Nearly a quarter of Herefordshire Council’s staff are reported to work remotely from outside the county. According to the Hereford Times, the council identified 391 such employees, against a total workforce of 1,598. That is approximately 24.5 per cent.
The council also said it did not hold information on how many employees worked partly or wholly from home. The figures therefore leave questions about working arrangements unanswered. They do not establish how frequently these staff visit Herefordshire, how far away they live or what duties they perform.
Nevertheless, they raise an important question for localism. How closely should local government be connected to the people and places it serves?
Knowledge of a place
A council administers more than a collection of services. It serves a living locality, with its own landscape, settlements, businesses and relationships.
Herefordshire’s scattered population, narrow roads and distances between services shape everyday life. So do the circumstances of older residents, small farms and households with limited transport. These things can be described in reports, but understanding them also comes from being present.
Living outside the county does not make an employee incapable of understanding it. Some may live just across the boundary and know Herefordshire well. Equally, a local address does not guarantee good judgement. What matters is whether staff have sustained contact with the communities affected by their work.
The danger arises when that contact becomes occasional, while decisions are increasingly made through screens, standard procedures and centrally collected information. A service can meet its administrative targets while failing to understand the practical difficulties faced by its users.
Where the wages go
Council employment also supports the local economy.
Employees who live locally spend part of their earnings in local shops, employ local tradespeople and support services used by their neighbours. When employees live elsewhere, a greater share of that household spending is likely to take place outside Herefordshire.
The figures do not tell us how much spending leaves the county. Some outside residents will still shop and use services here. But the underlying issue is significant. Public expenditure can provide a service to one locality while supporting household consumption in another.
Under economic shrinkage, this becomes more important. As discretionary businesses lose customers, reliable employment connected with essential services helps sustain local livelihoods. Where that employment is based influences which localities retain the spending.
The value and limits of remote work
Remote working has real advantages. It can reduce unnecessary journeys, help employees with disabilities or caring responsibilities and give a council access to specialist skills that are difficult to recruit locally.
Localism need not reject these benefits. A specialist adviser may serve several localities effectively without living in each one. Some administrative work can be performed from home just as well as from an office.
But remote working is not the same as localism. A digitally connected workforce may be geographically dispersed while authority remains concentrated in a distant administrative centre.
Localism concerns where responsibility rests, how decisions are made and whether people can influence the services on which they depend. Moving an employee’s desk into a house elsewhere does not, by itself, bring government closer to residents.
Government in a shrinking economy
If economic shrinkage progressively limits public spending, councils will face pressure to reduce costs. Shared services, remote staffing and greater automation may appear attractive.
Some savings will be useful. Others may remove the local knowledge and personal contact that make services effective. An apparent saving can become a cost elsewhere if residents cannot obtain help, maintenance needs go unnoticed or unsuitable decisions have to be corrected.
The localist response would be to retain specialist support where necessary while placing more practical responsibility close to the people concerned.
Care, minor maintenance, community facilities and other everyday services depend heavily on people who know the locality. Small local teams and businesses could undertake appropriate work, provided they have the funding, skills and accountability to do it. Local responsibility must come with resources. It cannot simply mean transferring an unfunded burden to residents.
A council rooted in its locality
Herefordshire does not need an arbitrary rule requiring every council employee to live within its boundary. It does need a clear understanding of which jobs require regular local presence, how staff acquire local knowledge and whether residents can reach someone who understands their circumstances.
The reported figures should prompt examination of these matters, rather than judgement of individual employees.
As the economy becomes smaller, the connection between public services and local livelihoods will matter more. A council’s purpose will increasingly be to help sustain the essentials of everyday life within the resources available.
For localism, the central question is therefore not simply where council staff live. It is whether local government remains rooted in the lives of the people it serves.
Britain’s population is still growing, but much more slowly. The Telegraph reports that the population reached an estimated 69.5 million in mid-2025. The annual increase was approximately 228,000 people, or 0.33 per cent. Excluding the pandemic year, this was the slowest growth since 1998.
Falling net migration accounted for most of the slowdown. Births only slightly exceeded deaths. These figures challenge the assumption that Britain must continually accommodate a rapidly expanding population.
They also raise a more fundamental question. Does a successful society require its population and economy to keep growing?
More People and Greater Prosperity
A larger population can increase the total size of an economy. More people buy food, pay rent, use transport and need services. More workers can produce more goods and generate additional tax revenue.
But an increase in total economic activity does not necessarily mean that each person becomes better off.
The outcome depends on the work available, the productivity of that work and the provision of housing and infrastructure. Additional people contribute skills and labour. They also need homes, water, energy, healthcare and transport. Whether living standards improve depends upon how these contributions and requirements fit together.
Population growth cannot, by itself, resolve an underlying deterioration in economic affordability.
From the energy-based perspective discussed on this blog, the central problem is the rising cost of obtaining the energy upon which production depends. If a greater share of available resources must be devoted to securing energy, less remains for other purposes. Increasing the number of consumers does not remove that constraint.
A Slower Increase in Demand
Slower population growth could ease some additional pressure on housing, water supplies, sewage treatment, roads and electricity networks.
It would not make existing shortages disappear. Nor would it necessarily reduce housing demand at the same rate. The number and size of households matter, as does where people choose or need to live.
Nevertheless, planning for slower growth offers an opportunity to reconsider priorities.
Maintaining existing homes may become more useful than pursuing expansion wherever developers find it profitable. Repairing water systems may deserve precedence over extending them. Keeping essential services accessible may matter more than constructing facilities based on expectations of continually rising demand.
