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It'll probably be a black swan anyway. So it's best to stay calm, because to hedge against it...

Stephen Emmott ends his book Ten Billion with the line "Teach my son how to use a gun."



Interesting reference. I had not heard of him, or that book from 2013. 10B is now projected to be our peak, and at 7B we have so much spare food that we burn it as automotive fuel. And now... we realize that population "collapse" is much more likely to happen than endless growth.

Obviously I have not read the book, but do you think it holds up in 2025?


Many books on the subject are very much "doomsayers" or "preppers" style.

The Roman Empire has been crumbling for 400 years, so it's likely that we won't experience the collapse of society as described in most history books either - life is too short for that. Unless a black swan comes along…

To answer your question, I like to come back to the book because it's written in the style of Dan Brown :) - short, punchy chapters. And it still makes sense (to me).


Worldwide population peaked sometime between 2015 and 2020 at somewhere between 7.2 and 7.4B. So my take on the book is that it isn't very good.

Also, biofuels based on most crops other than sugar cane, in addition to not being very helpful in the fight against AGW, triggered large price spikes and political turmoil in a dozen different countries at once. Perhaps you heard of this event, we call it the Arab Spring. We are still dealing with the fallout of it.




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