Stories about limits are where civilisation succeeds or fails. We can build the models, publish the data, and map the planetary boundaries, but none of it matters if the governing narrative refuses to acknowledge what the numbers mean.
Environmental analysts estimate that a sustainable global population enjoying a modest, equitable standard of living lies between two and four billion people, assuming per person final energy use of around 60 GJ per year—similar to present-day Greece and modestly above the current global average of roughly 55 GJ per person.
But we are at 8 billion, increasing toward 10 at 8,000+ per hour. What sort of story can we make of that?
The Governing Illusion
The establishment is pretending that presenting the data on ecological overshoot, the transgression of multiple planetary boundaries, the finite nature of resources, and any other environmental constraint will be enough for rational actors to adjust their behaviour accordingly.
But everyone, including the establishment, knows that this is not what happens. Evidence gets retrofitted to support whatever story generates compliance or outrage… oh, and people are not rational.
But the illusion is peddled anyway.
For example, the demographic transition model promises that development will naturally stabilise populations, conveniently ignoring that the transition takes 100 to 200 years and we probably lack sufficient resources for even 50.
Or the evergreen mantra that technology will save us, despite every technological solution requiring more energy, more materials, and more complex systems that themselves demand resources.
And to ensure there is no risk of misunderstanding, overpopulation remains the forbidden topic, systematically avoided in academic discourse, policy frameworks, and public conversation.
Admitting that 8 billion humans cannot persist at current or aspirational consumption levels threatens foundational stories about progress, development, and individual rights.
So the stories adjust to make distribution the problem, not absolute numbers. Then efficiency will close the gap, and innovation will transcend limits.
Narrative as Infrastructure
Civilisation stumbles and fails not because the mathematics are unknown but because the ruling stories refuse to update until circumstances force catastrophic adjustment.
Here is a story change that worked.
Bangladesh’s fertility fell from ~6–7 births per woman in the mid-1970s to under 2.3 by the early 2020s, one of the sharpest human fertility declines on record.
Bangladesh, a country of 78 million in 1975, built an intensive, door-to-door family-planning system staffed by tens of thousands of female fieldworkers, scaled nationally with government, NGO, and donor backing. These workers delivered contraceptive methods to the doorstep, offered counselling, and normalised contraceptive use; method access and uptake rose dramatically even without rapid economic growth.
This outreach also came with a story.
It framed smaller families as healthier and more prosperous. Religious and community leaders were engaged while media and peer networks reinforced new expectations. There were parallel shifts in girls’ schooling, delayed marriage and childbearing, women’s paid work, and falling child mortality, all contributing to making the “two-child ideal” socially desirable as well as feasible.
Careful evaluations credit both the programmatic supply-side and the aspiration.
All this took time, and the population of Bangladesh today is 176 million, but if the growth rate had stayed at the near 3% of the 1970s, the population would today be over 340 million.
In other words, the practical work of demographic descent is deliberate narrative design. The alternative is waiting for resource constraints to impose their own narrative through famine, conflict, and collapse.
We know that demographic mathematics allow for a managed descent to 2 billion over 100 years if global fertility drops to 1.5 children per couple. That trajectory demands stories that make voluntary restraint comprehensible, socially valued, and individually meaningful.
Stories that explain why less is not defeat but an essential adaptation.
No such narratives currently dominate public discourse.
Growth remains the governing paradigm, and questioning it marks one as anti-human, pessimistic, or ideologically suspect.
But here’s the thing.
The economic paradigm, the development framework, and the techno-optimist vision all rest on stories that assume limits can be indefinitely postponed.
They can’t.
Thought Challenges
Narrative Autopsy… Select a failed sustainability program from the past two decades. Examine its governing narrative. Did it promise continued growth with reduced impact? Did it assume technological substitution for finite resources? Did it avoid naming the population? Trace the failure not to inadequate data or insufficient funding but to narrative structures that made success impossible.
Story Testing… Draft three competing narratives for demographic descent to 2 billion. Let the first emphasise ecological necessity and planetary boundaries. The second frame smaller populations as enabling individual flourishing and reduced competition. The third to present descent as intergenerational justice, ensuring resources for future generations. Test each for psychological traction, social plausibility, and resilience to counter-narratives. Which story could actually shift fertility decisions at scale?
Stories
Clarity of story is the substrate on which every other intervention depends.
Family planning programs, education initiatives, and economic development all operate within narrative frames that determine whether they accelerate or delay demographic transition. The dominant narratives promise technological salvation, distribution solutions, and development pathways that mathematics cannot support.
Another story must be told.
G22 requires stories that make managed descent comprehensible, legitimate, and preferable to catastrophic collapse.
Small families are good, healthy and prosperous. Choosing fewer or no children is not failure, nor selfish, or somehow immoral. The stories we tell now determine whether descent is deliberate or imposed, managed or chaotic, a choice made or a consequence suffered.
It should not be difficult to craft them.
Evidence Support
Dahlstrom, M. F. (2014). Using narratives and storytelling to communicate science with nonexpert audiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(Supplement 4), 13614–13620.
TL;DR… narratives are more easily comprehended and engaging for audiences than traditional scientific communication that relies solely on logic and data. The research demonstrates that storytelling increases audience understanding, retention, and receptivity to scientific information, including contentious or complex topics.
Relevance to insight… shows that when societies face urgent issues, the stories told about those issues—not the hard data—determine what gets understood and acted upon. Public reaction, policy change, and cultural acceptance are largely narrative-driven, not constrained solely by the quality or quantity of scientific evidence.
Mohatt, N. V., Thompson, A. B., Thai, N. D., & Tebes, J. K. (2014). Historical trauma as public narrative: A conceptual review of how narratives frame collective experience and resilience. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(3), 1-24.
TL;DR… personal and public narratives contextualise adversity, forming resilience strategies both for individuals and entire groups. This conceptual review explains how collective trauma narratives shape group identity and societal response to adversity, demonstrating the narrative’s power to frame and direct large-scale adaptation.
Relevance to insight… even transformative survival and resilience hinge on communal stories, not data outputs. Societal survival and response to crises are functions of narrative framing that either enable or stifle adaptation.
Bouizegarene, N., Singer, J. A., & McAdams, D. P. (2024). Narrative as active inference: an integrative account of narratives and meaning-making in psychological adaptation. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1345480.
TL;DR… how narratives coordinate expectations, ground identity construction, and guide action through meaning-making processes far more robust than raw data intake. Narratives fuse past experiences and projected futures, providing coherence and social legitimacy for individual and collective adaptation
Relevance to insight… narratives are not mere entertainment—they are the infrastructure of adaptation, which translates technical realities into collective intention. Successful demographic transition, social descent, or resilience occurs only through narrative coherence, not solely data comprehension.
Murphy, S. T., Frank, L. B., Chatterjee, J. S., & Baezconde-Garbanati, L. (2013). Narrative versus Non-narrative: The role of identification, transportation, and emotion in reducing health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 116-137.
TL;DR… fictional narratives impact knowledge, attitudes, and behavioural intentions more than equivalent non-narrative formats. Participants exposed to narrative formats reported stronger identification and engagement, which directly translated to more significant changes in knowledge and intention.
Relevance to insight… why narrative is not just an adjunct but a primary driver of social change—even when high-quality data exists. This aligns with the insight that policy and public behaviour are shaped by emotionally powerful stories rather than the best available evidence.
Coming soon
Curated Insights, deeper Explainers, monthly live catchups, and a moderated forum for thinking clearly about a humane population contraction—without coercion, denial, or collapse.