Thinning out, not cooling off: Climate crisis and the dip in global population

We’ve always thought of fewer humans as good news: fewer mouths to feed, fewer emissions. But when it comes to climate, the case for optimism is much weaker.

For over two centuries, the spectre of overpopulation has haunted global debates about food security, sustainability and the environment. All the way back in 1798, English economist and scholar Thomas Robert Malthus wrote his influential piece, An Essay on the Principle of Population, arguing that the human population will always grow faster than our ability to produce food, eventually overwhelming the planet’s available natural resources. The catastrophe Malthus prophesied has yet to arrive, thanks to technological advances and human ingenuity.