We’ll be losing people by 2100

connected to the environment and the economy.

These include energy abundance, inequality, food production, income levels and the impacts of future global warming.

The model predicted two possible outcomes for the future human population.

The first, “business-asusual” case — in which governments continue on their current trajectories of inaction, creating ecologically fragile communities vulnerable to regional collapses — would see populations rise to 9 billion people by 2050 and decline to 7.3 billion in 2100. The second, more optimistic scenario — in which governments invest in education, improved equality and green transitions — would result in 8.5 billion people on the planet by the century’s halfway point and 6 billion by 2100.

The team also investigated the connection between population sizes and the planet’s ability to sustain human populations. They found that, contrary to popular Malthusian narratives, population size is not the key factor driving climate change. Instead, they pinned the blame on high levels of consumption by the world’s richest individuals, which they say must be reduced.

“Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population,” Jorgen Randers, one of the modellers at the Norwegian School of Business and a member of Earth4All, said in the statement.

empowered and have access to better healthcare.”

The study is a follow-up to The Club of Rome’s 1972 Limits to Growth study, which warned the world of an imminent ‘popula - tion bomb’. The new result diverges from other recent population forecasts. For instance, in 2022, the United Nations estimated that the world population would reach 9.7 billion by

2050 and rise to 10.4 billion by 2100. UN estimates from a decade ago suggested the population would reach 11 billion.

Other models forecast population growth based on