You have mosquitoes. I have the Press. - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Q: What do you consider the leading threat to the environment?
A: Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We're in for a major disaster if it isn't curbed--not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they'll consume, the more pollution they'll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option. If it isn't controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war.
Q: Is birth control part of the solution?
A: Yes, but you can't legislate these problems away. You've got to get people to understand the need for it: the more important people, the ones who have responsibilities have got to do it because they're at the receiving end. They've got to accept the measures.

Have you run over anybody?

For example, the World Health Organization Project, designed to eradicate malaria from Sri Lanka in the postwar years, achieved its purpose. But the problem today is that Sri Lanka must feed three times as many mouths, find three times as many jobs, provide three times the housing, energy, schools, hospitals and land for settlement in order to maintain the same standards. Little wonder the natural environment and wildlife in Sri Lanka has suffered. The fact [is] ... that the best-intentioned aid programs are at least partially responsible for the problems.
The industrial revolution sparked the scientific revolution and brought in its wake better public hygiene, better medical care and yet more efficient agriculture. The consequence was a population explosion which still continues today.
The sad fact is that, instead of the same number of people being very much better off, more than twice as many people are just as badly off as they were before. Unfortunately all this well-intentioned development has resulted in an ecological disaster of immense proportions.