Many prominent individuals have expressed concern about population.
Sir David Attenborough, naturalist and broadcaster, Population Matters Patron (born 1926)
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people.”
“I support Population Matters because I think if we keep on growing, we’re not only going to damage nature, but we’re likely to see more and more inequality and human suffering.”
“One thing you can say is that in places where women are in charge of their bodies, where they have the vote, where they are allowed to dictate what they do and what they want, whether it’s proper medical facilities for birth control, the birth rate falls.”
“The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrolled way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us.”
“As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.”
“Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.”
Dame Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist, Population Matters Patron (born 1934)
“Educating and empowering women and girls and providing family planning information enables more people to choose the size of their families. These are the kind of positive actions governments can take, and must take if we’re to address the biodiversity loss we’re facing.”
“It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”
“This organisation, Population Matters, is so very important, because this is one of the most important issues that we face today. We can’t go on like this, we can’t push human population growth under the carpet. It’s been shown all around the world that as women’s education improves, family size tends to drop. I would encourage every single conservation organisation, every single government organisation, to consider the absurdity of unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources.”
“The climate crisis that now threatens life on Earth as we know it results from a combination of different human activities, including the pollution of land, air and water, our reckless burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of forests, extreme poverty, and the unsustainable life styles of so many of us. And all of this is impacted by the relentless growth of human populations and their livestock. Educating and empowering women and girls and providing family planning information enables more people to choose the size of their families. And choosing to have fewer children is one of the most important choices we can make.”
Chris Packham, naturalist and broadcaster, Population Matters Patron (born 1961)
“There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other — namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.”
“I support Population Matters because they’re the only people pointing out the obvious link between ever more people and ever less wildlife.”
E.O. Wilson, entomologist and conservationist (1929-2021)
“We are in a bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption that could push half of Earth’s species to extinction in this century.”
“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical concept.”
Wendo Aszed, Founder, Dandelion Africa
“Kenya is becoming a desert. There’s pressure on the environment because we use charcoal and firewood. The larger the family, the more it consumes. There’s no provision to plant trees because trees cost money. If nothing is done soon there won’t be any resources left. Communities are beginning to realise that it’s better for the eco-system around them if they have smaller families.”
Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and science communicator (1934-1996)
“Our job is to bring about a worldwide demographic transition and flatten out that exponential curve—by eliminating grinding poverty, making safe and effective birth control methods widely available, and extending real political power (executive, legislative, judicial, military, and in institutions influencing public opinion) to women. If we fail, some other process, less under out control, will do it for us.”
Jacques Cousteau, ocean explorer and conservationist (1910-1997)
“We must alert and organise the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises — exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”
Ashley Judd, actor and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador (born 1968)
“If we invest in girls and women, the world and all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals will advance forward rapidly as a result.”
“I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our ‘own’ babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again.”
Paul Hawken, Founder, Project Drawdown
“Educating girls lays a foundation for vibrant lives for girls and women, their families, and their communities. It is also one of the most powerful levers available for avoiding emissions by curbing population growth.”
Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (born 1997)
“When girls are educated and when they stay in schools, they get married later in their lives, then they have less children and that helps us to reduce the impacts of climate change that the population increase brings.”
Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan climate activist (born 1996)
“Girls who have been to school grow up to be empowered women. They are not forced into early marriage, and they tend to have healthier, smaller families, reducing emissions well into the future.”
Bella Lack, youth ambassador for Born Free Foundation and Jane Goodall Institute (born 2002)
“We keep being fed the idea that somehow population and consumption can keep expanding without any consequences. They can’t. As population grows, the pressure on our planet is heightened. One of the many changes needed to give my generation a chance of a healthy future is for people to recognise that choosing to have fewer children helps relieve that pressure. We should and must be talking about population and family size.”
Adrian Hayes, polar explorer and adventurer, Population Matters Patron (born 1957) “I’ve seen melting ice caps with my own eyes and got very wet in the process, but it is pointless campaigning against climate change or to ‘save the Arctic’ without addressing the root cause behind it and virtually every other environmental issue we face: our unsustainable numbers on this planet. That is the real ‘inconvenient truth’.”
