The neo-Malthusian population-control zealots are at it again, claiming in a new taxpayer-funded “study” that the human population must be slashed by 50 percent to ensure “sustainable development” in line with the United Nations’ vision. Those who remain will have to learn to live with a much lower standard of living, the authors add.
The latest call for mass depopulation and enforced poverty echoes longtime fearmongering by multiple UN agencies and the broader globalist movement. Not surprisingly, the study was published in an influential pseudo-scientific journal dedicated, by its own admission, to advancing the UN’s deeply controversial 2030 Agenda “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs).
The team of self-styled academics from major universities around the world, including some from America, argue in the new paper that the number of people should be reduced to about four billion — all for “sustainability.” The current population is around eight billion. In other words, the authors are calling for cutting the population by half or more.
While the absolute number of people on Earth is expected to rise for a little longer, virtually every serious demographer recognizes that humanity is heading for a catastrophic demographic collapse — starting in the near future. Nations such as China, Japan, and South Korea are already well on their way. Western nations in Europe and North America are not far behind.
The Study Itself
The new study, titled “Achieve Sustainability by Easing Population to 4 Billion by 2200,” was published in the August issue of the journal Sustainable Development. It argues that population growth itself is the cause of the real and alleged ills supposedly afflicting nature and the planet.
For instance, the authors claim the mere fact that eight billion people exist is the primary driver of “climate change,” environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, rising emissions, resource depletion, and pollution. Decreasing the population while reining in consumption of those who remain is “the path toward sustainability,” they promise.
The supposed benefits of this include habitat recovery, reduced conflict and war, and even poverty alleviation. In reality, though, liberty, property rights, traditional morality, and free markets have been far more effective at protecting the environment and reducing poverty. Compare Switzerland to North Korea, Zimbabwe to Japan, or New Zealand to Cuba, and the facts become clear.
Reducing People and Prosperity
And yet, the population-control zealots behind the paper insist that depopulation and lower living standards are the key to saving the planet. “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,” the paper states.
“Global environmental problems are caused by people, nothing else,” continue the neo-Malthusian activists, echoing pronouncements by Rockefeller-funded totalitarians going back decades. “The more of us there are, the greater our overall economic demands and the greater the associated environmental problems.”
The paper further claims that “in the long run, population growth itself is unsustainable.” Almost no attention is given to the many concerns raised by experts about a declining population: less innovation, strained systems to care for a growing elderly population, economic stagnation, implosion of real-estate markets, and more.
The authors recommend a wide range of government programs and incentives to help continue reducing fertility even further below replacement levels than those currently wreaking havoc on nations worldwide. The measures include “reproductive health services” (code for abortion, sterilization, and contraception), “education” for girls (read: indoctrination), and more.
But critics, including those from LifeSiteNews, note that the study largely ignores the already unfolding demographic collapse in much of the developed world and beyond. In fact, across most of the world, fertility rates have already fallen well below replacement levels. Around the globe, populations are projected to plummet rapidly.
On the prosperity front, the authors call for placing even more restrictions on consumption, land use, energy, human emissions of CO2 (known as the gas of life), and much more. Even more alarming, the paper promotes the notion of “resource quotas” to limit production, consumption, and economic activity.
“Ever-growing wealth and consumption are not ecologically sustainable, and the sooner our societies grapple with this inconvenient truth, the better,” the authors write. (It is not immediately clear if they would be willing to sacrifice some of their bloated taxpayer-funded salaries for the cause.)
Other Depopulationists Agree
The new paper draws on data from 1970-2020 showing supposed correlations between population size and metrics such as CO2 emissions, energy use, ecological “footprint,” freshwater consumption, mineral extraction, and plastic production. Using climate change-style “projections,” the paper predicts catastrophic outcomes unless their demands are met.
Just a few months ago, another, similar paper published in Environmental Research Letters also concluded that there were too many humans. In fact, the authors of that paper claimed the number of people had already surpassed the planet’s “sustainable carrying capacity.” As such, they said, it is time for drastic measures.