In a shrinking economy, maintenance becomes central to protecting everyday life.
The Difficulty of an Ageing Population
Slower population growth brings difficulties as well as opportunities.
An ageing population needs care, suitable housing and accessible healthcare. If fewer people are available for paid work, supporting these services can become harder.
Migration can help meet particular shortages. Migrant workers already contribute to the care and support upon which many households depend. However, a lasting settlement also requires training, adequate pay, decent working conditions and affordable homes.
Localism would have to address these needs directly.
Neighbourly support and family care can improve daily life, but they cannot replace professional nursing or specialist medical treatment. A workable future requires cooperation between local provision and a national core of essential services.
Older people also remain contributors. Their knowledge, practical skills and experience can support younger generations. Communities benefit when people can continue participating within their abilities.
Different Futures for Different Localities
A national population figure conceals many different local experiences.
Some localities may continue attracting people because they offer useful work, affordable housing or reliable access to essentials. Others may lose younger residents and struggle to sustain shops, transport and care services.
These differences could become more pronounced as economic conditions tighten.
A locality with productive land, practical skills, dependable water and strong social relationships may possess advantages that conventional measures of economic success overlook.
Localism therefore involves more than reducing the scale of administration. It concerns the capacity of people in a locality to provide more of what they need and to support one another.
That capacity must be developed deliberately. It will not emerge simply because population growth slows.
Planning for Sufficiency
The demographic slowdown does not prove that economic shrinkage is inevitable. Neither does it guarantee the emergence of localism. It does, however, weaken the assumption that the future will always involve more people, more consumption and more construction.
A society organised around perpetual expansion finds slower growth alarming. A society concerned with sufficiency asks different questions.
Can people obtain nutritious food? Can they live in secure, warm homes? Is care available when it is needed? Can useful work be found close enough to home? Can existing infrastructure be maintained within the resources available?
These questions remain important whether the population grows, stabilises or eventually declines.
The purpose of the economy is to support human life. Slower population growth gives Britain an opportunity to reconsider how it does so, with greater attention to the quality of life and the sufficiency of essentials in every locality.
For most of the industrial age, migration has been driven by a simple expectation. Life somewhere else would be better. There would be more jobs, higher wages, better services and greater opportunities for children. The movement of millions of people around the world has been made possible by expanding economies, abundant fossil fuels and increasingly affordable transport.
That world is changing.
As the global economy shrinks in real terms, migration will not stop. Indeed, in the short term it may increase. But over time it will become more difficult, more selective and increasingly local. The great age of mass international migration is likely to give way to an era of constrained mobility.
Migration Depends on Surplus
Migration is expensive. It requires transport, housing, employment opportunities and functioning public services. Every migrant depends, directly or indirectly, upon the surplus generated by the receiving economy.
When economies are growing, this surplus can absorb newcomers. New houses are built, businesses expand and governments collect rising tax revenues. Even where tensions arise, growth helps soften the impact.
In a shrinking economy the opposite occurs.
Jobs disappear. Housing becomes scarcer. Infrastructure deteriorates. Governments struggle to maintain existing services. Instead of expanding capacity, society begins managing decline.
Migration therefore becomes a competition for shrinking resources.
Why people will continue to move
Economic decline does not remove the pressures that encourage migration. In many parts of the world they become even stronger.
Climate instability reduces agricultural yields.
Water shortages make farming impossible in some areas.
Political instability increases as governments lose the resources needed to maintain order.
Young people continue to seek better opportunities abroad.
Some coastal settlements become increasingly vulnerable to flooding.
Initially these pressures will increase international migration.
But the countries that once absorbed large numbers of migrants are themselves entering economic contraction. The opportunities which attracted migration begin to disappear.
Britain becomes less attractive
For decades Britain attracted migrants because wages were relatively high, public services were dependable and employment was plentiful.
These advantages are steadily weakening.
Real wages struggle to keep pace with living costs.
Housing becomes increasingly unaffordable.
Public services face growing financial pressures.
Infrastructure ages faster than it can be replaced.
The United Kingdom will remain attractive compared with many poorer countries, but the gap narrows. Migrants may still arrive, yet many will find that the prosperity they expected no longer exists.
Increasing numbers may also choose not to come.
A changing pattern of movement
Migration itself may become more regional.
Instead of crossing continents, people may move shorter distances.
Migration within Europe may replace migration from much further afield.
People may move from large cities to smaller towns where housing remains affordable.
Families may regroup in familiar localities rather than disperse across the globe.
The enormous energy costs associated with long-distance migration become harder to justify as fuel prices remain structurally high and disposable incomes decline.
What happens to population?
Global population is unlikely to continue growing indefinitely.
Industrial civilisation allowed population to rise by providing abundant food, modern medicine, sanitation and mechanised agriculture. All of these depend upon high levels of affordable energy.
As surplus energy declines, population growth slows and eventually reverses.
Many developed countries already have birth rates well below replacement level.
Developing countries are also seeing fertility decline, although often from much higher starting points.
Population may continue to rise for a time because people are living longer and because of demographic momentum. Eventually, however, deaths begin to exceed births.
Migration cannot reverse this globally.
It merely redistributes people.
The world as a whole must ultimately live within the carrying capacity supported by available energy, soils, water and climate.
Britain will age
The United Kingdom already has an ageing population.
Governments have often viewed migration as a way of maintaining the workforce and supporting tax revenues.
This works while the economy continues expanding.
In a shrinking economy it becomes increasingly difficult.
More workers do not automatically create more prosperity if the economy itself cannot grow. Instead, additional demand for housing, healthcare, transport and energy may simply place greater strain on declining systems.
