[Jeff_29]

"Our teeming population is the strongest evidence our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us from its natural elements. Our wants grow more and more keen and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, while nature fails in affording us our usual sustenance. In every deed, pestilence and famine and wars have to be regarded as a remedy for nations as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race."

-Tertullian (a Carthaginian priest in 210 AD when the world population was 250 million)

Can we improve the ways in which we utilize the resources on our plant? Definitely, but human beings can't be measured solely by consumption, but by their ingenuity and creativity, which help us to develop new resources, find new ways to deal with challenges, and discover new ways to protect the environment.

[Newgy]

Of course, Carthage was teeming with about half a million citizens when he wrote that, and was completely destroyed by Muslim invaders four hundred years later.

Minor point: Tertullian was an ethnic Roman born in Roman-rebuilt Carthage.