alt Hacker NewsWhen fertility rates fall below replacement rate, some amount of degrowth is all but inevitable. Probably multiple generations’ worth, assuming things remain at least nominally normal.
That few in government are readying for that and are rearranging deck chairs instead is not particularly reassuring.
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The electricity generation in the article is shown per capita.
Now I'm not saying we should generate as much as humanly possible, because even with renewables that has a cost.
And some things have gotten genuinely more efficient (compare modern heat pumps to heating available in 1968).
But why shouldn't we maintain the levels our parents enjoyed? And use the extra capacity if anything for EVs, grid stabilization, medical research, etc.
So population degrowth is a pretty separate issue.
It'll be temporary. Low fertility rates are an evolutionary bottleneck. After 100 years all of the people and ideologies predisposed to low fertility will have literally removed themselves and their bloodlines from existence and those who maintained a higher than replacement rate even when confronted with the ills of modern society will have taken their place. This works at the individual level, I'm not talking about race or nationality.