A new study published in “Sustainable Development” asserts that we need to cut the population to 4 billion to save the planet, thereby treating humanity itself as a variable to be reduced.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
The latest example of Narrative Science has arrived dressed up as sober sustainability analysis: a paper that treats a smaller human population as the cleanest route to a cleaner planet.
It might sound like the evil plan of a nefarious villain, but scientists now say that we need to halve Earth’s population to save the planet.
Over the last 100 years, the world’s population has ballooned from less than two billion to 8.3 billion people.
However, researchers say our planet cannot sustain this explosive growth for much longer.
Now, in a proposal that will remind movie fans of Thanos’ plot in Avengers: Infinity War, scientists argue that the population needs to be ‘eased’ down to four billion by 2200.
However, rather than the instant destruction envisioned in that blockbuster hit, the scientists say that this could be managed as a gradual decline.
Scientists say we need to halve Earth’s population to just 4 billion to save the planet, per Daily Mail.
— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) August 3, 2026
That framing used in the paper, published in Sustainable Development, is exactly what makes this genre so dangerous, as it takes a contested worldview, wraps it in charts and jargon, and then presents a deeply ideological conclusion as though it were merely the inevitable product of “the data.”
Once you accept the premise that human beings are the problem to be managed, the rest of the argument becomes a tidy exercise in moral laundering, where coercion is replaced by “voluntary” language and demographic engineering is marketed as compassion.
“Achieve Sustainability by Easing Population to 4 Billion by 2200” argues that population growth is closely linked to biodiversity loss, emissions, pollution, resource depletion, and conflict, and proposes that global fertility rates fall to 1.75 by 2050 so the world population can ease back to about 4 billion by 2200.
The authors claim that the population reduction would improve habitat recovery, protect wild species, reduce CO2 emissions, ease pressure on freshwater and mineral resources, and reduce resource conflicts.
In this study, metrics of biodiversity, consumption, and pollution show extremely strong correlations when charted against human population size and its per capita impacts. We describe causal mechanisms for these correlations. Then, using available data, we show that slowing and gradually reversing population growth to ∼4 billion or less by 2200, while moderating per capita impacts, is the path toward sustainability. Among the benefits are habitat recovery and conservation of wild species, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, reduced conflict over resources, and the reduction of global poverty.
Shorter: All the world’s problems solved by getting rid of humanity. I will simply note that the lead author of this inanity, Mark Keegan, is affiliated with Columbia University Teachers College. Others are listed as working in “Urban Environment and Human Resources,” Philosophy, and the Department of Population Sciences.
Granted, these “experts” insist that this shift should be non-coercive and driven by education, women’s opportunities, and contraception access.
Instead, they believe it could largely be achieved by giving women family planning services and improving girls’ educational opportunities, especially in low-income countries where these privileges remain out of reach for many.
This isn’t necessarily a new argument, and there is some data to back this argument up. Once Iran started efforts to promote family planning, the fertility rate (the number of children each woman has) dropped from 4.08 in 1992 to 1.94 in 2001. In South Korea, it fell from 4.07 in 1972 to 1.93 in 1984. For Costa Rica, the decline was slower, but the trend remained the same, falling from 4.16 in 1972 to 1.98 in 2009.
None of this was achieved through coercive or manipulative means. It was achieved by improving reproductive health services and broadening education for girls.
“When women are free to decide how many children to have, fertility rates tend to fall toward replacement level or below, often rapidly,” the study authors write.
In other words, it presents population decline not as a warning sign but as a deliberately chosen path to a “pro-human” and pro-nature future, using a long-range projection to make that outcome seem both inevitable and desirable.
I would argue that we need fewer “experts” like this, and more engineers and inventors who will make it easier for humans to have as many children as we want by creating the tools and technologies that would allow more people to live in harmony with this planet…and the others we will be heading to in the near future.