Norman Borlaug, scientist and “father” of the Green Revolution (1914-2009)
“The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only…Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the ‘Population Monster’.”
“There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.”
Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)
“Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the well-being of many people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet of ours.”
Martin Luther King Jr, clergyman and activist (1929-1968)
“Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.”
Aisha Khan, Chief Executive, Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change
“Reducing the population growth rate should be our first priority as no other programme, policy or initiative will produce results without managing the numbers.”
Michael Palin, English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter
“In all the global-warming figures I’ve seen since COP26, one stands out. In 1943, when I was born, the Earth’s population was 2.3 billion. Now it is nudging eight billion. That’s all you need to know about the causes of global warming. To satisfy this massive, unprecedented growth, we’re taking the place apart.”
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General (1938-2018)
“The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”
“Population stabilisation should become a priority for sustainable development, including a strong focus on the empowerment of women and girls.”
“The principle of contraction and convergence with a population base year should provide the basic framework for global greenhouse gas emission reductions.”
“…reproductive health (is) one of the key tools in the wider battle against poverty.”
Paul Ehrlich, biologist and author, Population Matters Patron (born 1932)
“Saying “it’s only consumption, it’s not the number of people that counts” is like saying “the area of a rectangle is determined only by its width, not by its length”. Certainly, consumption is a big problem. So is population size. The two multiply together to give you your impact on your life support systems.”
“A lot of people think the population problem is too many Indians or too many people in Africa, and so on. Actually, it’s too many people in the United States to start out with. You and I consume much more than the average person in Africa or the average person in India.”
“Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.”
“Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality. But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.”
“Basically, then, there are only two kinds of solutions to the population problem. One is a ‘birth rate solution,’ in which we find ways to lower the birth rate. The other is a ‘death rate solution,’ in which ways to raise the death rate — war, famine, pestilence — find us.”
“Each person we add now disproportionately impacts on the environment and life-support systems of the planet.”
Gordon Buchanan, wildlife filmmaker, Population Matters Patron (born 1972)
“I’ve travelled the globe documenting the most magnificent natural spectacles the world has to offer. But my decades-long career has shown me first-hand how the pressures on the natural world have changed. These pressures are driven by humankind’s growing population.”
Jane Fonda, actor and activist (born 1937)
“There’s lots to worry about these days but you know what worries me most: the news I read day before yesterday that by something like 2045 there will be 10 billion people on the planet — or more! I’m scared. I’ll be gone but I am scared for my grandchildren and for the wild animals and for the whole human race.”
Stephen Hawking, physicist (1942-2018)
“In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9 per cent per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.”
“Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding; they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased by eight per cent over the past five years.”
“Our planet and the human race face multiple challenges. These challenges are global and serious — climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.”
Emma Woods, UK Royal Society, Head of Policy, Wellbeing
“When it comes to tackling climate change and extreme weather, we ignore population at our peril.”
Professor Norman Myers, environmentalist (1934-2019)
“Many children face a prospect of a world which has been devastated of its forest cover and lost many of its species. Would it not be worthwhile to reinforce that enormous investment in the future, that grand gesture of hope in the future by chipping in just a little bit more, that one penny per day for family planning facilities? To insure that our children inherit a world worth living in. A world where population growth has been slowed to zero, with equity and fairness for all citizens on this planet, and where our environments are safeguarded and restored.”
James Lovelock, scientist and environmentalist (1919-2022)
“Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.”
Morgan Freeman, actor (born 1937)
“We have seven billion people on this planet. It’s not that there’s not enough room on this planet for seven billion people, it’s that the energy needs for seven billion people are seven billion people’s worth of energy needs, as opposed to, say, two billion. Imagine how much pollution would be in the air and the oceans if there were only two billion people putting it in? So yeah, we’re already overpopulated.”
Sir Peter Scott, Founder, WWF (1909-1989)
“If the human population of the world continues to increase at its current rate, there will soon be no room for either wild life or wild places…But I believe that sooner or later man will learn to limit his overpopulation. Then he will be much more concerned with optimum rather than maximum, quality rather than quantity, and will recover the need within himself for contact with wilderness and wild nature.”
“You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms.”