The challenge becomes one of adaptation rather than expansion.
Why localism becomes more important
As international systems weaken, communities become more important.
People increasingly depend upon nearby suppliers rather than distant ones.
Food production becomes more local.
Repair replaces replacement.
Neighbours become more valuable than distant institutions.
Migration does not disappear. People will still move between localities. Some areas may gain population while others lose it. Rural districts with productive land, reliable water and strong communities may become increasingly attractive.
Local resilience becomes more important than national averages.
The return of locality
History suggests that periods of contraction reduce mobility.
Before cheap fossil fuels, most people spent their entire lives within a relatively small area. Long-distance movement existed but involved only a minority.
Industrialisation reversed that pattern.
The coming decades may gradually reverse it again.
People are unlikely to become completely immobile. Digital communications will continue to connect communities. Some international migration will remain essential for specialised skills, family reunification and humanitarian protection.
But everyday life is likely to become increasingly rooted in place.
A different future
The political debate often assumes migration is simply a matter of border control or immigration policy.
In reality it is closely linked to economics and energy.
As surplus energy declines and economic contraction becomes permanent, migration patterns will change whether governments wish them to or not.
Some countries will become less able to receive large numbers of newcomers.
Others will become less able to retain their own populations.
Over time, mobility itself becomes another resource constrained by energy and affordability.
For localism, this presents both challenges and opportunities.
Communities will need to welcome those who genuinely become part of local life while strengthening their own capacity to provide food, water, energy, housing and mutual support. Success will depend less upon the size of the national economy than upon the resilience of individual localities.
In the shrinking economy, the future belongs not to places that rely upon endless growth, but to places that learn how to thrive within limits. Localism is not a retreat from the wider world. It is an adaptation to a world in which distance becomes increasingly expensive, resources increasingly constrained, and community increasingly valuable.
One of the most curious features of the mainstream unsustainability debate is almost complete absence of reckoning with ‘population-as-obvious-driver’. The subject remains taboo, mustn’t go there. Even serious degrowthers avoid discussing actively degrowing the human population.
This is, as they say, regrettable.
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Unsustainability is about overshoot and overshoot is about humans consuming beyond nature’s recovery rate and dumping wastes in excess of nature’s assimilation capacity. In short, there are already too many people consuming and polluting too much. Need I note (again) that overshoot is, by definition, ultimately a terminal condition?
These are not casual observations that we can merely take under advisement, things that we might consider later if it doesn’t cost too much. In particular, if it is obvious the total human impact on Earth is the product of average impact per person and the number of people doing the impacting, why is population reduction not a major focus of sustainability survival planning?
“Unfair,” you protest, “not all humans are equal impactors.”
Quite true, so let’s get the inequality factor (and any taint of racism) out of the way. Data show that that the richest 10% of people are responsible for half or more of carbon emissions; the wealthy quarter of people account for 52% of resource consumption while the poorest quarter get by on only 6%. This means that, should the global community decide to act aggressively to reduce consumption/emissions by the necessary 44% overall, simple justice would demand that the wealthy take by far the greatest hit (~80% reduction per capita in North America).
Fair enough—though rather more easily said than done. The currently well-to-do are, er… inclined to resist. Income redistribution is, like population planning, taboo. Protected by wealth and associated political leverage, major vested interests, particulary the corporate oligarchs who run the world, won’t even discuss the inequality problem—except to insist we can grow our way to sufficiency-for-all.
And there’s another fly in the equality ointment—even a successful ‘great leveling’ would by no means relieve us of the population question:
· First, overshoot means that even if all 8.2 billion humans had identical lifestyles and ecological footprints, we’d still be in overshoot. Averaging impacts doesn’t reduce totals; material quality per se is not enough—we’d still have to reduce consumption by almost half.
· Second, in recent decades incremental increases in humanity’s (consumption based) ecological footprint and carbon emissions have been driven more by population growth than by increased incomes/consumption in almost all income categories; population growth is a major co-driver of overshoot.
· Third, billions of people in lower income countries (particularly in Africa) are justifiably striving to attain developed nations’ material living standards. But Earth, in overshoot, is not now sustainably supporting even present average levels of consumption; how could it be expected to cope were all 8.2 billion members of the human family living high on the hog? (Remember, we’re supposed to be reducing aggregate consumption; see first bullet point.)
· Forth, we’re actually headed for 10+ billion by the 2080s. Most of the projected population growth will occur in those poorer countries with the greatest material needs and expectations. This amounts to adrenaline for overshoot. What are the additional consequences for global heating and ecological stability? ‘Tipping points’, anyone? Still want to ignore population?
To raise overpopulation-as-issue and ask such obvious questions is not racist; it is simply acknowledging crucial realities and the associated moral dilemma.
Avoiding the obvious
Analysts and the world community actually have myriad reasons for skirting the population question—ancient religious prohibitions, fear of being labeled eco-fascist/racist, self-interested resistance to reform, fanatical allegiance to the perpetual growth ethic and growing science denial being among the most prominent.[1] In one way or another, however, most such excuses arguably spring from the deep ‘exceptionalist’ soil of modern techno-industrial (MTI) culture. To wit: Why be concerned about population? Humans aren’t animals, certainly not like the others; we stand above nature and don’t have to be concerned about natural laws. In any case human ingenuity (technology) will sever any population-to-resources link and solve the overshoot problem.
That’s the happy-clappy story we tell ourselves.
Too bad it’s merely a shared delusion. What goes on in our collective brain often has no grounding in reality.
