Fewer people, fewer problems?

February 4, 2026 - Heather Cox Richardson
On the heels of last weekend’s special election in Texas, President Donald J. Trump has called for his administration to take over the polls before the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump’s New “Prison Camp” Threat Unleashes Fury Even in MAGA Country
The next phase of ICE’s big ramp-up: a nationwide network of vast detention facilities. But guess what? Even parts of Red America are saying no.
The New Republic and Greg Sargent

GOP senator opposes planned ICE detention facility in home state
Alexander Bolton, The Hill

Tom Homan Demands ICE Agents Return Their Signing Bonuses to Him in Paper Bag
Andy Borowitz

Hobbs launches know-your-rights website for ICE encounters
Saying there have been “abuses of power,’’ Gov. Katie Hobbs on Wednesday created a web site designed to tell Arizonans their rights when they’re stopped by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or when officers approach their homes.
By Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services, via The Yuma Sun

The Media Really Doesn’t Know What To Do With Trump’s Lies
The Wall St. Journal steps into a steaming pile of Trumpian nonsense.
Jared Bernstein

Uh Oh, Sounds Like Eagle Ed Martin Done Tainted Up DOJ’s Revenge Cases!
Lucky break, Adam Schiff!
Marcie Jones

Arizonans react to the Pentagon’s latest move against Sen. Mark Kelly
Tensions between the Pentagon and US Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona continue this week, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing that he is issuing a letter of censure against the Democratic congressman.
Arizona Copper Courier

Judge sees Hegseth bid to demote Sen. Mark Kelly as assault on free speech of veterans
At a hearing Tuesday, a federal judge cast Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s effort to demote Sen. Mark Kelly in retirement as an unprecedented attack on the free speech rights of military veterans.
Arizona Copper Courier

“It’s not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Lucian K. Truscott IV

Donald Trump Says He Wants To Seize State Elections, Probably Just Kidding Again Because He's Such A Kidder
Just joking, only serious.
Doktor Zoom

The Real Reason Trump Is Skipping the Super Bowl on Sunday
Trump claimed the big game is ‘too far away.’ Privately, his advisers warned he’d likely get booed if he went, sources tell Zeteo.
Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez

No Republicans Show Up For Joint House-Senate Hearing On ICE Murders, Brutality. Big Surprise.
Wouldn't want to give the impression that victims of ICE violence are human, after all.
Doktor Zoom

Gee, It Doesn't Seem Like This Raw Milk Thing Is Going So Well, Part 4,279,327,934
A New Mexico newborn has likely died from listeria.
Robyn Pennacchia

Trump’s spy chief accidentally gave Congress a roadmap to investigate him.
Tulsi Gabbard over-explained why she was in Georgia at an FBI raid of an election office, and — in the process — she implicated her boss.
Miles Taylor

what the fuck, Jeff Bezos?
democracy — and the Washington Post — dies up the oligarchy’s ass
Jeff Tiedrich

ICE agents in Oregon cannot arrest people without warrants, judge rules
US federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring warrantless arrests unless there is a likelihood of escape
Associated Press via The Guardian

Andrea Verdelli for The New York Times

Fewer people, fewer problems?

by Amanda Taub

The world’s birthrates are plunging.

China’s government revealed last month that its birthrate had plummeted to the  lowest level on record since 1949 . The U.S. said its population had grown at  one of its slowest rates ever , caused in part by an immigration slowdown but also by a decades-long decline in fertility rates. Similar trends can be found around the globe, including in India, South Korea, Italy, Colombia and Mexico.

All this means the global population is on track to start shrinking in the next 50 to 60 years. That has enormous negative implications for the world’s economic productivity, innovation capacity and political stability.

Some optimists say a smaller human population might have some upsides. It could, they say, buffer the consequences of the two other world-remaking shifts that humanity is confronting: climate change and the potentially wrenching disruptions of A.I.

These arguments have a certain logic. After all, climate change is the result of human emissions — wouldn’t fewer humans mean less strain on the planet? And amid fears that A.I. will displace human workers, couldn’t a smaller work force take the sting out of the prospective economic disruption?

If only. In fact, experts say, population decline is unlikely to be a solution to either problem — and may actually make them harder to solve.

‘A big, slow ship’

Decades ago, many within the environmental movement  called for a smaller population  as a means of curbing carbon emissions and lessening the effects of climate change. Most climate experts are now focused on other solutions, but the arguments have had a lingering cultural impact: Whenever I write about the negative effects of falling fertility rates around the world, I hear from many readers who are certain that the emission-reduction benefits will outweigh the other costs of a smaller population.

But when a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Hunter College in New York ran the numbers, they found that population decline was likely to have only a negligible impact on climate change.

The reason? The timelines just don’t match up. Because human life spans are long, the researchers wrote in a recent  working paper , falling birthrates will take a long time to meaningfully change the size of the world’s population. The threat of climate change is much more immediate — today’s emissions will have a lasting effect on the Earth’s atmosphere.

Solutions to climate change, which would also have the effect of reducing per-person emissions, need to happen within a much shorter period. By the time the population actually does shrink, having fewer people won’t make much difference.

“The population is a big ship, slow to turn,” said Dean Spears, one of the researchers who worked on the paper.

The researchers analyzed a few different models of population size and emissions changes. They found that if the world’s population were to shrink by billions of people by the year 2200, which will happen if things stay on their current trajectory, it would make less than one-tenth of a degree Celsius of difference to peak temperatures when compared with a population that remains stable over time.

The A.I. revolution

Another frequent rejoinder to demographic doomsayers: We’ll just have robots do the work for us! Or, more bleakly: If A.I. is going to destroy all the jobs, won’t it maybe be better to have a smaller work force to start with?

For now, it appears that the kind of robots we’d need to replace humans at scale won’t arrive soon enough to help compensate for the slowing productivity growth of an aging population, said Beata Javorcik, the chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In many places, the problem of an aging population and shrinking work force is already here. Post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe, for example, “got old before getting rich,” Javorcik said.

As for the bleaker scenario, economists like David Autor at M.I.T. believe it’s unlikely that A.I. will replace all or most human workers. Historically, labor forces have adapted to even the most seismic of technological changes. That might well happen with A.I., in which case a shrinking pool of workers would still dampen growth when the A.I.-driven productivity surge eventually did arrive.

But if A.I. did replace humans, Autor said, a smaller population would not be much of a cushion against the economic or political fallout. Even a small displaced work force has the potential to cause major disruption.

In other words, there is no magic bullet (A.I.) for the coming population collapse, and the collapse itself will not be a magic bullet (for climate change). There is only the slow, painstaking work of making policy that will be able to accommodate a new reality.