Contraction of the human enterprise must start now

August 26, 2025

In Julian Cribb’s article, water scientist Peter Gleick is quoted as saying: “The size of the world’s population, the nature of our consumption and economies and our use of energy and water resources have combined to threaten our very existence." This basically sums up why we humans find ourselves in a state of “overshoot”. Our impact on the Earth is simply too great, thus contraction of our population and economies must start happening now.

This is not to say that all aspects of our economies have to contract. Technological developments that lead to decarbonisation must be encouraged, not least in the areas of energy and transport. We have to be mindful of Jevon’s Paradox, however, which occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use but, as the cost of using the resource drops, may result in overall demand increasing, causing total resource consumption to rise.

As Cribb notes, “merely feeding humanity now absorbs 40% of the world’s land area” and is, in itself, “the biggest driver of extinction of other plants and animals…” Thus, reducing the number of mouths to feed through voluntary family planning must be integral to reducing our impact on the Earth.