The obvious flaw here is that H. sapiens not only is an animal, but is the major macro-consumer species in every accessible ecosystem on the planet (always at the expense of both our prey species and our competitors for available biomass). If the scale of material use and population were prime criteria, humans are the most successful large vertebrate ever to walk the Earth. The sheer weight of humans is ten times greater than that of all wild mammals combined. More broadly, the human enterprise has effectively merged (albeit destructively) with the ecosphere and is warping major geophysical processes from the climate and water cycles to landscape erosion. Quite the contrary record for a self-aggrandizing rapacious ape that claims to be detached from the natural world.
Just like the others
Which suggests it might be instructive to pay more attention to what we know about non-human population dynamics—there are plenty of examples of overshoot at work in other large mammal species.
For example, the graph at the top shows the trajectories of reindeer populations in the decades after a few individuals were introduced to the Pribilof Islands off Alaska early in the 20th Century. The islands were resource-rich and predator free. The reindeer, like all species’ populations enjoying favourable conditions, began expanding exponentially. From a handful of individuals in 1911, the St Paul Island herd ballooned to over 2000 individuals in under 30 years before going nearly extinct in little more than a decade. (The St George story was similar but less dramatic.)
The St Paul reindeer’s three decades of expansion provide a classic example of exponential (aka ‘geometric’) growth. This is a form of positive feedback in which each new generation adds to the breeding population ensuring that the next generation will be even larger than itself. The increasing steepness of the curve shows how such ‘compound interest’ accelerates population growth.
An exponentially expanding population has a constant doubling time. After a characteristically slow start in a new habitat, the St Paul herd reached 500 animals around 1931-32, had doubled in less than four years by 1934-35 and doubled again in the next four years, reaching its peak of 2048 animals in 1938-39. The population then crashed spectacularly—there were only eight survivors by 1950. The reindeer had overshot the regenerative capacity of certain lichens, a vital food source in winter. Depleted lichen = starving reindeer, particularly if the winter is exceptionally cold. Out-and-out starvation is one form of negative feedback due to overpopulation; the demise of animals weakened by hunger and succumbing to disease or foul weather is another.
On the upside, the collapse of an over-grazing animal population allows the habitat, particularly crucial food sources, to recover.
So, what have a bunch of starving deer on an Arctic island got to do with we humans?
Quite a lot, actually. For starters, as Malthus emphasized in 1798, humans are just as capable of geometric/exponential growth under favourable conditions as any other species. Malthus also reasoned that we are as potentially susceptible to starvation and other negative feedbacks when circumstances turn South (e.g., when crops fail or pandemics rage).
In this light consider Figure 1. This graph provides a low-resolution portrait of human population over the past 10,000 years, roughly since the beginning of agriculture.
Note that, despite the boost from occasional food surpluses, the population increase for 80% of this period was negligible, averaging only ~.04% annually. Starting from ~4-5 million, it took 8000 years for human numbers to reach just 232 million two millennia ago. The reason is fairly straight-forward; H. sapiens innate capacity for rapid geometric growth (positive feedback) was mostly held in check by local food shortages, constant territorial conflict, and disease (negative feedbacks).[2] As late as the 14th Century, bubonic plague killed off more than a quarter of the European population.
Nevertheless, the population kept growing at a slowly increasing rate. The real boost came with the Enlightenment (beginning in the late 17th Century) and subsequent scientific/industrial revolution. Humanity reached its first billion around 1820 then really took off, eventually on all continents, with improvements in public health and medicine (which reduced death rates) but especially with the exponential increase in fossil fuel-based technologies (which increased food production and access to all other resources needed to support the growing population). Together, these cultural factors enabled humanity to realize its maximum biological capacity for exponential population growth for the first time in human evolutionary history.
Note that the human population trajectory over the past 100 years is a geometric replica of the 30-year explosion of the St Paul reindeer herd (differing only in population size and because the human animal has a longer generation time). By 1927 the human population had reached two billion; we doubled to four billion in ~47 years by 1974-5; the next doubling to eight billion in 2022 also took 47 years (note the constant doubling time).[3] In short, the upslope of the human population growth curve has the same shape as that of the St Paul reindeer herd to peak.[4] It’s nature’s way.
It’s also ‘nature way’ for negative feedback to cut in and strengthen as a population approaches carrying capacity (which depends on habitat productivity and related factors). Figure 2 compares unconstrained exponential growth (2a) with so-called ‘logistic growth’ (2b), the idealized damping of positive feedback by the gradual onset of negative feedback. As population density increases in a specific habitat, so too does competition for food and space; with more crowding, communicable diseases and parasites spread more easily thus increasing mortality; a dense population of prey species attracts predators, increasing the death rate (and producing higher populations of well-fed predators). In theory then, the growth of a population of interest should slow asymptotically as it nears carrying capacity [Figure 2 (b)]. In practice, populations of typical slowly-reproducing mammals like humans tend to fluctuate in the vicinity of long-term carrying capacity as habitat and complex ecological relationships change.
But not always, in extreme cases, particularly in simpler systems such as reindeer on predator-free St Paul Island, the fluctuation may be a dramatic, even terminal, population crash.
Which brings us back to thinking about humans and how far to take our reindeer analogy. The St Paul reindeer population plunged rapidly after reaching peak, but does that say anything important about the human future?
It’s complicated.
Indeed, the human socio-political-ecosystem is vastly more complex and potentially more resilient than was the St Paul Island ecosystem. For example, mainly due to social negative feedbacks,[5] human fertility is actually falling (to the consternation of economists and most governments). The world population is currently expanding at ‘only’ ~70 million people annually, a rate of .85%/year, down and still-declining from the 1963 maximum of 2.2%.
