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Notes -
We are quite specifically in the year when the global fertility trends - if you follow the closest trends through, say, this account - will reach the point where global fertility rate, ie. the average number of children per women, will go under the global replacement rate needed to keep a stable population level, which is somewhere around 2.3 (I would actually guess the replacement rate will rise a bit if the food crisis has the expected famine effects in African countries). In other words, pretty near the specific point where we can fairly conclusively say that the population boom is cancelled, that we know the level at which the population will peak, and after that level global population will start coming down, perhaps not even coming down all that slowly.
As such, one might expect that, consciously or unconsciously, in the coming years the arguments that we need to prevent overpopulation will generally start losing credence and arguments that we should instead be concerned about underpopulation will start gaining it, and indeed the process has probably already started! It won't involve most people admitting they're wrong or that they have changed their viewpoint or anything like that, just barely perceptible social indicators.
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