Bill McKibben

When Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature in 1989, his Malthusian vision of global warming was met with considerable skepticism. But his prescience has been proven by a panel of international climatologists, and witnessed by victims of drought, flooding and bizarre weather patterns all over the world. Now, the former staff writer at The New Yorker, prolific freelance writer and author of Hope, Human and Wild takes an in-depth look at family size and overpopulation in his latest book, Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families. He warns us that if moderate action is ignored now, future overcrowding may become a dire global event.

From China's coercive family planning programs to Africa's voluntary family-downsizing, the world's explosive population growth is slowly declining. But McKibben notes that America continues to be the land of excess, and with 2.1 children born per woman, our use of resources and global destruction outweigh many a Third World family averaging four to six children.

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