It's very 1970s to explain the converging catastrophes of climate change, energy depletion and diminishing bio-diversity to be the result of an over-populated planet. If you chastised multiple baby-spawning as a greenhouse gas issue, you'd be raked over the coals and called a Malthusian, racist, or worse. While environmentalists of the 1970s championed the movement toward 'zero population growth' (ZPG), urging middle-class hippies of the day to 'stop at one', today they wouldn't touch the issue with a barge pole.

For my parents, having children was a decision they only came to after intense deliberation. Their decision to bring children into the world was, in the end, motivated by hope, in a belief that the species into which their children were to be born would be capable, one day, of living harmoniously with its environment. Having children would, as they eventually came to believe, help contribute to this ultimately redemptive project.

Such sincere sentiments sound bizarre in the days of baby bonuses and bugaboos. But after Paul R. Ehrlich's best-seller The Population Bomb was published in 1968, many believed disaster would ensue as a result of humanity's population explosion.

Since then though his ideas have fallen into disrepute. Many of Ehrlich's predictions - in particular widespread famine of the 1970s and 1980s - did not eventuate, and humanity just kept on getting better at using the earth's resources to meet its own increasingly rapacious needs. Ehrlich advocated tough sanctions for countries that did not adhere to population control measured - which earned him, and the zero population growth movement his book spawned, a bad reputation for decades to come.

Since Ehrlich published his book, the world's population has almost doubled, and for most of his readership that period has also been associated with incredible increases in personal wealth.

So today, the right to procreate remains a fundamental human right, and the subject of overpopulation is taboo. When US environmentalist Bill McKibben opted for a vasectomy after the birth of his first child, as a step towards limiting global warming, he was widely ridiculed. The Chinese government's policy of mandatory birth planning has also been a disaster - increasing rates of forced late term abortions while at the same time failing to reduce the total fertility rate to less than 2.1. 

Attention, however, may be swinging back toward the 'P' issue. In the Guardian recently David Nicholas-Lord urged the green lobby to start talking about human population growth again. "Family size" he observed "is seen as an exercise in individual lifestyle choice: few people consider the consequences for the planet of their fertility decisions. That means fertility rates in the UK rise, and the population keeps on growing."

Online magazine Slate has taken a peek at the issue and asked 'Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?'  And meanwhile, Alan Weisman's sketch of the planet's post human future The World Without Us has become a best seller.

According to U.N. projections, the world population is likely to increase by 2.5 billion people—to a total of 9.2 billion—by the year 2050. Recent reports in the journals Science and Nature suggest that one-third of ocean fisheries are in collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and all major fisheries may be gone by 2048.

Whether or not one thinks the subject of over population is taboo, young mothers-to-be who worry what uncooked fish might do their unborn child might also spare a thought for what their child will be eating when they're 40.

Words: Sarah Barns  

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