Peak Population

I was running down a rabbit hole about rewilding (more to come via future postings) as part of After Capitalism and came across Earth4all’s 2023 People and Planet report with two scenarios:

• In Too Little Too Late, the global population peaks at just below 9 billion in 2046 and declines to 7.3 billion in 2100.
• In Giant Leap, the global population peaks at 8.5 billion in 2040 and declines to around 6 billion in 2100.

Wow! In World Futures class at the Houston Foresight program, we’ve been talking about 10-11 billion as peak population between 2050 and 2100. That said, we’re not strangers here at this blog to provocative population forecasts – we looked at Peter Ziehan’s work including the projection of a complete demographic collapse in China with a population in the year 2070 less than half of what it was in 2020!

I read through Earth4all’s piece hopefully, wondering how I had missed this exciting possibility. It seemed more of a provocation, like, if certain things happened, these scenarios could happen. But when you look at the certain things, you go “oh, ooo, huh, well.” For due diligence, I did some searching for critiques of this forecast and found a good analysis by the Overpopulation Project. Very clearly, nicely, and convincingly laid out. Interestingly, one of the Earth4all authors comments basically saying it was a provocation in the sense that they did have these “unlikely” [my words] things that had to happen. But they could happen … so what would that look like. A reasonable response to a reasonable critique.

It did make me think about how sometimes when we do scenarios, we give a reason for why a provocative scenario might happen, and sometimes we get it right for the wrong reason. We did some work for the UAE back in 2016 looking at the future of work with a scenario about a reversal of economic growth. We thought it would be a terrorism event scaring away tourists. Turns out we were right about the reversal (albeit relatively temporary), but for the wrong reason. It was the pandemic.

So maybe Earth4all will be right, but for different reasons. I think it’s useful to consider provocative scenarios as a futurist as a general principle. And peak population is a big issue for After Capitalism!

So, we hold space for the thought, as the kids say (but not too much space). In this case, it seems like we have a useful addition to the debate, we clarified it, and we take a look at those “certain things” and see if we might be able to make them happen. – Andy Hines