I read Ehrlich’s book and it scared the hell out of me. But then nothing seemed to happen, and the entire overpopulation issue just seemed to fade away. Still, since he wrote, the global population has more than doubled. That is not a trivial increase considering the short amount of time that’s transpired.

As with other issues, when the gloomiest predictions fail to materialize on schedule, those who would rather not face the inconvenient facts gleefully pounce on that to promote the idea that there is really nothing to worry about at all. Everything’s fine, don’t worry, be happy, business as usual.

I would suggest that many of our present day problems, such as religious conflict, economic failure, war, mass migrations, civil unrest, political instability, crime, famine, extreme weather, wildfires, desertification and poverty) are not the result of local or contemporary issues, but the cumulative result of a general overall deterioration of the environment caused by interaction of overpopulation, pollution, climate change and resource depletion. The Malthusian model calls for a precipitous failure and systems collapse, but there is no reason why a gradual deterioration across the board might not precede it.

The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new United Nations report being launched today. With roughly 83 million people being added to the world’s population every year, the upward trend in population size is expected to continue, even assuming that fertility levels will continue to decline.

Actually, it may not be as bad as we once feared, but we’re by no means out of the woods yet, either.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html

Maybe we’ll get lucky and something like this will happen with AGW too.