In the end, perhaps only two things can be said for certain about population trends. Sooner or later, they make fools of those who offer dramatic forecasts. But people will keep making them. In 1960, in the US journal Science, a paper by the distinguished physicist and philosopher Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues declared, “Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death.” The paper was titled Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026. See you in the northern ticket hall then?
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