For the past few years, I have been the holder of a Chair at Ghent University dedicated in honour of Etienne Vermeersch, a Belgian philosopher renowned for many things but perhaps most notably for his early warnings about overpopulation and his advocacy for birth control. A few years before his untimely death in 2019, he expressed his “despair” at his failure to convince our political leaders to take overpopulation seriously.
Etienne was an intellectual hero of mine for whom I have huge respect, but this is the only thing about which he was dead wrong. Because there is no problem of overpopulation. In fact, before long, we will have to start worrying about underpopulation, caused by rapidly falling birth rates. It turns out that this is bad news not only for humanity but also for the planet, because more humans means more available resources and less destructive impact on nature.
Come again? More humans means more available resources? No, that’s not a typo.
Choose life.