Philosophy, the environment and population policy

What have and what can philosophers contribute to the debate on population and the environment? I don't think there can be any other discipline where it is more difficult to answer this question. While other disciplines have rival schools of thought, philosophy is the discipline people turn to when they can no longer take for granted a shared framework of assumptions underlying their disagreements. Consequently, it is a discipline riven by diversity of viewpoints, not only on what is the answer to any question, but also on what questions should be asked, how questions should be posed, how they should be answered and how proposed answers should be defended. Philosophers even disagree on what is a question. Perusing the papers written by philosophers on population policy confirms this state of affairs. [Introduction]