Liberal Free Chat Zone

[ksquared]

“If I’m being brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown (the latest alarmist dogmatic talking point), is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate.”

BALDERDASH ! ! !
According to today's WSJ, the planet is suffering from a fertility crisis.
IMO, the "problem" stems from educated women... Educate women and the birth rate drops.
(Note the fuslim objections to letting their girls go to school.)
The population is always culled periodically... war, disease, starvation.
As far as I'm concerned, birth control is the civilized way to go.
The Youth Generation was indoctrinated in the evils of reproduction.
Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb was required reading in my high school.
So it goes. The population will rebound eventually. I have faith.

Suddenly There Aren’t Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed.
Birthrates are falling fast across countries, with economic, social and geopolitical consequences
By Greg Ip and Janet Adamy May 13, 2024 12:01 am ET

The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened.

Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers.

Demographics are supposed to be a slow-moving force, but the baby bust is happening so quickly and so widely that it's taken many by surprise.

Some estimates now put the number of babies each woman has below the global replacement rate of about 2.2. The U.S. long ago passed that level. South Korea’s rate, the world’s lowest, was once unimaginable.

In high-income nations, fertility fell below replacement in the 1970s, and took a leg down during the pandemic. It’s dropping in developing countries, too. India surpassed China as the most populous country last year, yet its fertility is now below replacement.

“The demographic winter is coming,” said Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Many government leaders see this as a matter of national urgency. They worry about shrinking workforces, slowing economic growth and underfunded pensions; and the vitality of a society with ever-fewer children. Smaller populations come with diminished global clout, raising questions in the U.S., China and Russia about their long-term standings as superpowers.

Some demographers think the world’s population could start shrinking within four decades—one of the few times it’s happened in history...
The full article is here:
https://www.wsj.com/world/birthrates-global-decline-cause-ddaf8be2?mod=hp_lead_pos7