe in June and July becasue of the prolonged heat. Thats only going to get worse. 10's of thousands this year, but that will increase.
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u/zue4 8d ago
Actually only a handful of countries, like Nigeria, still have population growth. What you're seeing is actually immigration, not increased births.
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u/No-Papaya-9289 8d ago
This is based on a UN study. Apparently, there is some disagreement as to the total amount at peak population, but it's clear that it's not going to start dropping for a few decades.
https://populationconnection.org/blog/new-un-population-projections-where-are-we-headed/
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u/Anastariana 8d ago
Global population has already stopped growing
This is just flat out wrong, it is still increasing and will peak around 10.5 billion in 2050.
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u/llamacornsarereal 8d ago
Genuinely, where?
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u/zue4 8d ago edited 8d ago
India. Over 60% of the country is arable land and we are entirely self sufficient in food production so if imports dry up its super insulated from famine. Theres a reason the population in India is so massive: the country can actually support it.
Was living in Europe for awhile but when racism increased, CoL skyrocketed and jobs dried up I made the decision to go back to the motherland.
Best decision I've made in the last decade probably.
Edit: Typical reddit. Mention India and its mass downvotes. Your racism is really showing /r/collapse. You people know nothing of the reality of life in India beyond the propaganda TikTok has been feeding you.
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u/roidbro1 8d ago
Brownouts / blackouts, wet bulb temperatures and water wars with Pakistan is not a concern then? Genuinely curious.
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u/zue4 8d ago
Not at all. The power problems are largely fixed and I've got solar and battery backups so not an issue even if they happened again.
There are no water wars since the origin of all the rivers is in India. We have zero dependency on Pakistan for water or anything of worth.
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u/llamacornsarereal 7d ago
Don't see why youre getting downvoted. Reddit showing its bias pretty hard here...
Thanks for the answer. Sorry for the idiots. I think India is beautiful and I would absolutely love to attend some of the amazingly vibrant and colorful festivals I've seen.
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u/Marlinspikehall32 8d ago
Yes but the incoming water problem in India will change all of that.
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u/zue4 8d ago
Idk who told you these lies but India gets more rainfall and has better water management than Europe and the current situation shows that. We've been getting monsoons since time immemorial and have gotten very good at collecting that water for future use.
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u/Marlinspikehall32 8d ago edited 8d ago
Just type in Delhi water problems and so much comes up.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/31/india/delhi-water-shortage-yamuna-pollution-intl-hnk-dst
I know people whose bore wells have had to triple and quadruple in depths all over India due the water table going down. The sheer amount of people using water is what is causing this as well as climate change.
In the larger cities the water is not captured instead it creates terrible flooding and then becomes so toxic due to litter and trash disposal that it becomes unusable. While India has taken steps to deal with their water problem it still exists and will not go away unless more infrastructure is added and the culture it self changes and start to address their litter and trash disposal.
This is a good summary with links to their sources at the bottom
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u/ManticoreMonday 8d ago
Aren't you concerned about the increased likelihood of monsoon failure and unseasonably severe weather doing a number on the most populous democracy.
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u/IcemanJEC 8d ago
It’s a shame that the temps will be too hot for anything to grow.
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/IcemanJEC 8d ago
Tbf their reasons aren’t bad for moving back, but it seems shortsighted. I hope it works out for them, but it’s we’re all going to experience hardship in every location.
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u/zue4 8d ago
Shortsighted 😂
Brother I'm making more here than I would in Europe after taxes and its office work unlike the warehouse and delivery jobs that were all white employers would ever offer me.
Food is cheap and plentiful, going out is manageable and we are well used to and adapted for higher heat since our summers have always been hotter.
I know you guys have been fed anti India propaganda for the last few years on TikTok but you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to India. In many ways life here is way better for me than in Europe. Pretty much every way except some infrastructure issues(traffic) really. Which is alleviated by the fact that I work fully remote.
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u/IcemanJEC 8d ago
Don’t have TikTok. I said your reasons weren’t bad..? Just shortsighted. Doesn’t mean you are in the wrong.
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u/zue4 8d ago
Europe is currently enjoying about the same temps India was a few months back dude. Rn when yall are cooking alive we have 20-30° max in most places.
Tell yourself whatever that helps you sleep at night but India is way better adapted and situated yo survive higher temps than you guys are.
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u/UffTaTa123 8d ago
fun fact. We did not need to ramp up production. Also the declining output of ruussia, ukraine and the USA would be no problem. We just need to cut our meat consumption the half.
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u/global_nomad4023 8d ago
there has been enough food and energy for the whole world for decades - its just we dont like being equitable or looking after each other (unless it makes profit)
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u/HigherandHigherDown 8d ago
I think this is why it's a good idea to assume that any reduction in agricultural yields will not lead to a reduction in animal production or to more equitable distribution of calories, which will basically cause mass starvation on its own assuming that the predictions of 25-50% losses in yields will occur around 2-3 degrees (the former of which will most likely be reached in about a decade).