In some ways this is encouraging—one might argue that humanity is gradually approaching peak population and will level off at or below carrying capacity as in Figure 2(b). Conventional wisdom (e.g., United Nations population projections) has it that our population will peak at 10.3 billion in the mid-1980s and then begin a controlled decline to 10.2 billion by 2100. It could be that all is well—crash avoided, airbags unnecessary.
But that’s not the whole story. UN and other conventional population projects are rooted in exceptionalist thinking. They are based entirely on ‘endogenous’ data, e.g., age- and sex-specific mortality rates and average female fertility all abstracted from biophysical reality. There is no consideration of ‘exogenous’ or external factors, the possibility of significant negative feedbacks from the ‘environment’, broadly defined.
Which brings us to Figure 3 (borrowed from my most recent previous post) which includes a should-be-alarming alternative scenario. Note that this graph incorporates Figure 2 (a) and (b). It acknowledges that human carrying capacity is a practical concept, that at any defined average material standard of living there will be a maximum sustainable human population.[6]
Figure 3 presents the recent human population trajectory as an exponential/geometric growth curve which has, indeed, begun to slow and approach peak (first half of solid red line). However, it also indicates that this peak far exceeds pre-industrial sustainable carrying capacity (dotted horizontal black line). Technology has taken humanity far into overshoot which means that our large and growing population is living and expanding by depleting even self-replenishing resources, from fish stocks and forests, to arable soils and groundwater reserves, and by polluting air, soil and waters beyond natural assimilation rates. In doing so, we are causing global heating, destabilizing climate patterns, extinguishing hundreds of other species and otherwise reducing Earth’s productivity and livability. (As I write this much of the Northern Hemisphere including Western Europe is suffering record heat waves. A third of humanity—more than three billion people—may be forced outside of our species’ historic ‘climate niche’ by century’s end). Global heating brings an increasing risk of wide-spread disease and pandemics—recent measles, hantavirus and ebola outbreaks underscore this point—as well as local energy, food and water shortages.
In short, the evidence suggests that exogenous negative feedbacks are rapidly returning as an additional significant factor in human population dynamics. Trump’s war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (which has broken crucial global supply chains for petroleum, natural gas, urea fertilizer) is providing a preview of a possible global future of chaos and suffering that will eventually visit millions/billions of people as resources run down and limits are breached.
What might have been
Note that an actively intelligent species, one that accepted its niche in the natural world and understood population and systems dynamics[7], would have self-managed to ensure that its population followed the sigmoid growth curve gradually slowing growth to equilibrate (fluctuate, actually) in the vicinity of long-term carrying capacity (Figure 3, solid green line). Maintaining a civilization at a reasonable material standard yet within the productive capacity of its supportive ecosystems is called “one-planet living”.
As matters stand, MTI civilization is a victim of culture-wide self-deception. We have blown the opportunity to optimize or ‘green line’ human life on this single planet Earth. Other eco-oriented demographic analyses agree that Earth cannot support even the present population without a transformation of mainstream MTI cultural beliefs, values, assumptions and behaviours. Resource depletion, ecosystems destruction and destabilization of global life-support functions have reduced long-term bio-productivity and, with it, human carrying capacity[8] whatever the preferred material standard—and this corrosive process is obviously continuing.
The likely outcome is a ‘great simplification’ of MTI societies, much as was projected by the business-as-usual scenario of the original 1972 Limits to Growth report and several follow-up studies of real-world post 1972 trends. Are we prepared for major economic contraction and accompanying population ‘correction’?
We have too long downplayed the population question. The best humanity can now achieve as we come off peak, is to track the dotted red line (Figure 3) and work toward stabilizing our population within the much-reduced productive means of nature. Should we succeed, future generations will live at numbers well below pre-industrial carrying capacity (dotted black line). This assumes we don’t render ourselves extinct in the resource and habitat conflicts that will accompany the coming implosion (total systems collapse segment of the solid red line).
Epilogue
There are no secrets about any of the above. The threats posed by advanced overshoot fills academic journals and even recent policy analyses; ecologists have studied many boom-bust cycles in nature; the unique elements of human population dynamics are well known; policy makers are well-versed in all sides of the (un)sustainability story. Yet quirky MTI culture still denies the population problem.
All of which goes to show, once more, that macro-scale (corporate, national, geopolitical behaviour) is rarely guided by mere facts and analysis unless the latter support existing mythology, economic narratives, development policies and, of course, our governing elites. The modern ‘system’—MTI culture—has acquired a momentum of its own, powered by innate behavioural tendencies; religious doctrines; equally fantastical cultural narratives (e.g., human exeptionalism and infinite economic growth); powerful influencers; privileged self-interest; emotional resistence; willful blindness and a large dollop of popular indifference/ignorance.
The coming implosion should therefore hardly come as a shock. It is the inevitable product of a defective cultural algorithm combined with human cognitive maleability. The most recent ten generations of modern humans (out of ~17,000 generations) have lived mostly unaware that these are truly exceptional times. MTI peoples have been mesmerized into thinking that continuous economic and population growth are normal and ‘to be continued’; in counter-fact, the past 200 years of fossil-powered growth is the most anomalous period in human history and is ‘to be curtailed.’
The human population went way up; it will come down.
Perhaps some will find comfort in knowing that, one way or another, the next century will see a return to normalcy. Conceivably, like St Paul Island, our Earthly habitat will eventually recover from humanity’s over-grazing.