I am very sorry to say I bought into this argument early on in my life. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to have a child and build a family. However, how many young, impressionable minds are being exposed to these charts, graphs, and pseudointellectual arguments, and making decisions that will lead to a childless future that, ultimately, they learn is devoid of joy and meaning?
Personally, I am heartened by the very strong response to this piece in social media.
— Alan McCright (@Alan_McCright) August 2, 2026
What is presented as neutral analysis is, in reality, a value-laden prescription that narrows the scope of acceptable solutions to one deeply consequential path.
A truly sustainable future should prioritize innovation, resilience, and human prosperity alongside environmental stewardship. “Trusted Science” should not treat humanity itself as a variable to be reduced.
If the goal is a livable planet, the answer lies in expanding our capacity to thrive within it, not shrinking the number of people allowed to try.
I’ve read somewhere that one could fit the entire word population on the surface of Lake Constance, Germany. That’s about half the surface of lake St. Clair (Michigan, Ontario). The idea that there are too many people on the planet is laughable. There are of course many populations in need of cheap available energy and better infrastructure, but to justify restricting their access to energy through Malthusian ideology is despicable.
Much of the world subsists on low tech agriculture.
Bring the 3rd world up to 1st world standards and food supply would explode.
In the US alone, millions of acres of farmland were allowed to go fallow over the last 100 years or so because they weren’t needed. Even as the US’s population was trippling.
This is an interesting area of statistical/scientific study.
When I was born the world population stood at 2.5 billion. Today in less than one lifetime it has more than tripled to 8+billion.
The demographic studies show the world population will peak this century somewhere between 9.5 billion and 11.5 billion. The world population will then fall dramatically to somewhere around 5 billion so pretty close to the target the anti human movement are looking for.
This century China’s population will fall to half its current 1.4 billion. Every developed nation is failing to reproduce in sufficient numbers to maintain todays native populations.
I have no anxiety about runaway populations, I do have concerns about overblown experts making fortunes out of a non issue.
Perhaps they will blame CO2 for overpopulation issues? We all know how good it is for growth.
I have been projecting for the past 20 years that world population would never attain 10 billion, and it seems I am on track to be correct. However if the renewable energy kick continues for the next 10 years population could begin to collapse world wide, due to lack of crop fertilizer, the fertilizer problem is already raising its head due to lack of NG distribution.
I forgot you can’t produce fertilizer with wind or solar; and they can’t produce the energy required to do it.
Well, you do understand that humans exhale CO2, so reducing the population helps achieve Net (nonsense) Zero.
Then again Net Zero has the ultimate goal of reducing the population to a few hundred. /saqrc
The worlds average fertility for 2026 is about 2.3 live birth’s per woman. It was 2.4 for 2025.
2.1 is considered replacement level.
We are less than a decade from peak human.
I studied the concept of the demographic transition in some detail. Prosperity automatically results in a reduction in fecundity. The population reduction and environmentalist adherents work against the natural process.
I think I am not overly cynical in suggesting that it is the need for victims that underlies their entire philosophy and gives them a sense of purpose.
Perhaps I am overly callous to suggest that if they truly think there are too many people, they are welcome to reduce that sum by one.
Warmed over Paul Ehrlich.
If only they’d warm up one of Paul Ehrlichs many population collapse/ humanity extinction predictions.
The problem is that that Paul Ehrlich never ever believed in them.
Otherwise he would have never come up with the depopulation plans
as an extinct humanity does not need population control for obvious reasons.
His doom&gloom scenarios disappeared in the same memory hole as the ice age he used to believe in.
Retrospectively all his(and others) ideas turned out to be Orwellian as prosperity, education
and access to cheap energy are the most efficient way in population reduction.
(Reach countries with cheap energy and increasing populations have pretty much 0 intellectual output )
And all three things are being deliberately destroyed in remarkable synchronicity since
the 1970ies including the education system (The deliberate dumbing down of America – Charlotte Iserbyte)
Capitalism is already reducing population just fine. Takes a lot to have mammals not wanting kids but this system does it.
Takes a lot to have mammals not wanting kids but this system does it.
