By the end of today, the world’s population is expected to reach 7 billion. It has almost doubled since the late ’60s and is expected to reach 10 billion within the century. This is potentially catastrophic for several reasons; the effect on the environment of human activity; the demand for dwindling resources, including food and water, and the impossibility of ensuring a decent quality of life for everyone.

How can we prevent the population from continuing to increase, and reverse the trend? There are already more people than the Earth can support sustainably. What can we do?

The organisation Population Matters has four campaigns, on family planning, gender and social justice, UK reproductive health, and educating people to have smaller families. Their patron Sir David Attenborough’s view is that there is no major problem facing our planet that would not be easier to solve if there were fewer people and no problem that does not become harder and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more. Click here to see or hear his speech to the Royal Society of Arts last year.