The seeming inevitability of the transition does not, however, relieve the present generation of responsibility. This is no time to relax; we theoretically still have a choice between acting in ‘normal’ ways that facilitate a fast and brutal collapse or of exercising our much-vaunted high intelligence by coming together cooperatively to manage a controlled and humanely equitable soft landing.
Where would you put your money?
[1] Actually, and perversely, we’re not exactly ‘skirting the population question’. Many high-income countries are actively promoting pro-natalist policies to maintain or grow their populations in the face of declining fertility.
[2] Positive feedback occurs when a change in a systems variable generates further change in the same direction (deviation reinforcing). Negative feedback occurs when a change in a systems variable results in suppression of change in the same direction (deviation counter-acting).
[3] The instantaneous population growth rates actually increased initially during these periods rising, in humanity’s case, to a maximum of 2.2%/annum in the early-mid 1960s.
[4] The compressed time scale and steepness of the curve obscures this fact.
[5] E.g., greater economic freedom for women, improved family-planning education, increasing availability of pregnancy prevention technologies, concern about bringing children into an unstable world, etc.
[6] The numerical maximum can vary substantially. All else held constant, Earth could support more people at a modest material standard than if we all choose to live high on the hog (apparently the MTI default position).
[7]H. sapiens did actually understand all this but, being above nature, chose to ignore mere biology.
[8] Bio-productivity or biocapacity is a quality of ecosystems and should not be confused with carrying capacity which is always a population number. The two variables are related, of course—a highly bio-productive habitat (e.g., temperate grasslands) will support more people at any defined material standard than will a comparably-sized low-quality habitat (semi-arid scrubland). (See also Note #6.)
Canada has long prided itself on its multicultural mosaic, but for many Canadians, the pace of immigration—450,000 newcomers annually, with plans to hit 500,000 by 2026—feels like too much, too fast.
The top-down ideas of the UK government and other political parties are all of the same ilk. Top-down. Localism is on the horizon – maybe immigration, internally and externally, should be considered?
In small towns and big cities alike, people are voicing concerns: strained housing markets, overcrowded schools, stretched healthcare systems, and a sense that their communities are changing before they can catch their breath. A 2024 Angus Reid poll found 60% of Canadians believe immigration levels are too high, up from 35% a decade ago.
In places like Brampton or Surrey, where immigrants make up over half the population, locals worry about integration lagging behind arrivals. It’s not about rejecting newcomers; it’s about feeling unheard in a top-down system where Ottawa dictates numbers and policies, often ignoring regional realities.
Take Sarah, a teacher in Regina. Her classroom is bursting with new students, many needing language support her school can’t fully provide. Housing costs in her neighborhood have spiked 30% in five years, pricing out her own kids. She’s not anti-immigrant—she values integration—but feels the federal government’s one-size-fits-all approach disregards her community’s capacity. From Halifax to Kelowna, Canadians are asking: why can’t we have a say in who joins our towns and how many?
The solution lies in flipping the script: transfer immigration control to regional and municipal governments, using Swiss-style direct democracy to let residents decide. This decentralized approach respects local needs, rebuilds trust, and ensures immigration strengthens communities, not strains them.
Canada’s immigration system is a federal fortress. Ottawa sets annual targets, selects economic migrants, and processes refugees, with provinces getting limited input through programs like the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP). Municipalities? They get no say, despite bearing the brunt of integration—schools, housing, transit, and social services.
Centralized control assumes Ottawa knows best, but Canada’s regions are wildly diverse. Vancouver’s tech-driven economy can absorb skilled migrants differently than Cape Breton’s fishing communities. A top-down system ignores these nuances, fueling resentment. Canadians aren’t saying “no” to immigration—60% in the Angus Reid poll support it in principle—but they want a voice. By handing immigration decisions to regions or municipalities, Canada can ensure newcomers fit local needs and capacities, turning frustration into collaboration.
Swiss-Style Democracy: Power to the People
Switzerland, a nation of 8.7 million with 25% foreign-born residents, thrives on decentralised governance. Its 26 cantons (like provinces) and 2,200 municipalities have significant autonomy over taxes, education, and even immigration policies. Swiss citizens vote in referenda—sometimes multiple times a year—on issues like asylum policies or foreign worker quotas. This hyper-local approach ensures communities aren’t overwhelmed, and newcomers integrate into places ready to welcome them.
Canada could adapt this model. Imagine if Regina residents voted on how many immigrants their city can support, based on housing and school capacity. Or if a rural Nova Scotia municipality, eager for young families, set its own criteria. Municipal councils or regional assemblies could hold referenda to decide numbers, vetting processes, and integration priorities. This isn’t about closing doors—it’s about opening them thoughtfully.
Even with local control, integration matters. Newcomers need jobs, community ties, and a sense of belonging. Enter cooperative businesses—worker-owned enterprises that embody the democratic spirit of Swiss-style governance. Co-ops aren’t just economic tools; they’re social ecosystems where immigrants become co-owners, not just employees.
Picture a cleaning co-op in Toronto, where a Nigerian immigrant, Chidi, joins after his community approves a small intake of skilled workers. He’s not just scrubbing floors—he’s voting on contracts, sharing profits, and planning outreach.
“In the co-op, I’m not just cleaning homes—I’m building a home here.” —Chidi, a Nigerian immigrant in a Toronto cleaning co-op, on the power of ownership.
Through daily collaboration, Chidi learns Canadian workplace norms while contributing his own ideas. Language barriers fade as he debates strategies with colleagues, accelerating fluency. Co-ops turn immigrants into stakeholders, fostering pride and connection.
