Former Vice President Al Gore raised eyebrows last week when he suggested that “fertility management” was the key to fighting global warming and promoting economic development in poor countries. Gore’s comments drew criticism from free-marketeers who said his remarks amount to “eco-imperialism.”

“Gore’s agenda for saving the world from global warming has always included population control,” Myron Ebell, director of global warming and international environmental policy at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Advocating population control specifically for Africa is just another form of imperialism.  Gore’s eco-imperialism is uncomfortably close to the original racist goals of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who advocated population control in order to control the number of black and brown people in the world.”

The world is expected to have more than 9 billion people by 2075, with much of that growth coming from developing countries in Africa. This is alarming to environmental activists like Gore, who argues that “fertility management” is needed to address a whole slew of global development issues, including mitigating global warming.