Scientists have proposed a radical solution to address the limits of Earth's resources: reducing the world's population by half by the year 2200. This idea comes from a study published in March in the journal Environmental Research Letters, which combined 200 years of demographic data with agricultural development models to assess whether the planet can meet the needs of an increasingly numerous population. The study found that resource production had historically kept pace with population growth due to innovation and technological progress, but this trend reversed in the early 1960s. Since then, population has continued to rise while resources have become scarcer. The debate over overpopulation has been around for nearly 250 years. In 1798, the English economist Thomas Robert Malthus wrote in his Essay on the Principle of Population about the tension between population growth and food production. He argued that population growth would outpace agricultural production, a concept now known as the "Malthusian catastrophe." More than two centuries later, food production per person is at its highest level in history. The World Food Programme states that current supplies could feed the entire global population. However, the world's population is still growing and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations. The study highlights that population growth leads to an ever-increasing demand for food, energy, and raw materials. In an industrialized world that promotes overconsumption and continuous growth, scientists are concerned. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers population growth as one of the main contributors to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Corey Bradshaw, an ecologist at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study, explains, "The Earth cannot keep up with the current rate of our resource consumption. It cannot even meet the current demand without major changes. Our results show that we are demanding more from the planet than it can provide." A key factor in exceeding Earth's capacity is the reliance on fossil fuels. These non-renewable resources temporarily delay the effects of overstepping ecological limits. "Current economies, based on uninterrupted growth, seem to ignore the regeneration constraints related to sustained demographic expansion, as fossil fuels artificially compensate for these differences," the authors of the study note. "They also do not anticipate the imminent reduction in their regeneration capacity as climate disruptions intensify." The first signs of an upcoming crisis are not food shortages but increasing pressure on the agricultural system. Rising costs of chemical fertilizers, for example, could lead to lower agricultural yields. Studies have also shown that overpopulation contributes to the spread of pandemics and income inequality, which affect the quality of life. Some experts predict the world population will reach 12.4 billion by 2070 before beginning to decline. To address the challenges of limited resources, scientists suggest a drastic solution: reducing the world population. A study published in July in the journal Sustainable Development recommends achieving 4 billion inhabitants by 2200. The researchers argue that a larger population would worsen CO2 emissions, energy and water consumption, mining, plastic production, and the loss of wildlife. "The world population has quadrupled in the last century, and this transformation is much more radical than if it were to decrease by half over the next 170 years," the researchers conclude.