Human overpopulation is one of the biggest myths we keep needing to debunk. The reason is because this belief has an insidious effect, in some cases leading to profound acts of evil.
overpopulation
Several years ago, when I first became a science communicator, I was giving a talk in Seattle about GMOs.
There's been much hand-wringing (and flat-out denial) in some circles about the demographic crisis facing Japan and several European countries. The citizens of both aren't having enough children to replace themselves.
We aren't the sort of organization that likes to say, "We told you so." Okay, that was a lie. We totally are.
Being the richest person in the world certainly does not guarantee being the most informed. Consider Jeff Bezos.
Conventional wisdom tells us that there are too many humans on this planet. But the data disagree.
A "Kinsley gaffe" -- named after political commentator Michael Kinsley who elaborated on the subject -- is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
Do you see yourself as a worthless cockroach contributing to the collapse of human civilization? Probably not, but Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich thinks precisely that about you.
I can’t just say happy birthday to this book — after all it’s pretty much anti-birth. But that’s what the book really was — an early harbinger of the many scares put out by this group or that.