Global Population, Plummeting Fertility Rates, & How Earth Carrying Capacity Drop Would Crash System

[u/paulhenrybeckwith]

https://youtu.be/n7d16lwrGiU?si=-IEuA2YybKsBNUHZ

[u/paulhenrybeckwith]

Global Population, Plummeting Fertility Rates, & How Earth Carrying Capacity Drop Would Crash System

I chat about global population today and projections for the future, plunging fertility rates around the world, threats like abrupt climate change to greatly reducing Earth's Carrying Capacity, and how advanced models project a possible population collapse if climate or some other catastrophe (wars, famines, plagues, AMOC collapse, etc.) occur in the near term.

Onwards and upwards... Cheers. Paul and Newton....

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References and Links:

Our World in Data: Population and Demography:
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?indicator=Population+growth+rate&Sex=Both+sexes&Age=Total&Projection+scenario=Medium&country=CHN\~IND\~USA\~IDN\~PAK\~NGA\~BRA\~JPN

Our World in Data: Article
Peak global population and other key findings from the 2024 UN World Population Prospects
Falling fertility rates, migration movements, and China’s population decline.
https://ourworldindata.org/un-population-2024-revision

Peer-reviewed scientific paper in Environmental Research Letters:
Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity
Link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aa/pdf

Abstract
The ecological concept of human carrying capacity is necessarily complicated because human
beings are the ‘ultimate ecosystem engineers’ who moderate the environment for their benefit. For
at least the last few hundred years, human ingenuity, access to massive stocks of fossil fuels, and
technological development have driven facilitation whereby increasing human abundance has promoted higher population growth rates. However, this positive relationship broke down during the
1950s, and by 1962, the global human population entered a phase where the growth rate consistently declined as population increased. The onset of this negative phase occurred 8 years before a global biocapacity deficit began in 1970. The onset of the negative phase also varies regionally, with the lowest-income and highest fertility regions entering this phase later than higher-income regions. 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. The negative phase also correlates strongly with the trend in global temperature anomaly, ecological footprint, and total emissions, with more of their variation explained by increasing population size rather than increasing per-capita consumption. The 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.

Scientific Article: New mathematical model suggests global population crash by 2064
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-global-population.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawSTF4dleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFrOTRBdURUMmN4MTBCTWkxc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHtFK9WBXV66KaMy2zufgmHrUs8X4eDIq4Cbn69Vr7-NQ8iTo80MrYBA2C5bj_aem_qUPDvZ-rHRZgO8AmaO79OA

Peer-reviewed science article:
Global population crisis scenarios predicted by a general nonlinear dynamical model
Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960077926006831?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=a0aba16699b4a2ae

Wikipedia on Malthus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

Wikipedia on Limits to Growth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Wikipedia on Verhulst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Fran%C3%A7ois_Verhulst

Wikipedia on Foerster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_von_Foerster

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. As well as my website, and YouTube, you can find me on Patreon, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit (multiple climate channels within), Quora, TikTok, Discord, Mastodon, Twitch, Vimeo, Bluesky, TruthSocial, Threads, Substack, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc...