Imagine you’re on a spaceship, and your crewmates begin dismantling the craft while you’re hurtling through space. What will you do? We’re facing that predicament now on Spaceship Earth, and 11,000 scientists around the world have issued a third warning. “Stabilize population growth” was listed as one of six ways to mitigate effects contributing to the climate crisis.

World Population Balance staff gathered around the table to discuss how the warning addressed human population numbers, and to analyze some unwarranted criticism in the press. Was the language in the warning too timid? Why not just come out and say we need to contract our population? Well, they did. But they beat around the bush in getting there. Why?

Contracting our population can be accomplished humanely, ethically and voluntarily. Widespread adoption of one-child families as the norm can move our numbers back to a sustainable level in roughly 100 years.

This episode was published January 29, 2020.