For the first time, humanity is on the verge of long-term decline

Those were the days

The date of the forecast population peak keeps being revised closer and closer, from around year 2100 to 2064 now. The human number at the peak is also marked down to 9.4 billion in a 2021 study, from the 11 billion of previous UN forecasts. And the demographic "Japanese disease" is now seen on all continents, from rich to not-so-rich societies.

From Nikkei.com, "The new population bomb":

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For the past 200 years, a rapidly rising population has consumed the earth's resources, ruined the environment, and started wars. But humanity is about to trade one population bomb for another, and now scientists and policymakers are waking up to a new reality: The world is on the precipice of decline, and possible extinction.

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By 2050, 151 of the world's 195 countries and regions will experience depopulation.

Ultimately, the study forecasts that the global population will peak at 9.7 billion in 2064 and then start declining.

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Over the approximately 300,000 years of human history, cold-weather periods and epidemics have caused temporary drops in population. But now humanity will enter a period of sustained decline for the first time ever, according to Hiroshi Kito, a historical demographer and former president of the University of Shizuoka.

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The University of Washington study comes as a corrective to previous estimates that saw the global population continuing to grow through this century. "World Population Prospects" in 2019 estimated that the population is likely to continue to grow, reaching 10.9 billion by 2100. But new projections show the birthrate in developing countries falling faster than expected.

Murray believes global fertility will converge at around 1.5, and likely lower in some countries. "This also means that humanity will eventually disappear in the next hundreds of years," he said.

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