One of the self-appointed goals of Demography Is Destiny is highlighting loopy anti-human predictions for posterity. Most of them come from the UK, God bless the Brits, but lately I’ve found a few in the US as well. This one comes an Earth Day message from the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse, New York. Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, they say, followed closely by climate change and sustainable energy.

"Overpopulation is the only problem," said Dr Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist who studies the Adirondacks. "If we had 100 million people on Earth or better, 10 million, -- no others would be a problem." (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.) He has made his own commitment and has decided not to have any children.

The ESF scientists aver that they love people to death, but there ought to be a lot fewer of them. "Individuals are the ones that are associated with producing various pollutants and the more individuals there are, the more pollutants there are," says Dr Myron Mitchell.

Dr Hall insists, "I’d wouldn’t go out and kill anybody. That’s not the point. Let’s look at what the problem is." And the problem needs a drastic solution: population control, a bit shop-soiled maybe after scandals in the 70s and 80s, but still the only sharp knife in the drawer.

"It has to be a central issue regarding any type of environmental aspects of controlling pollution and climate change. Population control has to be part of the solution," Dr Mitchell told North Country Public Radio.

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