Overcoming the Hurdles
Skeptics might argue decentralization risks chaos or exclusion. Couldn’t some communities reject immigrants outright? Swiss-style democracy guards against this. Referenda are binding but operate within constitutional frameworks ensuring fairness. Canada could require municipalities to align with human rights laws, preventing discrimination while allowing local flexibility.
The goal is to ensure immigration flows where it’s sustainable. If Brampton says “slow down” while Prince George says “bring it on,” the system adjusts to community capacity. Pairing local immigration control with co-op opportunities ensures newcomers integrate into welcoming, prepared communities.
Conclusion: A Canada That Listens
Canadians aren’t anti-immigrant—they’re tired of being sidelined. A centralized system that ignores local realities fuels frustration, but Swiss-style democracy offers a fix. By letting regions and municipalities decide who joins and how many, we empower communities to welcome newcomers on their terms. Co-ops seal the deal, turning immigrants into co-owners who build Canada alongside locals.
It’s time to trust Canadians to shape their future. Support local co-ops, push for decentralized policies, and let’s build a Canada where every community has a say—and every newcomer a stake.
By Richard Heinberg, with permission, originally published by Resilience.org
An Interview with Chris Bystroff
A couple of years ago I read a paper titled “Footprints to Singularity: A Global Population Model Explains Late 20th Century Slow-Down and Predicts Peak Within Ten Years.” The banner finding of the paper—that world population is very close to peaking—seemed intriguing, but the population statistics then available seemed to show continued growth, at about 80 million net additions per year. I was unfamiliar with the author, Chris Bystroff, but made a mental note to keep track of how his modeling squared with developing demographic trends. Since then, significant population declines have been reported in China, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries. Official world population growth forecasts are being revised downward rapidly. I recently revisited Bystroff’s paper and was impressed by its methodology as much as its conclusions. I contacted him and invited him to engage in an interview by email; he graciously agreed.
Chris Bystroff is a San Francisco Bay Area native who studied biochemistry at the University of California San Diego and earned a doctorate studying the three-dimensional structures of protein molecules. He completed postdoctoral stints at the University of California San Francisco and the University of Washington, and in the 1990s was a visiting professor at the National University of Engineering (UNI) in Nicaragua. In 1999 he took a faculty position at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in upstate New York, where he still works. At RPI he rose to full professor and maintains a research laboratory funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Grantham Foundation. His lab is currently working on a contraceptive vaccine and a contraceptive transgene for temporary, non-hormonal birth control in men and women. Bystroff teaches courses in protein structure, protein computational modeling, and, since 2016, a course in modeling human population. He has 75 peer-reviewed published papers to his credit, along with one book and three patents.
RH: Thank you, Chris, for taking time to answer a few questions. Let’s start with some basic information. How are population statistics typically compiled? And how do demographers make forecasts about population growth? Do you have a critique of these methods?
CB: I have had the pleasure of being interviewed for a podcast along with demographer Wolfgang Lutz, who is the lead author on the publications that the UN uses for their published population projections. Lutz makes forecasts using trends in birth and death rates, their first and second derivatives, and using a stochastic model for immigration. I have critiqued this method saying that it ignores global limits. When I said this during our interview, Lutz countered that (to paraphrase his response) there are no physical limits to population growth. His view was that climate change and other environmental effects have had a negligible effect on the birth/death rates. He thinks the decline in the birth rates is due to Demographic Transition Theory (DTT), which states that economic advancement leads to decreased family size. DTT is encoded into the population projections through an assumption that Total Fertility Rate will converge on replacement value (TFR=2.1); this despite recent TFR values well below 2 and going down in many countries. I tried to convert him to an alternative view, in which the Earth has a voice, because in his model there is no Earth, no limits, and no carrying capacity (Lutz dismissed the notion that there is a carrying capacity for humans). To convince him, I pointed to the projected effect of climate change on agriculture. I pointed to declining freshwater aquifers. But changing an ingrained model takes more than just data and arguments.
Population statistics can be census data or vital statistics. Both have shortcomings. Census is regarded as more accurate, but census numbers can be politicized. China essentially admitted to overstating their population. India projects pride in having overtaken China in the count. In the US, states are motivated to overstate population since this could give them additional seats in Congress. Census numbers are not all direct counts. Projections, vital statistics, and demographic statistics are used to estimate the non-response rate. Then the estimated non-responses are added to the responses to get the reported count. I have not looked into the non-response rate, but I think it must be rather large, perhaps 10%. If so, then the reported census numbers may be contaminated with expectations. This was the case with China as reported by China-watcher Yi Fuxian. China overstated 2020 population, along with crop production. A paper from 2010 showed that China has done this in the past, significantly underestimating mortality. People ask why my predictions were off and I think, well, the predictions are only as good as the data going in.
RH: Your analysis leads you to a conclusion that few demographers would likely accept. How is your methodology different from theirs? How would you defend it against likely critiques?
CB: In discussions with the few demographers I have met (I am not a demographer, as you may know, I’m a biochemist), I have put them on the defensive and have not heard good defenses. The typical defense is to say, “This is what everybody is saying.” This is a fallacy. Just because people are saying it doesn’t mean it is true. I had an interaction with John Sterman (MIT) at the System Dynamic Society meeting in Albuquerque in 2020. Sterman is the lead author on En-Roads, a comprehensive model for climate change. I’m sure you know of it and have probably played with it. The population model in En-Roads is taken from the UN population model. I complained that there is no feedback from climate change to population, as we know there should be. A truer population model should allow for a crash (using the dramatic term). He stopped talking to me at that point.
I also put Wolfgang Lutz on the defensive. When the interviewer asked us at the end of the interview what we could take away from each other’s critiques, Lutz said he would consider putting global limits into his model. I in turn said I would start to consider economics more.
