It's time to stop blaming overpopulation for our environmental woes and start looking at the factors that really matter—resource consumption and toxic exposure as population growth and fertility rates show downward trends. U.S. and global populations are both growing at slower rates.
A group of the world’s top ecologists have issued a stark warning about the snowballing crisis caused by climate change, population growth, and unchecked development. Their assessment is grim, but big-picture societal changes on a global scale can still avert a disastrous future.
In all the talk of tackling environmental problems such as climate change, the problem of population growth often escapes attention. Politicians don't like talking about it. By and large, neither do environmentalists—but former Greens leader Bob Brown has bucked that trend.