Sir Crispin Tickell, environmentalist, former Population Matters Patron (1930-2022)
“Population was a big issue about 30 years ago, now it’s not, but I suspect it will come back because it has to be discussed as one of the big environmental problems of our time, it’s one animal species out of control, and the awful thing is that if we don’t control it then Mother Nature will do it for us.”
Professor Aubrey Manning, zoologist (1930-2019)
“Looking across the world at the present time it is obvious to anybody at all who has even the slightest bit of biological knowledge that human numbers are already out of balance.”
Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, economist, Population Matters Patron (born 1942)
“Population growth, poverty and degradation of local resources often fuel one another.”
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama (born 1935)
“One of the great challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we are able to tackle this issue effectively we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this Earth.”
“The growth in population is very much bound up with poverty, and in turn poverty plunders the Earth. When human groups are dying of hunger, they eat everything: grass, insects, everything. They cut down the trees, they leave the land dry and bare. All other concerns vanish. That’s why in the next 30 years the problems we call ‘environmental’ will be the hardest that humanity has to face.”
Malcolm Potts, human reproductive scientist, Population Matters Patron (born 1935)
“Rapid population growth is at the center of many of the world’s pressing environmental, economic and security problems.”
“Without a significant slowing of population growth we face irreversible degradation of the natural environment and continued poverty for much of the world.”
Margaret Atwood, author (born 1939)
“The world is finite. For everybody in the world to have the same lifestyle that we [in the West] have now, at only six billion people, would take four additional Earths [in resources].”
Susan Hampshire, actor, Population Matters Patron (born 1937)
“It’s been so obvious to me for so long that cramming ever more people onto our little planet does it ever more damage — I can not understand why so many people find this so hard to grasp, and why so many Governments ignore it.”
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, former UN Under-Secretary-General (born 1946)
“We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”
Al Gore, former US Vice President (born 1948)
“Population growth is straining the Earth’s resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.”
“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children… You have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”
Cameron Diaz, actor (born 1972)
“I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”
Lily Cole, model and actor (born 1987)
“It is not feasible to expect a finite planet to support infinite growth. I am most inspired by efforts to improve sex education and contraceptive availability so women have more choice. I believe women have the right to have more children if they wish but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to better understand this issue.”
Blur, band (formed 1988)
“There are too many of us. That’s plain to see.”
Sara Parkin, activist and politician, Population Matters Patron (born 1946)
“…as the soaring demand for food, water and energy is exacerbated by climate change, it is no longer legitimate to leave policies for lowering birth rates off the policy agenda.”
Rex Weyler, Greenpeace Co-Founder (born 1947)
“The wealthy nations and wealthy consumers have, of course, the greatest impact, but sheer numbers do count. There are ways that we can stabilize human population without unpleasantly imposed restrictions, namely with universal women’s rights, education and available contraception.”
Jeremy Irons, actor (born 1948)
“One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable.”
Dr Muhtari Aminu-Kano, Director-General, Nigerian Conservation Foundation
“We should be talking about population and we should be talking about consumption that goes with population. It is true, the average Nigerian, as a single person, does less damage than the average American, British, European or Russian, or any of the others, but then a lot of us do a lot of damage as well. I think it is not ‘either or’, it’s ‘and with’. It’s not a binary issue, really.”
Stasinos, poet (776-580 BC)
“There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed Earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing Earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.”
Confucius, philosopher (551-479)
“Excessive (population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”
Aristotle, philosopher (384-322)
“One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property…The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of both revolution and crime.”
Tertullian, writer and theologian (160-220)
“The strongest witness is the vast population of the Earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs.”
Nicolas Machiavelli, political theorist and philosopher (1469-1527)
“When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere… the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways (floods, plague and famine).”
Richard Hakluyt, writer (1527-1616)
“Through our long peace and seldom sickness…we are grown more populous than ever heretofore…many thousands of idle persons are within this realm, which, having no way to be sett on work, be either mutinous and seek alteration in the state, or at least very burdensome to the commonwealth.”
