Sex and food are the two big elephants in the room that no-one is really talking about in conservation. It stands to reason, that when population growth (and consumption) leads to depletion and pollution of resources, that growth is something we need to look at very seriously.

Consider the example of a forgotten faucet.  Imagine coming home to find the floor flooded. There’s water everywhere. You wade through the rooms, and everywhere carpets and floors are soaked.  After walking through the mess and destruction, you eventually find the forgotten tap that was left open. Would you want to start mopping out the water straight away, or would it be sensible to turn off the tap first?  In a nutshell, this is the case of the problem of population size. We try to deal with the effects of our population growth, instead of looking at the root cause.

We have a very simple and straightforward answer to the question, on how we significantly can prevent several environmental problems from further escalation. That answer is family planning. The lack of willingness to discuss this on a broad regional and national level is lack of understanding, and individual, collective, religious and governmental courage. 

“A US family who chooses to have one fewer child would provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives,” :    Environmental Research Letters