And that system you refer to is climate alarmism, not capitalism or free markets.
Fundamentally it is education and its wilful use of IPCRESS – the Induction of Psychoneuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS – that is the cause…
“climate anxiety” is now also leading some couples in other parts of the world to decide against having children.
Julia Borges’ worries about climate change intensified during the first months of the pandemic, when she and others were in isolation, alone with their thoughts.
“I started to picture my city and my university under water,” says the 23-year-old agriculture and engineering student from Recife, on Brazil’s north-eastern coast.
“I started to have anxiety crises, to the point of thinking about giving up on my own life, because I didn’t know how to deal with it all.” Taking a course in climate leadership was little help – it only increased her feeling of responsibility for what was happening. She soon came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be right to have a child. – British Bolshevik Corporation
Covid used the same (movie)psycho-strategy .
Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot. All capitalists, not. Hitler NASIs, national socialist.
Beside being wrong about the nazi part, is this some kind of pavlovian reflex? Because it can’t be an answer to my post.
Read up on fascism.
It’s economic philosophy was that the private sector would be run by the public sector. Any company that failed to follow government diktats would be taken over completely by the government.
That’s socialism.
Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether the moronic posts like yours are from stupid people, the “woke again” indoctrinated government worshippers or paid propagandist trolls.
Could say the same about other posts here, beside the “woke” part – I know that has no meaning beside “everything I don’t like”.
I would add fossil fuel shills and russian propagandists (ThE wEsT is FailiNg, NO gO ZonEs, GermAny is BurnInG!!!111) to my list, tho.
Thanks for eliminating paid troll, but stupid and “woke again” have a lot in common. Do you still wear your COVID burka mask?
You are one lousy excuse of a human being.
Your favorite religion, Climate Apocalypse, has led me to have no grand children.
Thank you very much for denying me that.
Try not being a victim for a second.
Where I come from people have been shot for that kind of disrespect-messy, perhaps, and overdone at times, but it solves people like you with no manners, or class. Think about it.
Try not being a stool sample, troll.
Self awareness was never one of your strong points.
Not really.
The strongest predictors of falling birth rates are usually higher education levels (especially for women), lower child mortality, better healthcare and nutrition, urbanisation, and access to family planning.
As people become healthier, wealthier, and more educated, they generally choose to have fewer children. That’s the demographic transition we’ve seen across much of the world.
Capitalism creates wealth, socialism creates poverty.
The places with the most socialism have the lowest fertility rates.
Data is once again, not your friend.
100 years ago, there was much more capitalism in the world, and fertility rates were higher. Over the last 100 years socialism has become the new thing amongst those who lack the ability to think for themselves.
Over that time period, fertility rates have plummeted.
Seems like once again reality refutes what you want to believe.
I think the world would be a better place with 2 billion people, about the number when I was born.
I was disappointed when the Chinese dropped the one child policy
Oh well.
You think the world would be a better place with 2 billion people, but offer no rationale or evidence for what you think or even believe.
Attenborough thinks humans are a plague on the Earth, you make it sound like herpes.
Why should I offer a rationale? Well, here goes anyway.
I travelled through about half the countries of the world 50 years ago and have lived variously in Australia, Brazil, Bahrain, and Germany. But the UK is my home country.
Australia is the only one I would like to go back to. Not Sydney, maybe Hobart, maybe the outback where I worked on a mineral exploration site – where part of the movie Crocodile Dundee was later filmed – but we were a team of about a dozen in a hundred square miles by the banks of the South Alligator River.
All of the places I visited are more crowded and more aggro than they were.
Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan no thanks, interesting then, not now.
Brazil, lived in Rio for over a year; great fun, crowded then, and Brazil’s population has doubled from about 120m when I was there to some 240m now.
——-
What’s your rationale for thinking 8 billion people is better than 2 billion?