Otto Diederich Lutken, clergyman and economist (1719-1790)
“Since the circumference of the globe is given and does not expand with the increased number of its inhabitants, and as travel to other planets thought to be inhabitable has not yet been invented; since the Earth’s fertility cannot be extended beyond a given point, and since human nature will presumably remain unchanged, so that a given number will hereafter require the same quantity of the fruits of the Earth for their support now, and as their rations cannot be arbitrarily reduced, it follows that the proposition “that the world’s inhabitants will be happier, the greater the number” cannot be maintained, for as soon as the number exceeds that which our planet with all its wealth of land and water can support, they must needs starve one another out, not to mention other necessarily attendant inconveniences, to wit, a lack of the other comforts of life, wool, flax, timber, fuel, and so on. But the wise Creator who commanded men in the beginning to be fruitful and multiply, did not intend, since He set limits to their habitants and sustenance, that multiplication should continue without limit.”
Hong Liangji, philosopher (1746-1809)
“Speaking of households, the number of which … there are 20 times more than a hundred years ago … Some people may propose that there would be wild land to cultivate and spare space for housing. But they can only be doubled or tripled, or at most increased five times, whereas the population at the same time could be ten to twenty times larger. Therefore housing and crop fields tend to be in scarcity, while the population tends to be excessive at all time. Given the fact that some households become monopolists, there is no wonder that so many have suffered cold and hunger and even died here and there … How does Heaven deal with the tension? Flood, drought, and pestilence are the means of Heaven to temper the problem.”
James Madison US President 1801-1809 (1751-1836)
“What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, first, destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedaemonians; or, second, it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or, third, it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or fourth, it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer (1803-1882)
“If government knew how, I should like to see it check — not multiply — the population.”
John Stuart Mill, philosopher (1806-1873)
“There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase in population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of cooperation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population, may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character, and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the Earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.”
John D. Rockefeller, business magnate (1839-1937)
“The population problem must be recognized by government as a principal element in long-range planning.”
Bertrand Russell, philosopher (l1872-1970)
“The one real remedy is birth control — that is getting the people of the world to limit themselves to those numbers which they can keep upon their own soil.”
Max Born, physicist (1882-1970)
“Science and technology will then follow their tendency to rapid expansion in an exponential fashion, until saturation sets in. But that does not necessarily imply an increase of wealth, still less of happiness, as long as the number of people increases at the same rate, and with it their need for food and energy. At this point, the technological problems of the atom touch social problems, such as birth control and the just distribution of goods. There will be hard fighting about these problems…”
Helen Keller, author, activist and lecturer (1880-1968)
“Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.”
Jawaharlal Nehru, former Indian Prime Minister (1889-1964)
“Some of these (Asian) countries, like India, far from needing a bigger population, would be better off with fewer people.”
Frederick Osborn, philanthropist (1889-1981)
“The process of industrialization should of itself reduce the birth rate if we are to judge by Western experience. But Asia cannot afford the time this transition took in the West.”
Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)
“This is the force which in general terms can be called overpopulation, the mounting pressure of population pressing upon existing resources. This, of course, is an extraordinary thing; something is happening which has never happened in the world’s history before. I mean, let’s just take a simple fact that between the time of birth of Christ and the landing of the Mayflower, the population of the Earth doubled. It rose from 250 million to probably 500 million. Today, the population of the Earth is rising at such a rate that it will double in half a century.”
Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)
“There is no denying that the accelerated rate of population growth brings many added difficulties to the problems of development where the size of the population grows more rapidly than the quantity of available resources to such a degree that things seem to have reached an impasse. In such circumstances people are inclined to apply drastic remedies to reduce the birth rate. There is no doubt that public authorities can intervene in this matter, within the bounds of their competence. They can instruct citizens on this subject and adopt appropriate measures, so long as these are in conformity with the dictates of the moral law and the rightful freedom of married couples is preserved completely intact. When the inalienable right of marriage and of procreation is taken away, so is human dignity. Finally, it is for parents to take a thorough look at the matter and decide upon the number of their children. This is an obligation they take upon themselves, before their children already born, and before the community to which they belong — following the dictates of their own consciences informed by God’s law authentically interpreted, and bolstered by their trust in Him.”
Lyndon B. Johnson, former US President (1908-1973)
“The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman and each nation must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.”
