In the mod­ern era, uber-left wing aca­d­e­mics who view envi­ron­men­tal­ism as a reli­gion and take on blind faith that the world is being destroyed by the infes­ta­tion of human beings have long con­sid­ered and dis­cussed how best to achieve “pop­u­la­tion con­trol” and even pop­u­la­tion reduction.

Most have been care­ful not to actu­al­ly state what it is they would real­ly like to see: the mass mur­der of bil­lions of peo­ple, so they could “save” the plan­et through avoid­ance of destruc­tion by humans. But even a rea­son­ably astute observ­er can see through the veneer of their “con­cern” and fig­ure out what they real­ly want.
One recent aca­d­e­m­ic paper serves as a per­fect exam­ple of this hid­ing our zest for depop­u­la­tion by any means men­tal­i­ty. Corey J. A. Brad­shaw and Bar­ry W. Brook, both of the Envi­ron­ment Insti­tute and School of Earth and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide in Ade­laide, Aus­tralia, note that even a loss of 2 bil­lion peo­ple over the course of five years still would not be enough of a depop­u­la­tion effort to do the earth much good.

‘Cat­a­stroph­ic human event’ needed?

The paper, titled, “Human pop­u­la­tion reduc­tion is not a quick fix for envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems,” states the issue thus­ly, in a sum­ma­ry; note that the authors have already essen­tial­ly con­clud­ed what the prob­lem is and who is respon­si­ble (my emphasis):

The plan­et’s large, grow­ing, and over­con­sum­ing human pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly the increas­ing afflu­ent com­po­nent, is rapid­ly erod­ing many of the Earth­’s nat­ur­al ecosys­tems. How­ev­er, soci­ety’s only real pol­i­cy lever to reduce the human pop­u­la­tion humane­ly is to encour­age low­er per capi­ta fer­til­i­ty. How long might fer­til­i­ty reduc­tion take to make a mean­ing­ful impact? We exam­ined var­i­ous sce­nar­ios for glob­al human pop­u­la­tion change to the year 2100 by adjust­ing fer­til­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty rates (both chron­ic and short-term inter­ven­tions) to deter­mine the plau­si­ble range of out­comes. Even one-child poli­cies imposed world­wide and cat­a­stroph­ic mor­tal­i­ty events would still like­ly result in 5–10 bil­lion peo­ple by 2100. Because of this demo­graph­ic momen­tum, there are no easy ways to change the broad trends of human pop­u­la­tion size this cen­tu­ry.

Except, per­haps, some sort of mass casualty/pandemic/world war? That is the pos­si­bil­i­ty the authors exam­ine in the body of their work. In the paper’s abstract, the authors talk of the “inex­orable demo­graph­ic momen­tum” of the grow­ing human pop­u­la­tion, which is, of course, “rapid­ly erod­ing Earth­’s life-sup­port sys­tem” (though there is no proof of this, notice how the authors state it as fact).

The authors also state that there “are con­se­quent­ly more fre­quent calls to address envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems,” which must be dealt with using “fur­ther reduc­tions in human fer­til­i­ty.” And here is the crux of the authors’ study vari­ables (note my emphasis):

To exam­ine how quick­ly this could lead to a small­er human pop­u­la­tion, we used sce­nario-based matrix mod­el­ing to project the glob­al pop­u­la­tion to the year 2100. Assum­ing a con­tin­u­a­tion of cur­rent trends in mor­tal­i­ty reduc­tion, even a rapid tran­si­tion to a world­wide one-child pol­i­cy leads to a pop­u­la­tion sim­i­lar to today’s by 2100. Even a cat­a­stroph­ic mass mor­tal­i­ty event of 2 bil­lion deaths over a hypo­thet­i­cal 5‑y win­dow in the mid-21^st cen­tu­ry would still yield around 8.5 bil­lion peo­ple by 2100. In the absence of cat­a­stro­phe or large fer­til­i­ty reduc­tions (to few­er than two chil­dren per female world­wide), the great­est threats to ecosystems–as mea­sured by region­al pro­jec­tions with­in the 35 glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Hotspots–indicate that Africa and South Asia will expe­ri­ence the great­est human pres­sures on future ecosystems.

They have to sound rea­son­able to be tak­en seriously

So, buried in their paper is the hoped-for solu­tion: Some sort of “cat­a­stroph­ic mass mor­tal­i­ty” that would dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion because, you know, that’s what has to hap­pen if we are to save the plan­et.

To cov­er for this hoped-for con­clu­sion, how­ev­er, the authors real­ize that they must at least sound rea­son­able:

Human­i­ty’s large demo­graph­ic momen­tum means that there are no easy pol­i­cy levers to change the size of the human pop­u­la­tion sub­stan­tial­ly over com­ing decades, short of extreme and rapid reduc­tions in female fer­til­i­ty; it will take cen­turies, and the long-term tar­get remains unclear.

Brad­shaw and Brook also not­ed that “some reduc­tion” in human pop­u­la­tion could be reached “by mid­cen­tu­ry,” in some man­ner, which would at least result in “hun­dreds of mil­lions few­er peo­ple to feed.”