There are few overlaps between the green left and reactionary right, but one of them is an obsessive fear of global population growth. To a certain mindset, there is no doubt as to the greatest threat facing mankind: babies.
In his 1995 book All the Trouble in the World, PJ O'Rourke includes a chapter entitled "Just enough of me, way too many of you" – neatly satirising those who see overpopulation as the cause and not the outcome of insufficient freedom and opportunity.
David Brooks, for his part, takes a characteristically evidence-based approach. And what the numbers tell him is this – the real story isn't rampant procreation, but a "fertility implosion" that's going global. Almost half the world's people now live in countries where the fertility rate is below replacement level, with some of the biggest falls happening in the most unexpected places:
Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia: it clearly doesn't require that much extra freedom and opportunity to turn things around – nor, one assumes, much in the way of feminist re-education programmes funded by western governments.