How Population Became an Environmental Problem

One afternoon in 2009, a friend and I flew home to Northern California from our Costa Rica vacation, gazing through the window and marveling at how many trees covered the land just south of San Francisco. “It’s so beautiful,” he said. “People should start using some birth control so that we can get this back in San Francisco!” A lifelong resident of the city, he was struck by the contrast between the view from the airplane and the landscape of concrete, steel, and glass that had shaped everyday life in his hometown. I, on the other hand, was surprised by