Panic Over 7 Billion: Letting The 1% Off The Hook

Editors’ Note: In October 2011, the UN Population Fund decided to pinpoint the birth of the world’s seven billionth living person as Halloween — a choice clearly meant to encourage conversations about how terrifying the number should be. In this issue of DifferenTakes, authors Ian Angus and Simon Butler explain that the wave of populationist fearmongering that followed was based on misleading statistics, and dangerously ignores the real perpetrators of environmental destruction.

–Katie McKay Bryson and Betsy Hartmann