Dean Spears, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, penned a piece for the New York Times that its editors apparently found so enlightening they augmented it with flashy graphics.
“Children born today will very likely live to see the end of global population growth,” Spears argues. Apparently, though, the author felt the need to guide his readers toward the conclusion that the “unprecedented decline” of the human species would be undesirable. “It would be tempting to welcome depopulation as a boon to the environment,” he ill-advisedly concedes. Well, at least Spears is prepared to educate Times readers about the benefits associated with human output and innovation, right? Wrong. Sadly, the author wrote, “the pace of depopulation will be too slow for our most pressing problems.” The biggest problem with humanity’s retreat is that we’re just not going to be dying out fast enough.
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