“Why should I offer a rationale? “ – altipueri
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it…” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, email to Warwick Hughes
My rationale is based on what the Earth can carry, and dense local urban concentrations have no bearing on that, there are large parts of the world yet to be inhabited. People will be back in Chernobyl before too long. The animals have showed the way
The vast majority of the world is pretty close to unpopulated, there are huge swath’s of the land that is completely unpopulated.
Your belief that there are too many people is merely your own delusion.
You had all these decades to become a leading example, a shining light to help the planet to go down to 2 billion – but you never did.
I wonder why?
As I wrote above: Prosperity,cheap energy and education are the way to bring numbers down – and it works way more effectively than the one child policy, as we can see in China.
And the real population goal is > 500 mio (40334400 to be precise) as carved into the Georgia Guidestones.
And people with the wealth to secretly carve and set up giant mono/multiliths ( there is a revised story for you ” a small group of LOYAL Americans ” )
mean what they say – and their last an most important commandment has ” Leave Room for Nature” been written down twice.
So your wish will be true.
And on top of that, from a pure crazy conspiracy perspective:
The very same Anomaly( 1: 4000 in this case)that shouldn’t be there that can be tracked down throughout history
be it the Russian Revolution, the Opium Wars, the end of the Ottoman Empire/young turks,
Cromwell, Free Masonery, Ukraines “Revolution” etc.etc.etc,
can be found on the stones.
Or as one of them recently admitted : ” We write the scripts,we are the producers and the directors. The world is our stage ! “
I have a suggestion. Why don’t you set a good example and personally start the trend.
Some people just hate the thought that there are people out there that they can’t control.
Better to get rid of the excess than worry that somebody may be doing something you disagree with.
More humans means more minds, which means greater progress for all of us.
We are nowhere near to what might be called the carrying capacity k
But then when one reads… (Ehrlich and Holdren 1971) you know it’s an April, May, June, July and August fool. As Ehrlich famously prophesied…
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, speech at the British Institute for Biology, Sep. 1971
How unright he was.
But I prefer a half empty bus train or plane to a full one.
And???
Define half of k What is your estimate?
Three down votes and no rationale or estimate offered.
A vow of silence?
Unlikely that the bus train or plane operator would agree
You don’t!
Why should a guy with your worldview prefer half empty trains/busses /planes.
As soon as this would be the case you’d cry for smaller busses,planes etc,
because of their inefficient use.
You realize that a half empty bus or train or plane doubles your “carbon footprint” making you a “climate criminal.”
If the buses and planes were routinely half empty, then half of them would be retired.
Your lack of knowledge regarding how the world works is astounding.
In fairness, Strat, the way the UK has been heading over the last few decades, it’s just the year that seems out. It’s like our politicians and the so-called environmentalists are determined to make his wet dream come true.
The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source” covered this story in 2012:
Scientists: ‘Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?’ – The Onion
Population Reduction has always been the “Final Solution” of the radical environmental crowd.
Dropping birth rates come with its own set of complications and problems for societies that experience/encourage it. Western Europe? Japan? Bueller? Bueller?
Population Matters (AKA The Optimum Trust – Attenborough, Patron Saint) produced a spreadsheet showing where the cull was to start: link to spreadsheet
Thanks to both the unintended consequences of China’s one child population (IE many girl babies were aborted), and it’s now dropping total population, China is in for a very serious demographic crisis in a few years.
It won’t be long until there are not enough young people available to both fill out their armed forces, and take care of the elderly at the same time.
“The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are f…ed.”
George Carlin
Make a promising start by 86-ing the authors?
The same crowd constantly tell us we have to “reduce” the number of people on the planet, yet they refuse to remove themselves. Imagine that, they want to kill off other people. I seem to remember other groups espousing this ideology.
No, they want to lower the birth rate. The ones that want you to die are the ones waging never ending wars for oil in the middle east and those who enrich themselves on the cost of the working class like musk, bezos and trump.
As I said upstream:
The strongest predictors of falling birth rates are usually higher education levels (especially for women), lower child mortality, better healthcare and nutrition, urbanisation, and access to family planning.
