The Climate Myth that Sought to Change Our Way of Life
On May 5, 2026, without fanfare, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made a significant announcement: its most dire climate scenario, the RCP 8.5, is now classified as "unlikely." For nearly 15 years, this scenario fueled tens of thousands of articles... and the eco-anxiety of an entire generation. It was the raw material for the +5°C projections that were brandished to justify ever more restrictions, taxes, and bans...
Media outlets celebrate this abandonment but carefully fail to mention that RCP 8.5 was based on the assumption of a global population of 13 billion people. The scenario was far-fetched not just for the past few years, but from day one. Demographers knew it...
The defining change of our era is not technological. It is demographic...
Across the developed world, birth rates have fallen well below replacement levels. The same trend is now evident in emerging economies. India has crossed that threshold...
The implications are profound. If global fertility stabilizes around 1.5 children per woman by mid-century, the world’s population will peak at roughly 8.5 billion before declining. At 1.3, it could fall to around four billion by 2100 - half the level once expected...
According to the so-called Kaya equation, carbon emissions are the product of four factors: population, economic output per person, the amount of energy required to produce that output, and the carbon intensity of that energy. For decades, policy has focused on the latter two -- improving efficiency and reducing carbon intensity.
But population is the first term in that equation -- and the only one now undergoing a structural, global reversal...
It reflects voluntary choices...
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This article reflects on the fundamental ecological equation: I = P x A x T. That is, impact is equal to population times affluence times the leverage of technology.
Any given nation - or planet - cannot grow its population infinitely within the constraints of finite boundaries. The good news is that individual voluntary decisions are resulting in reduction of population growth.
In 1972, American women made the voluntary decision to reduce fertility to replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Yet Congress, in their infinite idiocy, mandated that U.S. population double via mass immigration.
While fertility rates are decreasing, population will not immediately decline. Population momentum will continue as today's children have their own children. In America, it will take about 73 years for population momentum to play out and for population to stabilize at reduced numbers.
A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries
Overshoot and the work of William R. Catton Jr.
We would need 1.7 Earths to make our consumption sustainable
Is There Really a Climate Emergency?
1,100 Scientists and Professionals Declare: 'There Is No Climate Emergency'