Is the shrinking global population good news?
The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece on the long- term ‘slide’ in world population with ‘plunging fertility levels’ and ‘sweeping ramifications’. How will the lower projected levels of world population affect climate change? Surely, if humanity is a blight on earth, as leading environmentalists assert — from the great naturalist David Attenborough who famously said that ‘humans are intruders’ to UN secretary general António Guterres who declared that ‘humanity is waging a war on nature’ — then surely the projected decline in world population by the end of the century should be welcome news.