U Thant, former UN Secretary-General (1909-1974)
“The problem of the growing food shortage cannot be solved without in many cases a simultaneous effort to moderate population growth.”
Kenneth Boulding, economist and President Kennedy’s Environmental Advisor (1910-1993)
“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist.”
Arne Ness, philosopher (1912-2009)
“The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.”
Richard M. Nixon, former US President (1913-1994)
“One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population.”
Robert McNamara, former President of World Bank (1916-2009)
“Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue we face. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.”
Christian de Duve, biologist (1917-2013)
“We’ve come to use all the resources that are available for our use on the planet…we have to do something about population control, if possible, by birth control.”
Spike Milligan, comedian (1918-2002)
“Overpopulation is a serious issue. The human race will soon have to get used to 12 in a room.”
Pete Seeger, musician (1919-2014)
“The world’s only so big. If that’s true, doesn’t it follow that the human race is far bigger than it should be? Some things are so big, like this population problem, that the best way to tackle them is in small ways. I can sing a song about overpopulation and maybe touch one or two people at a time with it.”
Digby McLaren, geologist (1919-2004)
“If an unseen intelligent being from somewhere else in our galaxy were to visit the Earth, perhaps the most incomprehensible phenomenon it could observe would be that the planet’s apparently wise and competent dominant beings are totally ignorant of the life-support system they are destined to live within. They are, furthermore, unaware that their uncontrolled reproductive capacity has grown to the extent that it is rapidly destroying this system, while they fight among themselves to preserve their freedom to do so.”
Isaac Asimov, author (1920-1992)
“…democracy can not survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.”
“Which is the greater danger — nuclear warfare or the population explosion? The latter absolutely! To bring about nuclear war, someone has to do something; someone has to press a button. To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values-there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally — and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
“The more people there are, the more food we need, the more space we occupy, the more resources and consumer goods we wish to have and the more development has to take place in order to employ the extra population. (…) Who is going to be the first to face up to the need for self-restraint in the number of children brought into the world?”
James P. Grant, former UNICEF Executive Director (1922-1995)
“Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.”
Professor Albert Bartlett, physicist (1923-2013)
“Can you think of any problem on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?”
Gore Vidal, writer (1925-2012)
“Think of the Earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every 40 years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”
Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)
“One must remember that (St. Vincent’s) resources are finite and cannot accommodate indefinite population growth. Families must plan their families just as the Government has to plan the Nation’s development. There can be no long-term stability when the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of job creation.”
Henry Way Kendall, physicist (1926-1999)
“If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in the next one or two decades, then nature will do it for us in the most brutal way, whether we like it or not.”
“The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world’s population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.”
“We must…guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”
Gunther Grass, author (1927-2015)
“We already have all of the statistics we need for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification and so on. The future is already in place.”
Maurice Strong, former UN Under-Secretary-General (1929-2015)
“Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”
Karan Singh, politician (born 1931)
“In 1974, I led the Indian delegation to the World Population Conference in Bucharest, where my statement that ‘development is the best contraceptive’ became widely known and oft quoted. I must admit that 20 years later I am inclined to reverse this, and my position now is that ‘contraception is the best development’.”
Baroness Shreela Flather, politician (born 1934)
“With the global population reaching the milestone of seven billion, population size is starting to get the attention it deserves. One of the most effective contributions to solving these problems would be to enable women worldwide to decide their own family size and timing through funding universal access to family planning and through enabling them to exercise their social and economic rights.”
Lester R. Brown, environmentalist (born 1934)
“Our numbers expand, but Earth’s natural systems do not.”
Gloria Steinem, feminist, journalist and activist (born 1934)
“Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”
George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1935)
“The overpopulation of this small island nation, already stricken with a mountain of debt that could blight generations, is the gravest crisis we face.”
Pope Francis (born 1936)
“Some people think that — excuse my expression here — that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No. Parenthood is about being responsible. This is clear.”
Marvin Gaye, musician (1939-1984)
“What about this overcrowded land? How much more abuse from man can she stand?”
Sir David King, UK Special Representative for Climate Change (born 1939)
“The prospect of nine billion people is a very big challenge. Basically today we are using the natural resources of the planet at a rate faster than they’re being replenished.”
“The massive growth of the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor.”
