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The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Futurology
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Could you please explain one thing to me: How does climate change cause the current population decline?
Chaotic weather.
80+% of agriculture depends on rainfall, either directly or in very near-indirect ways. A warmer atmosphere means not only air that dries out soils a lot faster and rains a lot less, but also more chaotic weather, with stronger deluges and more powerful droughts.
Agriculture at scale depends vitally on stable, consistent weather.
That stability and consistency is not in our future. Expect the first multi-crop, multi-year, worldwide famines to hit at some point in the 2030s. Expect the shortfall to be so so severe that it hurts even first-world populations. Anyone else will be much worse off.
But this can be the causal root of the recent changes. Populations aren't declining because of famine, but because people aren't having more children.
Your argument need some middle step or mediator like "people already realizing the comming problems and react with getting less childeren". But is this really the case? I mean, we observe the decline even in places like north korea or by groups who denied clima change or simply don't care.
Maybe, the emerging problems of clima change are part of the creation of a pessimistic worldview or something.