I personally don’t think journalists have been voicing these concerns in anything like a manner proportionate to the risk of megadeath (compared with something like, say, climate change, which has become a perennial font of public hysteria even though its impact on quality of life will likely be minimal for most areas of the globe.)
Climate change’s effects on desertification and rising sea levels could plausibly either directly or indirectly kill tens of millions over the coming century- which isn’t exactly good news, but… given our global population size, tens of millions could statistically die from various causes over the course of a century and the average person will probably never notice, especially when most of those deaths will occur in ecologically marginal areas where life was never easy to begin with.
If Zeihan’s analysis is correct, then hundreds of millions could plausibly perish from war and famine just over the coming decade. If so, “keep global trade in fertiliser inputs cheap and safe” would have to be considered a project of overwhelming importance for rational altruists.
I am baffled as to what ‘net positive impact’ extinction rebellion is supposed to have made, given they tarnish the reputation of the environmental movement as a whole with vastly exaggerated projections of doom, actively block pursuit of non-renewable energy solutions like natural gas, carbon capture and nuclear, and promote an anti-natalist hysteria which is only going to make other economic and social problems worse over the coming decades.