Continued rapid global population growth is unsustainable, but the media instead focus on low birth rates in developed countries. Most future growth will be in Africa, where young people want to emigrate to Europe or other developed regions. How will EU countries act in the face of Africa’s extreme population growth and increasing migration?

Every problem we are experiencing right now can be traced back to overpopulation. From mass immigration, the rise of the far right, housing shortages, rising food costs and extreme weather events.

The UN’s population forecast from 2024 estimated a World population increase of about 2 billion people by 2084, from today’s 8.2 to 10.3 billion (but the UN usually underestimates population growth). If more vigorous efforts were made to provide good family planning services and promote the benefits of small families, birth rates could fall much faster in high-fertility countries. The UN’s Low Fertility projection could result in a world population of only 6.4 billion in 2100, instead of the one anticipated at over 10 billion.

Such an outcome is of course highly relevant for climate policy – ​​but ignored. The IPCC reported in 2022 that “Globally, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO₂ emissions […] in the last decade (high confidence)”, but this important conclusion was lacking in the IPCC’s “Summary for Policymakers” and at the UN climate conference this year. It is also absent from the media’s climate reporting.

Earth’s climate, ecosystems and biodiversity are being degraded by increasing consumption by increasing numbers of people. Among Earth’s mammals, people, domestic animals and pets today make up 94.5% of the biomass, wild mammals only 5.5%. Over the last 50 years, populations of wild vertebrates declined by on average 73% according to the WWF. From this point of view, Homo sapiens is an invasive species, a deadly threat to most others.

Our growth also leads to more pollution in the ocean, on land and in the air (chemicals, oil, plastic, etc.), causes shortages of fresh water (increasingly used for irrigation), reduces natural environments when roads, cultivation and buildings spread, and causes worse pandemics. Storms and fires that usually kill relatively few people are given much attention in the media, but they hardly ever mention that population growth has grim consequences that kill many.