For most of history, the total human population number has remained somewhere under 1 billion. Today in 2020 we find ourselves 7.8 billion people. Yet to speak environmentally about population is a difficult issue, because different people have different understanding as what the problem exactly is. For some, it is simply a matter of too many people. Other people point out differential consumption. And then finding an answer may have directly dystopian results. Writer and activist Sangeetha Thanapal hopes the environment movement can see behind the chimera of overpopulation, avoid the entanglements of inadvertent racism, and spot the central role played by corporations in damaging the earth.