evidence: According to the founder of environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion, climate change will lead to the "slaughter, death, and starvation of 6 billion people this century." According to Just Stop Oil, the climate group behind many disruptive actions making news headlines, any further exploration of oil and gas will amount to "genocide" and the "starvation and the slaughter of billions," and will "condemn humanity to oblivion." Four in 10 Americans believe that global warming will likely lead to human extinction. Not surprisingly, a quarter of childless adults cite climate change as part of their motivation for not having children. After all, what’s the point of having children if you can’t give them a livable future? As one young woman put it: "I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions." [...] This leads me to the final parallel. Back in Asimov’s day, it was considered incredibly embarrassing for an educated and intellectual type, particularly someone dedicated to science, to doubt catastrophic predictions about overpopulation. Didn’t the math make it inevitable? Skeptics like Julian Simon were either vilified or ignored, and they often still don’t get much credit today, long after they were proven right. The other lesson we should learn from the overpopulation debacle is the importance of doubt and dissent, of probing the blind spots of our own era.