Even another world war won't slow down population time bomb

LONDON: Not even a third world war or a lethal pandemic, leave alone a one child policy globally, will be able to slow down the planet’s rocketing population rise.
New multi-scenario modelling of world human population has concluded that even stringent fertility restrictions or a catastrophic mass mortality would not bring about large enough change this century to solve issues of global sustainability.
Scientists have concluded that even a world-wide one-child policy like China’s, implemented over the coming century would still likely result in 5-10 billion people by 2100.
There are currently about 7.1 billion people on Earth, and demographers estimate that this number could rise to about 9 billion by 2050 - and as many as 25 billion by 2100.
Ecologists professor Corey Bradshaw and Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute say that the virtually locked-in population growth means the world must focus on policies and technologies that reverse rising consumption of natural resources and enhance recycling, for more immediate sustainability gains.
Fertility reduction efforts, however, through increased family-planning assistance and education, should still be pursued, as this will lead to hundreds of millions fewer people to feed by mid-century.
“Global population has risen so fast over the past century that roughly 14% of all the human beings that have ever existed are still alive today,” says Professor Bradshaw.
“We examined various scenarios for global human population change to the year 2100 by adjusting fertility and mortality rates to determine the plausible range of population sizes at the end of this century”.
The researchers constructed nine different scenarios for continuing population ranging from various fertility reductions, to highly unlikely broad-scale catastrophes resulting in billions of deaths.
“We were surprised that a five-year WWIII scenario mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the First and Second World Wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” says professor Brook.
“Often when I give public lectures about policies to address global change, someone will claim that we are ignoring the elephant in the room of human population size. Yet, as our models show clearly, while there needs to be more policy discussion on this issue, the current inexorable momentum of the global human population precludes any demographic quick fixes to our sustainability problems”.
“Our work reveals that effective family planning and reproduction education worldwide have great potential to constrain the size of the human population and alleviate pressure on resource availability over the longer term. Our great-great-great-great grandchildren might ultimately benefit from such planning, but people alive today will not”.