As people become healthier, wealthier, and more educated, they generally choose to have fewer children. That’s the demographic transition we’ve seen across much of the world.
By plunging the world into your utopian wet dream, making us poorer, while subjugating developing countries with your eco-colonialism, you’re raising birth rates.
You are lying. Leftists want to kill off people, they tell us so every single day. You lying about that fact puts you on their side.
He’s not lying, he’s just so indoctrinated that he is no longer capable of entertaining any thought that is not party approved.
You are correct! He is lying.
And yet again, the socialist declares that the only way to get rich is by making others poor.
The fact is that thanks to people like Musk, Bezos, Trump, Gates, Koch brothers, etc. Everybody is richer.
Capitalism creates wealth while socialism destroys it.
When/if the population becomes unsustainable if will take care of itself. No need to artificially control something that is naturally regulated.
Aug 7th 1945 was the day a new bomb got the world’s attention; Nov 2nd 2016 was another bomb that got the worlds attention.
the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908,
No need for a plan, it’s already accomplished;
“Approximately 71% of the global population resides in countries where the total fertility rate (TFR) is below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman, with over 60 countries currently experiencing population decline.”
Even in places that are still above replacement rate births, like Africa, birth rates have been falling for years and will before long be below replacement levels also.
Reducing population by culling out the young only. Soon the new “Global Crisis” will be how to support an aging population with a collapsing youth cohort.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/which-countries-have-fertility-rates-above-or-below-the-replacement-level
In Japan, they are already working on creating robots to help take care of the elderly.
Including a “Human Washing Machine” that’s already in use in some nursing homes.
https://people.com/all-about-japan-s-new-human-washing-machine-that-costs-usd385k-11866990
The area of the planet affected by the human population is miniscule. Having travelled all over the world it is obvious that this gospel by the Church of Climate works on the clowns that have never left a city.
When the human population was 3 billion we were told it should be reduced to 1 billion. If the population was 20 billion we would be told to reduce it to 8 billion. And 8 billion it is.
Many in history have felt the correct number of humans on the planet is one. Sitting in rush hour traffic I feel the same.
Nothing new . See the link to the The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement at https://www.cosy.com/Liberty.htm#Links .
And yet they are still alive
[“Scientists say we need to halve Earth’s population to just 4 billion to save the planet.“]
OK, they are scientists, so they know what they are talking about …
So let’s start with reducing them & all the politicians & media influencers; You’ll find that all the unprecedented existential catastrophes, emergencies & crises will rapidly disappear & we can get on with life.
Humans have never been as well fed and long lived as they are today. Take away oil and 90% of the humans on the planet would be dead of starvation within a year.
That’s the goal
The planet could easily accommodate 50 billion, but not to worry, population will peak and begin to decline in coming decades even without climate catastrophists prattling.
Looking at current world fertility rates, peak human is less than a decade away.
Why not just shoot for 500 million as espoused in The Population Bomb, Paul R. and Anna H. Ehrlich, 1968 based on a widely spread pamphlet The Population Bomb is Everyone’s Baby issued in 1954. Ehrlich later revised the limits to 1.0 to 1.5 billion.
So let’s scare the shit out of more people. Sheesh.
“Ease.” They like using that word.
This quote seems to apply.
— “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” — Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations.
Speaking for most ordinary people, I declare that my existence is none of the business of anybody else and should someone try to get rid of me they will be resisted with minimum necessary force, which includes lethal force should anything less fail to deter the attempt.
Your existence would become my business should you be starving or in pain or suffering or lost or otherwise in distress and it came to my immediate attention and receive the maximum necessary aid within my means.
There have and always will be incels and old maids, the barren and the impotent and only some of each generation have offspring going into the future.
Every species has the capacity to reproduce and fill the entire earth and there are limiting conditions on every species which prevents that from happening.
And those conditions for life existed long before there was a single human being on the planet.
Hear, hear for the humanity of this man-who would do less and call himself a man?