XPost: alt.fan.heinlein
from
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-10/global-population-collapse-isn-t-sci-fi-anymore-niall-ferguson
Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore
We used to worry about the planet getting too crowded, but there are
plenty of downsides to a shrinking humanity as well.
March 9, 2024 at 9:00 PM PST
By Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the Milbank
Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
and the author, most recently, of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.”
It’s getting lonely out there. Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
We used to imagine humanity populating the universe. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation (1952), mankind has established a vast multi-planetary empire
by the year 47000. “There were nearly twenty-five million inhabited
planets in the Galaxy,” Asimov wrote. “The population of Trantor [the imperial capital] … was well in excess of forty billions.”
In Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem (2006), by contrast, we’re a cosmic rounding error, bracing ourselves for the terrifying Trisolaran
invasion. As the trailer for the new Netflix series puts it: “They are coming, and there is nothing you can do to stop them.”
IMHO, a worthwhile read with plenty of Sci-fi references.
Read the rest at the citation.
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