Michael Palin, comedian (born 1943)
“The greatest politically charged challenge facing our planet? Unchecked population growth.”
Dame Mary Archer, scientist (born 1944)
“The first thing I’d do would be to try to curtail population growth because that puts a strain on so many resources as well as energy — food, land, housing.”
John Holdren, scientist (born 1944)
“If population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”
Dame Helen Mirren, actor (born 1945)
“…I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology.”
Joanna Lumley, actor (born 1946)
“I don’t think there’s any denying the fact that there are too many people in the world. I know that’s an awful thing to say, and people say you’re Hitler if you say it, but the human population is growing now so fast, and they need so much more to keep themselves alive — and indeed in developing nations, to reach a standard they would like to reach, i.e. with more cars, more TV sets. Which is completely understandable. But if a hundred people want a new car, that’s one thing — but if a million people want a new car… So I think the green issues — which is the cutting down of forests to make more room to graze more cows to make into more beef burgers — that comes from the quantity of people. And we’ve never addressed that.”
John Gray, philosopher (born 1948)
“…the root cause of mass extinction is too many people.”
“A world of fewer people would be far better placed to deal with climate change than the heavily overpopulated one we are heading for now.”
Babatunde Osotimehin, former Executive Director of UNFPA (born 1949)
“Population growth patterns are linked to nearly every challenge confronting humanity — including poverty reduction, urban pollution, energy production, food and water scarcity and health….Evidence now shows that the voluntary reduction of unwanted fertility also helps to reduce poverty rates…Efforts…to protect women’s rights to education and reproductive health…will create a world in which a stable population with a balanced approach to resource use and consumption will benefit families, communities, and nations.”
Richard Branson, entrepreneur (born 1950)
“The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”
John Guillebaud, medical doctor and academic, Population Matters Patron (born 1950)
“Should we now explain to UK couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren?”
Barbara Stocking, former Chief Executive of Oxfam (born 1951)
“…it is dangerously misleading to focus solely on population growth or solely on consumption, as we struggle to work out how we can sustain a population of nine billion people on the planet….”
Sir Bob Geldof, musician (born 1951)
“I think the tipping point has been reached. There can’t be more people on the Earth than we can feed.”
Fred Pearce, environmental writer (born 1951)
“Clearly, other things being equal, fewer people will do less damage to the planet.”
Baroness Valerie Amos, former UN Under-Secretary-General (born 1954)
“Population growth puts increased pressure on everything else…Girls and women must be educated. Even a few years’ basic education leads to smaller families.”
Bill Gates, business leader (born 1955)
“The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050. (…) And we’ve got to make sure that we help out with the tools now so that they don’t have an impossible situation later.”
Bill Nye, scientist, television host and educator (born 1955)
“In 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many large populations of humans around the world.”
Lionel Shriver, author (born 1957)
“We need to recognise that slowing population growth is one of the most cost-effective and reliable ways of easing pressure on our environment and securing a sustainable future for us all.”
Kate Humble, television presenter (born 1958)
“There are far too many people in the world…I think one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do is not to have children.”
Jeanette Winterson, author (born 1959)
“Climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation and war each threaten the future of our life on Earth. They are our own man-made Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
Rupert Everett, actor (born 1959)
“…we’ve got too many children on the planet, so it’s good not to have more.”
James Gasana, former Rwandan agriculture minister (born 1960)
“Rapid population growth is the major driving force behind the vicious circle of environmental scarcities and rural poverty. In Rwanda it induced the use of marginal lands on steep hillsides, shortening of fallow, deforestation, and soil degradation — and resulted in severe shortages of food.”
George Monbiot, writer (born 1963)
“(Population is) an important issue…most greens will not discuss. Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both.”
“…if we accept the UN’s projection that global population will grow by roughly 50 per cent and then stop. This means it will become 50 per cent harder to stop runaway climate change, 50 per cent harder to feed the world, 50 per cent harder to prevent the overuse of resources.”
“Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts.”
Dan Brown, author (born 1964)
“Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”
Julia Bradbury, presenter (born 1970)
“I’m passionate about the world we live in and the enormous burden of the population. We can’t keep using the Earth as a bottomless pit.”
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