The air and water in rich countries are becoming cleaner. Most importantly, human beings are living much longer than ever before. Yet we hear the fear that if there are too many people who consume the resources of a given society, life there will become untenable. You say this while we are here in Cannes, a densely populated city, measured by the number of persons per square mile. But if we were to look inside those hotel rooms to see how much space those people have, we would see that they are living with luxurious amounts of space.
People have more and better living space than ever before.
The view that I have expressed to you thus far is precisely the view held by experts on these topics. Every agricultural economist knows that people have been eating better since World War II, the period for which we have data. Every resource economist knows that natural resources have become cheaper rather than more expensive. Every demographer knows that life expectancy in the wealthy countries has gone up from under 30 years at birth 200 years ago to over 75 years at birth today. Those are the facts which are known by the economists and demographers who study these subjects.