Thanos wholeheartedly approves.

It might sound like the evil plan of a nefarious villain, but scientists now say that we need to halve Earth’s population to save the planet.

Over the last 100 years, the world’s population has ballooned from less than two billion to 8.3 billion people.

However, researchers say our planet cannot sustain this explosive growth for much longer.

Now, in a proposal that will remind movie fans of Thanos’ plot in Avengers: Infinity War, scientists argue that the population needs to be ‘eased’ down to four billion by 2200.

However, rather than the instant destruction envisioned in that blockbuster hit, the scientists say that this could be managed as a gradual decline.

The approach in that Sustainable Development manuscript is especially concerning: it wraps a contested ideology in charts and technical language, then presents a strongly ideological conclusion as the inevitable result of the data.

Once humans are framed as the problem to be managed, the rest becomes moral laundering—coercion rebranded as “voluntary,” demographic engineering sold as compassion.

The paper links population growth to biodiversity loss, emissions, pollution, resource depletion, and conflict, and calls for fertility rates to fall to 1.75 by 2050 so world population eases to about 4 billion by 2200. The authors claim this would aid habitat recovery, protect species, cut CO₂, ease resource pressure, and reduce conflict.

Although they stress a non-coercive path through education, women’s opportunities, and contraception access, the study still leaves the clear impression that fewer humans would solve the world’s problems.

Rather than treating population decline as a danger to be avoided, the study frames it as a conscious strategy for a future that is both pro-human and pro-nature, relying on a distant projection to make that result appear inevitable and preferable.

In my view, we would be better served by fewer such experts and far more engineers and inventors—people focused on developing the tools and technologies that let humans have as many children as they wish while enabling larger populations to live in balance with this planet, and with the others we will soon reach.

What looks like neutral analysis is a value-laden prescription that locks us into one highly consequential path.

True sustainability should advance innovation, resilience, and human prosperity alongside environmental care. Trusted science must not treat humanity as a number to cut.

A livable planet requires expanding our capacity to thrive—not shrinking the number of people allowed to try.