Experts claim that overcrowding is destroying the Earth because people are draining its resources, and that animals and their habitats are also being obliterated by humans' dependence on fossil fuels.
But a professor believes there is a solution – for humans to hibernate like bears, bats and skunks.
“It is good news for the world. Our ecological footprint would become very small”Prof Rob Henning
Rob Henning, a professor of Pharmacology at the University Medical Centre Groningen, said people living in cold temperatures should start sleeping for between five and seven months every year.
The boffin also suggested people would live until the age of 175 if they started hibernating and would have children much later in life.
He said: "This means three-quarters of us would hibernate.
"That is four-and-a-half billion people who don't need food, water, or consumer goods for half of the year.
"We would massively cut down on our use of fossil fuels needed to heat our homes in winter.
"It is good news for the world. Our ecological footprint would become very small."
Meanwhile, a Brit minister has warned the government that climate change should be taken as seriously as nuclear war.
Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, warned about global warming in a report led by the UK's climate change envoy Prof Sir David King.
She said increasing temperatures could cause international security issues because people would migrate from hotter countries en masse.
"These [risks] could be far greater than the direct risks like coastal flooding," she added. "Assessing the threat of climate change today demands a more coordinated, more sophisticated, more holistic approach."