Sustainability Science

Birthrates are falling around the world. And that’s O.K.

Why do commentators, like Chicken Little, treat this worldwide trend as a disaster, even collective suicide? It could be because declines in fertility rates stir anxieties about power: national, military and economic, as well as sexual. In reality, slower population growth creates enormous possibilities for human flourishing. In an era of irreversible climate change and the lingering threat from nuclear weapons, it is simply not the case that population equals power, as so many leaders have believed throughout history. Lower fertility isn’t entirely a function of rising prosperity and secularism; it is nearly universal.

The Earth’s population now tops 7 billion people. The rapid growth of our human population is pushing other species off the planet in what most scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction crisis. Yet this population explosion is too often ignored by the public, the media and even the environmental movement, while it continues to drive all the major environmental problems that plague our planet — including climate change, habitat loss, ocean acidification and resource depletion.

That’s why the Center for Biological Diversitylaunched our Endangered Species Condoms project in 2009, and since then has distributed hundreds of thousands of free condoms across the United States. Wrapped in colorful, wildlife-themed packages (with artwork byRoger Peet), Endangered Species Condoms offer a fun, unique way to get people talking about the link between human population growth and the species extinction crisis.