The eminent ecologist Garrett Hardin in the following essay offers some suggestions on how to go about it. Almost two hundred years have passed since Malthus disturbed the world's slumber with his celebrated Essay on Population. Today, the world has more than five times as many people in it, and the rate of population increase is nearly four times as great as it was in Malthus's day. Each year, the globe must support 90 million more people.
Population control is needed.
Many plans have been proposed, and some have been half- heartedly tried. Unacceptable schemes to control numbers are easy to find. We could elect a dictator and let him shoot the excess population. But we won't. Or we might take no action while waiting for gross overpopulation to produce its own cure in the form of starvation and mass disease.