The connection between population growth and environmental degradation seems clear enough – the more people there are, the more greenhouse gases are emitted and the more resources are consumed. But as I report in Tuesday’s Times, the population issue has been conspicuously absent from the public discourse on global warming in the United States.

The filmmakers Christophe Fauchere and Joyce Johnson say that when they set out to make “Mother: Caring For Seven Billion,” a recent documentary film about population growth and climate change (a trailer is above), they found some environmental groups reluctant to address the subject for fear of alienating their supporters. One group hung up on them when they called, they recounted.

“The stigma on the population issue is so strong that people tend to shut down,” Mr. Fauchere said. Still, the global milestone announced this week – roughly around now, the world’s population is thought to be hitting the seven billion mark — is stirring some discussion.



In line with that milestone, the United Nations is highlighting the need to link the sustainability issue to fundamental problems like poverty and inequality. Currently, officials at the United Nations Foundation say, 215 million women lack access to quality reproductive health care and voluntary family planning.

And at the Aspen Institute’s annual environment forum last spring, the topic was front and center in panel discussions with titles like “What’s Good for Women Is Good for the Planet,’ which delved into how educating women and giving them access to contraception leads to a drop in births.

David Monsma, the executive director of the institute’s energy and environment program, said that a discussion started there on how efforts to rein in emissions and limit climate change could relate to family planning and human rights.” “It clearly is still a next step,” he said.