Migrating Species

ENVIRONMENTALISTS have long held that environmental problems come down to one issue: population. All our environmental woes, from species extinction to global warming, can ultimately be traced back to human population pressures.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote the bestselling Population Bomb. Despite his inaccurate predictions of doom, traditional greens still zealously cling to his thesis. According to Claude Martin, director of World Wildlife Fund International, “Conventional wisdom has it that the world’s rapid increase in population is largely responsible for its environmental degradation.” Even self-proclaimed optimist Gregg Easterbrook says, “Human population growth is at once the most important and worst understood of ecological issues.”

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John A. Baden

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Douglas S. Noonan

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ENVIRONMENTALISTS have long held that environmental problems come down to one issue: population. All our environmental woes, from species extinction to global warming, can ultimately be traced back to human population pressures.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote the bestselling Population Bomb. Despite his inaccurate predictions of doom, traditional greens still zealously cling to his thesis. According to Claude Martin, director of World Wildlife Fund International, “Conventional wisdom has it that the world’s rapid increase in population is largely responsible for its environmental degradation.” Even self-proclaimed optimist Gregg Easterbrook says, “Human population growth is at once the most important and worst understood of ecological issues.”