This paper called for a population reduction of almost two-thirds. “The truly sustainable population is much lower and closer to what the world supported in the mid-twentieth century,” argued lead author Corey Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology at Australia’s Flinders University.
“Our calculations show a sustainable global population closer to about 2.5 billion people if everyone were to live within ecological limits and comfortable, economically secure living standards,” he continued. “Earth cannot keep up with the way in which we are using resources. It cannot support even today’s demand without major changes.”
UN-backed Population Control
The fearmongering from this team of scientists is not fringe academic speculation. In fact, it fits seamlessly into the long-running agenda of the UN and its allies in the globalist establishment.
As The New American has been documenting for years, the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals — explicitly labeled a “master plan for humanity” by top UN officials — embed population and consumption controls under the banner of “sustainability.” Goal after goal demands transformation of production, consumption, education, and governance.
Education Goal 4, for instance, requires that “all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development,” including “sustainable lifestyles,” “global citizenship,” and related ideologies. In short, children must be trained not merely to accept the regime, but to advance it.
And that is exactly what the UN is working toward as it targets the next generation for heavy indoctrination. One early tool was the children’s book Rescue Mission: Planet Earth — A Children’s Edition of Agenda 21. The volume, published by the UN, bombards young readers with sustainable-development propaganda.
One page even depicts storks carrying babies while pagan “gods” look troubled. “The planet groans every time it registers another birth,” reads the adjacent page in this book used to peddle depopulation ideology to children worldwide.
The message is clear: Human life itself is a burden on the Earth. Agenda 21 and its successor, Agenda 2030, make education central precisely because adults who value liberty, family, and national sovereignty would reject the full program of centralized control, wealth redistribution, and population management. Children, by contrast, can be molded into “critical agents of change,” as the 2030 Agenda calls them.
The History of Depopulation Zealotry
This UN-backed, anti-human ideology traces back to older, thoroughly discredited theories. Thomas Malthus’ 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population claimed population grows geometrically while food supply grows only arithmetically, condemning humanity to inevitable misery, famine, and checks by war, disease, and poverty.
Of course, reality refuted him. Human ingenuity, technological advances, and free markets produced abundance that far outpaced population growth, lifting billions out of poverty. Yet the Malthusian foolishness never died. It was repackaged by the Club of Rome, whose 1972 Limits to Growth used computer models to predict resource exhaustion and collapse if growth continued.
Like the “climate” predictions going back to the 1970s, those forecasts failed spectacularly—resources became more abundant and cheaper, living standards soared, and prosperity became far more widespread. But the Club of Rome’s influence and dogma endured.
In its 1991 report The First Global Revolution, the group candidly admitted seeking a new enemy to unite the world: “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.” That meant humanity itself was the real “enemy,” the Club of Rome declared. (One of the authors of the new study has long been involved with the group.)
Then-President Barack Obama’s “Science Czar” John Holdren provided one of the most chilling modern expressions of this mindset. In the 1977 textbook Ecoscience, co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren called for a “planetary regime” with a global police force to control resources and population.
Even more outrageous, the book contemplated compulsory abortions, forced sterilization (including via sterilizing agents in the water supply), and other coercive measures, at least if the “population crisis” became severe enough. Holdren thought these could be implemented in the United States without even seeking a constitutional amendment.
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society,” the authors said.
Obama’s “Ebola Czar” Ron Klain, meanwhile, a Big Pharma lobbyist, was quoted publicly claiming that overpopulation was the top challenge facing the world. Indeed, the administration and many of its big supporters, including billionaire population-control extremist Bill Gates, have made similar public statements.
Open Calls at the UN & Beyond—Funded by YOU!
The New American has been exposing the UN and its allies’ efforts to slash the number of people for decades. From helping to fund coercive population control in India and even forced abortions in Communist China, to lavishing tax money on depopulationist forces worldwide, the U.S. government and the UN have been brazen.