My model is different in that I focus on the carrying capacity (which is a non-starter for demographers like Lutz). I subscribe to the theory that a K-selected species is limited by carrying capacity and that we are a K-selected species. It’s Ecology 101. Also, my model uses the power of system dynamics, inspired as I was by The Limits to Growth. A systems approach allows me to set constraints in a way that demographics analysis does not. For instance, I put total world biocapacity into a two-stock sub-system with global hectare units. The sub-system can’t grow, just like the Earth can’t grow. We can only change the allocation of hectares (humansphere versus ecosphere), we can’t add hectares. This view is inspired by Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel. Also, my model is different in that it explicitly factors in technology and treats technology like a living thing, growing exponentially. Others have published about technology, but I am not aware of it being included in a formal model before. It is always discussed informally (i.e., non-numerically). Finally, I can’t neglect to mention the machine-learning aspect. My model was fit to population data using a simple machine-learning algorithm (called hyperfit in my paper). The program allowed me to optimize the parameters of the model even though they are interdependent. For instance, the total biocapacity of the Earth is an unknown that I can find by machine learning, but it correlates with another parameter, the sensitivity of the carrying capacity to ecosystem loss. Using hyperfit I could explore how parameters were related, and that was useful for the story-telling part of the paper.
RH: What evidence do you see that world population is in fact peaking right about now?
CB: The TFR of more than half of the world’s population is now below replacement value. That alone should tell us the population is sinking. Some think TFR tells you about future birth rates, but that’s not how it is calculated. There’s such a thing as “demographic inertia” if the age demographics are skewed (lots of young people), but they’re not very skewed, so TFR relates to birth rates now, and expresses that number in terms of average family size later. So, we can look at TFR as an indicator of the slope of the population. I haven’t done it yet, but if I took the TFR times the size of the country and summed it over all countries (and then divided by the sum of the populations), I would probably get a number below 2.1. That would be a decline. If you look at the TFR data publicized by the UN in 2022 and compare those to the TFR published by the OECD in 2021, the difference is night and day. In the latter, the vast majority of countries have TFR less than 2.1. In fact, the eyeball average is about 1.5. This includes China (TFR=1.16) and India (TFR=2.03). What does the OECD know that the UN doesn’t? So, I would say the world population is peaking right now or has already peaked. The uncertainty comes from the degree of demographic inertia and uncertainty in the statistics.
RH: How much of this has to do with declining birth rates, versus increasing death rates?
CB: It’s all about declining birth rates. But as climate change heats up, population decline will be about increasing death rates. If the IPCC “hot models” are correct, then we can expect a 5-6 degree change by 2100. Long before that, equatorial countries will be losing population due to heat, and/or migration to the poles.
RH: Do you think falling birth rates might be influenced somewhat by environmental hormone-mimicking toxins? What other factors?
CB: Fertility is falling everywhere. So, the explanation must be global. Environmental toxins may have a local effect, but are they everywhere? I think a simpler explanation is that decreased fertility is intentional. What is everywhere is social media. Everyone knows about climate change and the associated sea level rise, raging storms, heat waves, and droughts. The outlook for the future is gloomy, and if you are a woman of childbearing age, you might think twice about bringing a child into this world with this future. Also, everywhere the prices of things are going up—childcare and rent among them. When asked why they chose to have zero or one child, women invariably cite the cost of raising a child. So that’s what I blame, climate change and cost of childcare, not toxins.
RH: Pro-growth economists are fretting over falling birth rates, portraying them as a catastrophe. How do you see population decline?
CB: I think population decline will be a relief, like an escape valve in a pressure cooker. As we shrink in numbers we will grow in other areas, like resources per capita and free time. I don’t buy the argument that an aging population is a big problem. Climate change is a big problem. An aging population is a small problem, not worth mentioning by comparison. Pro-growth economists are motivated by what economic theory says about economic stability, namely, that you need growth for stability. I don’t think that is a law of nature. I believe that when the economy shrinks, we will invent an economy that is stable with a shrinking populace. Japan is already shrinking and it is not going through a depression. Doesn’t that mean the doomsaying economists are wrong about needing growth?
So, I believe we will Decline and Prosper (book by Vegard Skirbekk). But part of me says The Heat Will Kill You First (book by Jeff Goodell), so what happens to you may depend on where you live. In any case, the population Countdown (book by Alan Weisman) is happening now or soon, certainly not in 2100.
Prof Harper told the Telegraph: “I think it’s a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they’re having. I’m quite positive about that.”
The academic said declining fertility in rich countries would help to address the “general overconsumption that we have at the moment”, which has a negative impact on the planet.
Most importantly, declines in births will bring about reductions in CO2 emissions from wealthy nations, Sarah points out:
Research has found that wealthy nations tend to have much larger carbon footprints than poorer countries, as rich people can afford to buy more goods, travel more and do other activities that generate emissions. Carbon emissions from high-income countries were 29 times larger than low-income countries on a per capita basis
by William E. Rees, School of Community and Regional Planning, Faculty of Applied Science, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada; wrees@mail.ubc.ca
Abstract: Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. This natural capacity is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics—nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ and sub-system of the ecosphere—it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system, the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host. The population increase from one to eight billion, and >100-fold expansion of real GWP in just two centuries on a finite planet, has thus propelled modern techno-industrial society into a state of advanced overshoot. We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is the best-known symptom of overshoot, but mainstream ‘solutions’ will actually accelerate climate disruption and worsen overshoot. Humanity is exhibiting the characteristic dynamics of a one-off population boom–bust cycle. The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
