The environment needs more people, not fewer

There are still a few regions with very high fertility rates—notably in sub-Saharan Africa—and as a result, living standards are not yet rising at the rates needed to end poverty in those places. The expectation is that with more urbanization and longer years of schooling, especially for girls, fertility rates will decline in those places as well.

Earth’s population could reach ten billion in the future, but of course with humans we also have to consider the possibility that it could decrease to 200 million. Just as there have been plenty of such examples in the past, any number of tragic events could happen in the future. So how do we go on living? If you ask me, the only solution is to mak

As for concerns around overpopulation, historically, these fears have been completely backwards. Every time, it's education, technology and innovation that lifts us out of poverty and saves us from imminent apocalypse, while population controls and 'de-growth' initiatives lead to stomach-churning atrocities.

One basic calculation puts it this way: The human impact is equal to the population times GDP/population times impact/GDP, sometimes summarized as I = P × A × T, where I is impact, P is population, A is affluence (GDP per capita), and T is technology (impact/GDP).10 What is clear from this equation is that per capita economic growth (a rise in A) o

there is no reason to believe that we are in a better position to foresee the extent of coming technical innovations (unless, of course, you are a believer in near-imminent Singularity), the events that will shape the fortunes of nations, and the decisions (or their regrettable absence) that will determine the fate of our civilization during the ne

Add to this all other environmental worries, and you must conclude that the key existential question—can humanity realize its aspirations within the safe boundaries of our biosphere?—has no easy answers. But it is imperative that we understand the facts of the matter. Only then can we tackle the problem effectively.

Kremer illustrates this by showing that as the population of the earth has increased, the rate of population growth has increased rather than declined. Had humans been a burden consuming resources, then the larger the population, the lower the quantity of resources available to each individual and the lower the rate of economic growth and thus popu