Sustainability Science

"All couples will now be allowed to have two children, the state-run news agency said, citing a statement from the Communist Party. The controversial policy was introduced nationally in 1979, to reduce the country's birth rate and slow the population growth rate. However, concerns at China's aging population led to pressure for change."

"We must recognize that we shot past the opportunity to stabilize our population at a sustainable level of 2 billion about 80 years ago. We must now focus on humanely reducing population on the planet. Some recognize this harsh truth, but most are focused on symptoms. The issue of overpopulation is feared, ignored, misunderstood, falsely represented and demonized by people from all political and religious persuasions. The concept of too many people using up the earth’s limited resources lies outside the parameters of the typical activist’s world. It flies in the face of current norms and doesn’t fit into society’s dominant anthropocentric worldview.

"Bindi [the photograph] is the precocious animal-loving daughter of the late Australian “crocodile hunter,” conservationist and personality Steve Irwin. Bindi was invited to submit an essay on wildlife conservation to Hillary Clinton’s e-journal. She chose to focus on the threat human overpopulation poses to wildlife. “How is it possible that our fragile planet can sustain these masses of people?” Bindi wrote. She used the analogy of too many people showing up for a party and not having enough food to go around.

"Clinton or her lackeys heavily edited the piece before publication, censoring the overpopulation angle, but the feisty Bindi would have none of it. She refused to allow the gutted essay to appear in Clinton’s journal, and instead went about publicizing how Clinton had tried to silence her."

Earlier this month, Pope Francis made news when he said that not only was climate change real, but it was mostly man-made. Then, last week, he said that couples do not need to breed “like rabbits” but rather should plan their families responsibly — albeit without the use of modern contraception.

Birthrates are falling around the world. And that’s O.K.

Why do commentators, like Chicken Little, treat this worldwide trend as a disaster, even collective suicide? It could be because declines in fertility rates stir anxieties about power: national, military and economic, as well as sexual. In reality, slower population growth creates enormous possibilities for human flourishing. In an era of irreversible climate change and the lingering threat from nuclear weapons, it is simply not the case that population equals power, as so many leaders have believed throughout history. Lower fertility isn’t entirely a function of rising prosperity and secularism; it is nearly universal.