Several readers have pointed out that the BMJ’s recent coverage of climate change has ignored a key issue—the need for population control. John Guillebaud and Pip Hayes give the same rebuke in their editorial this week (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a576). They may be right that “population” and “family planning” are taboo words. The BMJ hasn’t actively avoided these issues, but we could do more to highlight them. As Guillebaud and Hayes portray it, every week an extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live, amounting to “a huge new city each week, …