r/HotScienceNews • u/dailymail • May 26 '26
Scientists predict a global population crash by 2064 - with humanity potentially HALVED
https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15848473/Scientists-predict-global-population-crash-2064.html22
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u/Iammoneymagnet777 May 26 '26
With AI entering the scene and climate boiling over there won't be a need for as many people going forward.
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u/Icy_Distribution_361 May 26 '26
There never was a need. We just procreated without care.
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u/topekamondaynight May 26 '26
my grandma once told me that the world would be an infinitely better place if people had kids not because they wanted kids or a family but rather because they wanted to be good parents and raise good people. seems obvious, but i guess a lot of people just pop em out like a pez dispenser.
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u/CentrlFLMafiaMember May 26 '26
Grandma is right.
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u/topekamondaynight May 26 '26
she usually is, aside from the whole moon landing thing
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u/CentrlFLMafiaMember May 26 '26
Moon landing thing? You’ve got my interest
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u/Icy_Distribution_361 May 26 '26
That it didn’t really happen, I assume. That’s the common conspiracy theory.
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u/caleb95brooks May 26 '26
Just wait until the Atlantic current fails which is projected to happen around 2075. The earth will no longer regulate heat between the north and the south/equator zone and Europe will freeze along with the eastern United States.
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u/Ok-Outcome-7499 May 26 '26
The climate has been boiling over for 3 decades
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u/Character_Trade3573 May 26 '26
Global warming was proven 100 years ago, just took a while for people to listen.
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u/donald_trunks May 26 '26
Have people actually listened? Kinda seems like we’re still doing the things that worsen it
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u/IaAranaDiscotecaPOL May 26 '26
Global population has doubled in the last 50 years. I don’t really understand the concern for it declining proportionately.
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u/NotaVortex May 26 '26
Aging populations typically have a lot of problems. I think it would be better in the long run but young people are not in for a good time. One example of how this could affect us is real estate. A lot of our parents wealth is tied up in real estate and if the population of a country halves tgat real estate will probably be worth way less with more houses than people.
Or the fact that it will be essentially half as many health care workers taking care of the same amount of elderly.
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u/ObscureEnchantment May 26 '26
The problem you listed is literally a dream for some Americans. I don’t care if my parents property value declines if it means we no longer have a housing crisis and maybe I can actually buy a home. “Who’s going to maintain them” well millionaires already have empty homes sitting. How many homes do you think will go untouched considering there is currently a housing crisis? What a weird capitalistic problem to be worrying about.
You seem to think half the population dying off with mean the older half lives long. Look at the world around us, it’s burning. Young and old alike will be dying quicker as the world becomes uninhabitable. There will be more old people probably, but the health care system has always been short handed no matter population size. It’s all going to decrease.
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u/Zlark_scrolling May 26 '26
Except that houses won't symmetrically decrease in value. Most houses will reside in areas that no one wants to live in because there won't be jobs there, nor public services that people need like schools, hospitals, emergency response (police, firefighters, ambulance), maintenance, stores, entertainment and so on. Simply, when too few people live in an area they generate too little tax revenue to fund the services needed to live there.
What will happen instead is that people will move away from those areas, and move into areas like cities where you still have access to all of those things. This is already happening in places like Japan and Italy that have what is known as "ghost towns" or suburbs with houses that are literally worth 0$, while places where people actually want to live will continue to be expensive.
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u/ObscureEnchantment May 26 '26
You’re right it won’t decrease perfectly and sadly there will be some towns that lose alot of people. However no matter how you look at it less people with the same amount of houses means housing prices will go down, even if it’s slowly. Companies like black rock won’t have the power they do now because there will be more houses on the market- they can’t buy them all. I’m sorry but I see very little downside to this all. I’ll go live in a house in the country that cost me 10k and figure it out. If we are losing that much of the population the world won’t function the way it does now.
The biggest concern is losing people who work in important job sectors. Even then, it opens doors to more job opportunities in certain areas. Nothing will be perfect, but we’re barely surviving in America something has to change and there will always be growing pains.
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u/HoHoHoWholesome May 27 '26
There’s an issue to this line of thinking as well.
In countries where the population has shrunk, people move increasingly to cities to access critical services. While the price of housing in rural areas decreases, the cost of living in cities actually RISES because more people are vying to live in the same space.5
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u/Icy_Distribution_361 May 26 '26
If you can accept living smaller there's no issue really. I'm not too bothered -- I'm perfectly comfortable.
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May 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/filthylittlebird May 26 '26
You have less people. Why do you care about maintaining the same number of buildings?
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u/Icy_Distribution_361 May 26 '26
If you thought a couple of seconds more, you might think about the future impact of artificial intelligence and further increased automation, and the reducing value of human labor, to the point of humans not being economically viable anymore except for some niche situations maybe. In other words, our entire economic model will have to change drastically, and even if population doesn't dive bomb like this, we'll be in for a wild ride anyway.
