Scientist: A Major Population Crash Is "Inevitable" And Could Be Messy

According to a recent report written by a renowned population ecologist, a large decline in humanity's population is "inevitable" after two centuries of exponential development.

In terms of growth and socioeconomic development, William E. Rees, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles. Even the term "ecological footprint" is credited to him as the result of his decades of labor.

He makes a comeback in a new study with a new warning that the exponential population increase and our unsustainable resource use have "pushed modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot." As a result, he considers it "inevitable" that the world would see a global economic collapse and population decline this century.

It all boils down to the limited resources that, as a contemporary techno-industrial civilization, we constantly use in an effort to generate ongoing economic expansion.

Rees contends that all animal species, including Homo sapiens, have a natural tendency to increase in size and procreate until their habitat is irreparably damaged.

Any animal eventually reaches a point when its abundant population causes excessive consumption and habitat destruction, which results in food shortages, sickness, or predation.

The population is affected negatively by this feedback, which causes it to decline once more below the habitat's long-term carrying capacity. The cycle will eventually restart as the resources restock and the habitat is repaired.

However, the circumstance that humans have found themselves in is very challenging. In particular, since the 19th century, the ability of humanity to harness the force of fossil fuels has started a time of unheard-of food and resource plenty. Global population growth then ensued. The population rose from 1 billion to 8 billion in the previous 200 years.

These fossil fuels are currently beginning to run out and won't be able to be replenished very soon. At the same time, the widespread usage of fossil fuels has irreversibly changed the earth.

"The abundance produced by fossil fuels allowed H. sapiens to experience a one-off global population boom-bust cycle for the first time. It is a "one-off" cycle since it was made possible by enormous reserves of non-renewable, finite, possibly renewable, self-producing resources, including fossil fuels, which have been significantly depleted. No recurrence is conceivable, claims Rees.

"When Homo sapiens decided to industrialize, they unintentionally vowed to accept impermanence. We adopted a self-destructive lifestyle, wherein the few resources that support our industrial existence would inevitably run out.

Numerous additional studies have predicted that the world's population will fall during the coming century. A significant study released in The Lancet in 2020 predicted that the world's population will increase during the following few decades, reaching a peak of 9.7 billion in 2064 before declining to 8.8 billion by 2100. Some have gone even further, speculating that by the turn of the century, there may only be 6 billion people on the planet.

Rees thinks the "population correction" that results from the resource overshoot could be messy. If the issue is not resolved, it could result in "reduced goods production, massive unemployment, broken supply chains, failing GDP, declining personal incomes, and overburdened social services," which would be a mystery to billions of people.

In the worst-case situation, society may completely disintegrate. In any case, a population drop is expected to occur.

"In the absence of plentiful, inexpensive energy and rich resource reserves, the majority of which will have been mined, utilized, and squandered, it is doubtful whether much or any industrial high-tech can endure.

The best-case scenario may well see the use of renewable energy but with the addition of mechanical water wheels and windmills, human muscle, draught animals like horses, mules, and oxen, as well as human power.

"The worst-case scenario for the billion or so survivors is a return to Stone Age living conditions. The pre-adapted rural poor and residual pockets of Indigenous peoples will survive, not metropolitan sophisticates should this be humanity's future, said Rees.

What can we do, then, to avoid this dire situation? Rees has previously claimed that by lessening our ecological footprint and giving up on the idea of endless material progress, we may prevent an outright catastrophe. But in his most recent piece, he sounds less upbeat.

"On a finite planet, expansionist tendencies could be dangerous, thus it makes sense that an intelligent social species would create cultural overrides to prevent this. Surprisingly, the reverse is true," writes Rees.

The shift "might actually be managed in ways that prevent unnecessary suffering of millions (billions?) of people, but this is not happening - and cannot happen - in a world blind to its own predicament.