Marian Starkey, VP for Communications, had a letter to the editor published in the Sunday, June 6^th, edition of the New York Times. Her letter is in response to the front page article from May 23^rd, "World Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population."

The letter is printed in full below. As always, we welcome feedback and comments at [email protected].

To the Editor:

“World Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population” (front page, May 23) misses the big picture. World population is still growing by 80 million people annually, and it won’t stop for several more decades.

Most of that growth is happening in the poorest places on earth — many in sub-Saharan Africa. If the Italian towns of Capracotta and Agnone want to boost their populations of working-age residents, there’s a steady stream of people willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to get there.

The article refers to a paradigm shift necessary to address the “strain of longer lives and low fertility” that “threatens to upend how societies are organized.” As the status quo changes, people adapt to the new normal.

If public health campaigns can get billions of people to wear masks and stay six feet apart for over a year, surely economists and politicians can figure out how to restructure economies away from a strict dependency on infinite population growth. Perhaps the cleaner air and water that will result from our slower growth will even be inspirational.

Marian Starkey, Washington. The writer is Vice President for Communications at Population Connection.

You can also read the letter in the web edition of the Times here (please note that the letter is behind a paywall).