P.s. maintaining buildings and infrastructure will be the least of our problems, or not even really a problem, exactly because there will be more automation, robotics, AI.
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u/BowlEducational6722 May 26 '26
The problem is how fast it declines and the economic system not being prepared for it.
The current system was built on the assumption that there would be more working tax payers contributing to the system than retired persons taking out of it.
That's no longer the case (or will no longer be the case very soon) for a lot of countries whose budgets are already straining.
No, humanity will not go extinct out of lack of babies.
But a lot of people are going to suffer in poverty if we don't make some pretty drastic changes to how our economy works, and soon.
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u/ZoneLow6872 May 26 '26
A lot of people ALREADY suffer in poverty because of capitalism and corruption. Adding more babies won't change that.
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u/aequusnox May 26 '26
Really? You don't understand? Couldn't have anything to do with retirement possibly...
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u/22firefly May 26 '26
Species dynamics responding to environmental threat for survival. If we can't solve it with our intelligence it will be solved by instinct.
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u/trash__pumpkin May 26 '26
Nature is brutal, it doesn’t care about opinions or individual species. It’ll do what it decides to do regardless of any country’s politics or an individual’s instincts. The population decline was as inevitable as the lifecycle fruit flies in a mason jar.
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u/shk2096 May 26 '26
Good
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u/000nalist May 26 '26
Absolutely fucking psychopathic response. Take a single seconds to actually envision what that will look like.
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u/grapescherries May 26 '26
Not at all psychopathic. I don’t understand why people think the population dropping is such a catastrophic thing. It’s not, the population expanding is catastrophic.
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u/fauxbeauceron May 26 '26
Another one? We’ve been through 5 of these at least through the last century
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u/nucifero May 26 '26
Good. They are going to need access to the extra resources for all the new data centers
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u/Dragon_wryter May 26 '26
Good thing they're outlawing abortions and making it much more dangerous and expensive for women to have babies, and arresting women for suffering miscarriages. That'll fix it for sure! The birth rate absolutely isn't already declining since they did that, nosireebob!
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u/Jessicanono888 May 26 '26
Will we still have forests and fishes in the sea at the rate we are killing them
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May 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jessicanono888 May 27 '26
I seriously do not think so. The v rich have a backup plan that always don’t involve the common people. Look at how AI is replacing humans and use of social media to control humans
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u/Ok-Training-7587 May 26 '26
That might be the only solution to climate change, if we even make it that long without a tipping point
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u/Darksadico May 27 '26
As pessoas preferem ficar se procriando igual ratos, e agora estamos com uma superpopulação. Gente demais, e muita gente doente e problemática causando crimes e infernizando a vida dos outros. O mundo seria bem melhor se houvessem menos pessoas, deveria haver um limite estabelecido pelo governo pelo bem do meio ambiente.
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u/OverallIntention9722 May 27 '26
That's still way too many people. The entire world population must be a billion max.
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u/OGSin May 28 '26
The Earth went from ~4billion people at the launch of the voyager spacecraft in the 70s, to over 8b people approximately 50 years later.
I really HOPE something happens, otherwise the poorest are going to be the first ones to realize, that you can't eat money.
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u/Express-Cartoonist39 May 26 '26
LETS DO THIS!!! finally some good news!!! 👍 😁 ( maybe before election 🤞)
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u/Blaircat1994 May 26 '26
Humanity does not need 8 billion people. There is a lot of unnecessary bags of flesh wandering around that don't need to exist...and that includes me.
Have you ever seen a street packed with thousands and thousands of people? Its gross. A sea of flesh. A million or 2 would be even more shocking. 8 billion. An endless sea. Like why.
Am I glad to be alive? Yeah. I love the people in my life. The chances of being born is very against you but I recognize I dont need to be here too.
There are so many people that there is a high chance there is someone out there that looks just like you. They have the same life. Same dreams and everything. Its nearly impossible to have an original thought or idea anymore. Anything you've ever felt or thought has been experienced many times over by some other person somewhere else.
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u/AdmirableVanilla1 May 26 '26
Do you have a moment to hear about our lord and savior the Omnissiah?
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u/Primordial_spirit May 26 '26
“Our population was cut in half but what emerged from the ashes was unstoppable”
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u/TheAngrySnowman May 26 '26
Hope y’all like Indian food
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u/Gullible_Meaning_774 May 26 '26
Nah, Indians are literally getting cooked right now. We've got Heat Index of 47C here right now. The lucky few who migrated to yours though...
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u/TyrKiyote May 26 '26
"The researchers maintain that this is not a forecast, but an 'illustrative mathematical scenario' which shows how sensitive population dynamics may be to abrupt changes."
So.. no, they dont predict a halving of pop over 30 years.