A shrinking population might make it harder to save the climate because you need a massive economy just to maintain green tech.
April 2, 2026
Original Paper
The Environmental Benefits of Low Fertility and Population Decline are Overstated
SSRN · 6506384
The Takeaway
While many assume fewer humans naturally leads to a cleaner planet, this paper argues that technologies like carbon capture have massive fixed labor and capital costs. A smaller, aging population lacks the economic scale to fund and operate these systems, making the per-capita cost of environmental protection prohibitively expensive.
From the abstract
The discussion of impending population decline is often dismissed or minimized by arguments that downplay its urgency – or even welcome this development – because of the proposed environmental benefits. This paper argues that the environmental benefits of depopulation are far smaller than widely believed, and that complacency about population decline may be counterproductive to climate goals. First, there is a fundamental issue of timing mismatch. Demographic change unfolds over generations, whi