Remember the jokes about how the pandemic would lead to a baby boom? The reverse has happened and birth rates have fallen to all time lows, accentuating declines already in place. A recent paper in The Lancet, a world-leading medical journal, predicted global population will be 2 billion less than previously forecast by 2100. 23 countries will halve their population. China alone is expected to lose more than 600 million people. Commentators claim we are facing a demographic winter that will reshape the world and the fortunes of all nations.
Do we urgently need to take steps to boost population to avoid long term deep economic decline? Should we accept that these can't succeed and instead focus on the impact and the shifting global power balance that will result? Or should we ignore the doomongers and welcome the decline as beneficial to the planet's resources and climate change?