Empty Planet

**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ** ''Riveting and vitally important'' - Steven Pinker ''A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change'' - Anjana Ahuja, New Statesman Empty Planet offers a radical, provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth''s resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we''re thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace