Relentless human-population growth coupled with rising consumption has outpaced the planet’s ability to cope.

An article in BBC’s Green Room says we are now in “overshoot” – our numbers and levels of consumption greater than Earth’s capacity to sustain us for the long-term. The writer says we must end world population growth, and then reduce population size in industrialized as well as developing nations.

Colorado-based environmental writer John Feeney says despite expanding coverage of climate change, today’s environmentalists avoid discussing the link between population and environment more than any other ecological truth, either for political motives or because they misunderstand the issue.

Total resource use is the product of population size and per-capita consumption, and there’s no chance of solving the predicament without reducing both factors in the equation.

Feeney said we need a complete transition to clean, renewable energy as reliance on non-renewable energy is, by definition, unsustainable. But that alone will not solve our problems. There remains population growth, which increases consumption of resources other than energy.

“We have to rethink the corporate economic growth imperative,” Feeney said. “On a finite planet, the physical component of economic growth cannot continue forever.

“Fortunately, expert consensus tells us we can address population humanely by solving the social problems that fuel it.”