True Left

Besides casualties in the thousands on the battlefield, the enlistment of 300,000 reservists to join the fight -- and an even bigger flight of men abroad -- is derailing Putin’s goals of starting to stabilize the population already this year.
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“The chief blow to the birth rate will be indirect, because most families will have their planning horizon completely destroyed as a result,” Efremov said. “And the impact will be stronger the longer the mobilization lasts.”

as Russia approached the invasion of Ukraine in February, it was coming off its deadliest year since World War II -- made worse by the pandemic -- with the population in decline since 2018. It reached 145.1 million on Aug. 1, a fall of 475,500 since the start of the year and down from 148.3 million in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The continuation of the military campaign and mobilization until the end of next spring would be “catastrophic,” according to Efremov, likely bringing births down to just 1 million in the 12 months to mid-2024. The fertility rate may reach 1.2 children per woman, he said, a level Russia saw only once in 1999-2000.

This week, the world’s population ticks over a historic milestone. But in the next century, society will be reshaped dramatically — and soon we’ll hit a decline we’ll never reverse.

Eight billion. It’s a number too big to imagine but think of it this way: In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, the world’s population grew by around 20 people.

We’re getting older and older, which means there are fewer people able to work to support more people who can’t.

Cities are expanding, chewing up arable farmland as they go.

Where are we going?
The world is likely to have a couple more billion mouths to feed in just a few decades.

The UN’s latest projections, released earlier this year, suggest the world will house about 9.7 billion humans in 2050.

“Demographic projections are highly accurate, and it has to do with the fact that most of the people who will be alive in 30 years have already been born,” the UN’s population division director, John Willmoth, says.

“But when you start getting 70, 80 years down the road, there’s much more uncertainty.”

Under its most likely scenario, the UN projects the world population will reach about 10.4 billion in the 2080s.

From there, it’s set to plateau for a couple of decades, before falling around the turn of the 22nd century.

But the range of reasonable possibilities in 2100 is considerably wider, between 8.9 and 12.4 billion.

Canada has seen a record boom in its population, with Ottawa citing higher immigration targets and a “record-breaking year for the processing of immigration applications” as being responsible for the increase.

The most recent bump has also been fuelled by new citizens from abroad, with international migration accounting for nearly 96 percent of the growth.

Trudeau’s government has doubled the pre-existing target for welcoming newcomers since coming to power in 2015. A record 437,180 immigrants landed in Canada in 2022. That number is scheduled to rise to 500,000 per year by 2025.

Statistics Canada said that “high job vacancies and labour shortages” have fuelled the high rate of immigration. It also noted Canada’s ageing population, with one in seven residents between the ages of 55 and 64, providing opportunity to welcome more people.