A pandemic assisted by our incursions into nature has given questions about human population size a renewed focus, but advocates for limiting population also have questions to answer
Environment
| Leader
11 November 2020
LETTERS to New Scientist in response to coverage of environmental issues often raise a glaring omission: why aren’t we mentioning the elephant in the room, namely the number of humans on the planet?
A pandemic assisted by our incursions into nature has now given questions about human population size a renewed focus. Such questions have been hugely contentious since at least 1798, when Thomas Malthus issued the dire warnings that still set the tenor of the debate in An Essay on the Principle of Population.
See The great Population debate: Are there to many people on the planet? …