Just a few decades ago, slowing global population growth was an international policy priority. Nowadays, pundits and decision-makers are fretting about the fact that people are having smaller families – a development that, in the past, would have been heralded as welcome progress. But which side is right? — July 11 marks World Population Day, a day singing a light “on the urgency and importance of population issues,” and established by the United Nations in 1989. Back then, it was widely understood that sustained human population growth has the potential to outstrip available resources, cause ecological devastation, exacerbate poverty, and trigger social unrest and armed conflict. Yet today, World Population Day largely goes unmarked, even by the UN. Baby Bust Panic Reflects Infinite Growth Delusions The dominant population narrative now revolves around declining fertility rates (the number of births per woman), and the supposed threats these present to our economies. Little attention is given to the alarming fact that we are still adding roughly 70 million people (equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom) to the world every year, and are on course for a peak of more than 10 billion in the 2080s. While population aging – and, in some countries, decline – certainly brings new socioeconomic challenges, these are manageable with available social policy measures. More problematic is the fact that global fertility decline is not happening fast enough. At our current population size of 8.3 billion, all environmental health indicators are already in the red. We are facing catastrophic climate change and a sixth mass extinction, and are using natural resources almost twice as fast as the Earth can regenerate them. Every few years, we breach more planetary boundaries and have already transgressed seven of nine. Scientists agree that we are moving ever closer to