'The world population won't increase for very much longer...and of course in many areas it's reaching or indeed well into the decline phase.' - agreed we're approaching a global population peak but would say it's because the ability to convert natural gas into food has reached its limits, not so much because of the demographic transition. Generally I subscribe to the argument Daniel Quinn made, that food surpluses generate population increases rather than being reactive to them. The demographic transition argument as I understand it suggests that increased affluence leads to a drop-off in the birth rate and subsequent stabilisation of population, albeit at a higher level than before. However this wealth still depends on increased populations of exploitable labour in the global south (though the 'ghost slaves' made available by fossil fuels complicates this)... Difficult to explain concisely, and I'm out of practice. If you want more to chew on here's an article that digs into it:
https://medium.com/@jefgodesky/overpopulation-e1f85ee9dc68
As relates to the discussion of how to feed the 8bn, the real danger is that there is a new discovery unlocking the ability for a new way to mass produce cheap food, potentially leading not only to a sustained population at that level (disastrous in itself) but even to a further increase in the population. That's what happened with the green revolution after all. Monbiot uncritically accepts the benefits of much reduced famine which the haber bosch process allowed, without noting the downsides that this had for the natural world as the human population exploded. Fear of collapse and starvation - as well as enormous profits - drove that transition. The same could result in yet further growth, which the planet could possibly not recover from. Quinn made the distinction that Malthus' warning was about the system's failure whereas his was about its ongoing success. One way or another we've got to go down the other side of the curve, as you mention, though there are plenty of ways for it to go very, very badly. I'm forced to agree with Monbiot on that at least!
re: weather, yes awful here too, getting pretty sick of it. People are reassuring us that it's not usually this way, but then nothing is 'usual' any more... On the plus side the soil seems to have an impressive ability to absorb and disperse excess water without much surface runoff, and being on a slope means there hasn't been much standing water anywhere, which is a blessing. We'll see what it's like with reduced vegetation in the winter...
cheers,
I
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