Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire play siblings in the satirical ‘Humane,’ where people are asked to enlist for euthanasia to avoid human extinction.
(Elevation Pictures)
Faced with a darkly satirical vision that hardly seems sensationalist, the audience might wish for compassionate thinking to combat ecological disaster and precarious resources.
Indigenous people have long spoken about coercive practices of officials and experts around birth control, as late as the 1960s. Now historians are finding evidence in the government’s own records.
China limited families to one child from 1980 to 2015 to curb population growth. The policy paid off economically for the country, but it left couples whose only child died grieving and impoverished.
The US has a long history of forced sterilization campaigns that were driven by the bogus ‘science’ of eugenics, racism and sexism.
In 2018 scientists of the Miami-Dade County Mosquito Control tested a new way to suppress mosquito populations carrying the Zika virus.
RHONA WISE/AFP via Getty Images
Brian Allan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Chris Stone, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Holly Tuten, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jennifer Kuzma, North Carolina State University e Natalie Kofler, Harvard University
Release of GM mosquitoes in Florida is imminent. But a multidisciplinary team of scientists believe that more studies are needed first. They encourage a publicly accessible registry for GM organisms.
Cities around the world appear to be harboring increasing numbers of rats, including this one: the inflatable ‘Scabby the Rat.’
robert cicchetti/Shutterstock.com
Cities often embark upon drastic and expensive eradication campaigns designed to rapidly rid the city of pests like rats. But are the surviving rats stronger or weaker than before?
Global population is rising.
Volodymyr Goinyk/Shutterstock
There are plenty other good reasons to stabilise the global population.
In the latest Avengers film, our heroes grapple with the consequences of villain Thanos wiping out half the population. The study of resource management shows why this wouldn’t necessarily solve hunger and resource scarcity.
Marvel Studios/IMDB
Marvel villain Thanos wiped out half the universe’s population to create paradise. But as the Avengers find out in Endgame, solving resource scarcity is not that simple.
A female Anopheles stephensi mosquito bites a human to get a blood meal through its pointed proboscis. A droplet of blood is expelled from the abdomen after having engorged itself.
Jim Gathany/Wikimedia Commons
Researchers are exploring genetic forms of population control called gene drives that spread traits faster that happens naturally. The goal is to curb mosquito-borne diseases like malaria.
Slums like this one in Rio de Janeiro embody the problems Paul Ehrlich warned of in ‘The Population Bomb.’
dany13
Fifty years ago biologist Paul Ehrlich published ‘The Population Bomb,’ an apocalyptic warning that overcrowding would lead to wars and famine. Here’s what the book got right and wrong.
Our national wellbeing probably peaked with Australia’s population at roughly 15 million in the 1970s, when this photo was taken in Hunters Hill, Sydney.
John Ward/flickr
Australia’s GPI, a broad measure of national wellbeing, has stalled since 1974. So what has been the point of huge population and GDP growth since then if we and our environment are no better off?
Public outcry, demonstrations and riots have followed the death of 13 women at a government female sterilisation camp in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Investigators have blamed tainted medicines and…
China’s rapid economic growth, and the development of Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzen into modern metropolises, might easily give observers the sense of a successful country, full of confidence. Clearly…