[parkingrift]

Adjusting economic models? We’re significantly below replacement level. That means population collapse and, eventually, actual extinction. We’re not headed toward a future where we just stop growing. We’re headed for a future where populations shrink by more than 50%. It takes decades to create this problem, and even more decades to fix it.

People aren’t paying attention because from a raw numbers perspective our population is growing. But it’s also aging, and eventually people will die and we won’t have created enough kids to reverse the shrinking.

I’m not even getting into the economic catastrophe of a shrinking population caring for an aging society. The US may be alright due to immigration but you can’t say the same of Korea, Japan, Italy, or most of Europe.

This is a crisis and we need to be taking action right now. By the time the populations start shrinking it will be too late. We can eventually reverse the trend but it will take an entire century, or more. We’re quite literally running out of time to avoid disaster.

[chronofar]

Do you have some models you're looking at that cause you to believe with such certainty that this is what the future holds? I have not seen, nor can I even really fathom, a scenario in which declining birth rates leads in of itself to extinction (unless the birth rates drop to basically zero for some reason), but certainly this could be due to a failure of imagination. A declining population would certainly look different, but I don't see it causing the end of civilization, much less the species.

[navane]

I dont agree population decline is a problem. Nevertheless, if it were, at any time of our choosing, we can open the gates and access a practically endless supply of people wanting to move and work in the countries with population decline.