Depopulation of the World - Buddha's Explanation In The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha,  Sutta 3/56 titled Depopulation (on page 253; internet version here) and note 415 (on page 1645) provides the Buddha's explanation for the Depopulation of the World.

In this explanation reference is made to Yakkhas -- wild demonic spirits, sometimes depicted as  killing human beings....wild, nonhuman -- being released.  Besides the Yakkhas, which are only the physical manifestation,  Buddha explains the Primary Causes for this Depopulation. 


  "Again , at present people are excited by illicit lust,
  overcome by unrighteous greed, afflicted by wrong Dhamma.
  When this happens, the yakkhas release wild spirits.


At a time when the world is engaged in combatting Yakkhas globally via lockdowns etc., are we falling short in addressing the Causes of this Depopulation as spelt out by the Buddha? If so, what should be our Strategic approach to this problem?
AN 3.56: Paloka Suttaɱ

Woodward translation:
The Rich Man
http://buddhadust.net/dhamma-vinaya/pts/an/03_threes/an03.056.wood.pts.htm

A wealthy brahmin has heard the story told by the ancients of a time when this world was densely populated and villages and towns and cities grew up right next to each other. He asks Gotama why it is that this is no longer the case and is told that it is because at this time the people are obsessed with lusts, depravities and wrong views resulting in a number of calamaties that depopulate the earth.

A tough sutta for modern man to digest for several reasons. Nobody I think will argue that the people today are not as depraved as described, and that that results in wars, but that this depravity affects the weather and crops and causes the unleashing of demonic beings will be harder to see. And then there is the issue of feeding such a dense population ... and this was speaking of a time when the lifespan of man was in the tens of thousands of years.

How can this be seen?

This world is a work of the imagination, individual and collective. The individual has no way to know the nature of 'the real world', what he can know is simply the three experiences through the senses, what he 'sees' and 'hears' and 'tastes' and 'touches' has no more concrete reality to it than a dream, but because man desires to live collectively he agrees to believe the world is of a certain nature, possesses certain properties beyond solidity, liquidity, heat and light, motion, space and consciousness. Thus the apparent world is one which is arrived at by consensus*. That consensus changes over time.

That's how.

Today we have heard that because of wide-spread lockdowns limiting human activity, the surface of the globe has experienced a reduced vibration. The poles of the earth are moving. There is a huge increase in seismic activity in places where there has been none in centuries. There is global warming and the rise in sea-level. Fires rage uncontrolled destroying millions of acres of vegetation. The US has experienced flooding that has seriously compromised food supplies. There is even a plague of locusts! As for demonic beings, put aside pre-conceptions as to how these beings look and you may see them in the actions of human-form monsters. We have school shootings, mass shootings, terrorists, assassans, child-women-human trafficers... the list of monsterous activities by so-called human beings is endless.

*Actually examined closely it will be seen that outside the sangha there are hardly two people in the world that agree with each other about almost anything. What it is is a 'consensis reality' arrived at by the hoodwinking of weak, ignorant majorites by powerful ignorant minorities.