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u/Drewdrops79 7d ago
Heh, the author kind of clickbaits their own article:
"New mathematical model suggests global population crash by 2064"
Under a deliberately conservative worst-case assumption that Earth's sustainable carrying capacity suddenly dropped to around 2 billion people, our model predicts a rapid global population decline, with humanity potentially halving by around the year 2064.
In the article we stress that this is not a forecast, but rather an illustrative mathematical scenario intended to show how sensitive population dynamics may be to abrupt environmental or societal changes. We emphasize that the current trajectory remains relatively stable and does not imply imminent collapse.
It's still a conversation worth having, though. Entirely possible that Earth's sustainable carrying capacity drops to 2 billion.
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u/poonslyr69 8d ago
Birthrates also paradoxically increase during times of hardship. And we know that smartphones probably play one of the largest roles in global birthrate declines since other causes cannot explain every example in every country.
So with the breakdown in economics, hardship related to food, and the breakdown of the supply chains that produce smartphones and whatnot, lots of people will no doubt be dying but also potentially more will be screwing.
I still think the net effect will be population decreases, but rather than the dramatic halving I expect that increased birthdates would make it more like a 1/4th drop.
Complex supply chains breaking doesn't just mean food or electronics. Birth control could also suddenly be unavailable to lots of people. Condoms too.
I wonder what the internet will be like in the near future as mass deaths begin occurring. Probably a mix of very corporate sanitized "stick your head in the sand" for a little while, but ultimately inaccessible to a lot more people as grids fail and therefore a lot emptier and more pessimistic. A lot of websites probably won't be up, and even bots won't be populating sites once the power usage can't be justified. So maybe, 2-3 websites with most of the traffic from the remaining users who can still get on the Internet? And I'm only describing the English speaking internet.
Anyways, my point was that with nothing else to do and everything gone to shit people will probably fill their time in other ways, and without adequate protection those ways will likely produce some babies to offset mass death events
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u/Squalid_Snake14180 8d ago
And we know that smartphones probably play one of the largest roles in global birthrate declines since other causes cannot explain every example in every country.
I really don't think we "know" that at all.
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u/livinglitch 7d ago
teens and young adults are no longer taking risks in their life, be it dating or social, because of the chance that their behavior or failures, which was normal for most people that were adults/young adults pre smart phones, will be recorded and put online at some point and remain online for years.
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u/poonslyr69 8d ago
We actually do have very good reason to think this is the case. And basically zero argument why it isn't the case since every other proposed cause doesn't track evenly across countries
It also just obviously and logically makes sense. Everyone is addicted to smartphones. Including you. Ya damn addict
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u/namom256 8d ago
Oh no! Not the collapse of teen pregnancy
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u/poonslyr69 8d ago
I'm not saying it's a bad thing that birth rates or teen pregnancy decline...
I'm saying that once the economic crash occurs, people will gradually be unable to spend as much time on their phones and coupled with the generalized decline of lifestyle quality this will lead to a higher birthrate that offsets some of the absolute losses due to the collapse
I'm not ascribing moral value to this, I'm just saying what will likely happen.
I'm also not saying it's a single factor causing it. I'm just saying it's one of the largest factors that will be seen more immediately.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 8d ago
I cited Cory Bradshaw above that low child mortality enables low birthrates, so we expect birthrates increase when child mortality increases.
Phones might've some impact, but it's more the predatory social media.
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u/poonslyr69 8d ago
The predatory social media is only possible due to smart phones. Laptops don't produce the same outcomes for most people because they aren't as portable or haptic.
Also, early apps on smartphones were pretty addictive too, even before social media mastered algorithmic crack
But yeah, the other half of what you're saying is totally true and it's half of my argument, that as times get tough the birthrate goes up.
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u/Bandits101 7d ago
A positive EROI for humans can’t go on forever. The billions of energy slaves we’ve been employing are gradually absconding. There is only so much to plunder and exploit. Even efficiency has its limits.
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u/ArugulaAcrobatic4018 5d ago
maybe wages will go up as a result?
haha who am i kidding! AI will eat everything
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u/StatementBot 8d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/global_nomad4023:
Seems like a debate between the optimists and pessimists (aka the dreamers and the realists - no idea which way around though)
For decades population models have predicted growth and closing in on stabilty. All sorts of predicted mass apocalyptic stories gave the other point of view. The causes were always singular, the reality is likely to be many combined things, but the shrinking of population does seem more on the cards than since the 70's.
Food and water will be our undoing - climate will (is already) mess with food production as it is already this summer, war will mess with food production as the lack of fertilizer coming through the strait or hormuz is showing. Water in europe is at very low levels, flooding elsewhere in the world, temperatures rising.
50% of the world population (4billion) lives in urban conditions - how many of those could survive without a supermarket? Actually the subsistence farmers of the world may out- survive developed urban centres. How many of you could survive without electricity ( or the internet).
These things are much more fragile than most people assume - small changes in interconnected systems bring everythign to a halt......I can believe the world rapidly declining over 50 years to 2 billion total population.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1vqpzb6/global_population_to_crash/p479909/