A paper published in Sustainable Development magazine calls for reducing the world population by 4 billion by the year 2200 in order to “achieve sustainability.” The magazine, according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, holds a “prestigious” 9.3 impact factor, placing it in the top tier of global environmental and (anti-) development publications.
Glancing through the paper is enough to catch a few typical hoaxes, such as the correlation between population growth and energy consumption, giving the impression of resource exhaustion. They of course turn reality upside down: it is not consumption, but production of energy that causes population growth, etc.
The authors suggest cutting the world population by half through “voluntary” methods, focusing on a 1.75 fertility rate by 2050. The strategy centers on expanding universal reproductive healthcare, enhancing education for girls, and promoting socioeconomic autonomy, while specifically rejecting forced measures. They mention success achieved by Iran, South Korea and Costa Rica in slashing fertility rates to below 2.
(As shown in the case of several European nations where fertility rates have collapsed to below 2, this tends to cause a collapse of society, which is unable to replace the working age section of the population and to sustain increased costs for the aging population. Authors of the study know or should know this).
Notable among the authors is a certain William Rees, who appears to be the same Canadian ecologist who co-created the concepts of “ecological footprint” and “carbon footprint.”
