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In 1968, husband and wife biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a terrifying look at coming ecology-driven disasters. Our population growth, they said, had to be slowed or reversed, or else catastrophe would ensue.
The world’s population has more than doubled since that time, to over 8 billion people, and the disasters are still looming. But now, a new factor has entered the picture, one that has never been seen before in the entire history of life on our planet.
Italy’s population has shrunk by around a million since 2014. Japan’s has fallen by about 5…