Overpopulation...?

Question

In all this talk about global climate change and "greening" our lives for a sustainable future, when are we ever going to address overpopulation? It is a huge issue! Certain cultures and religions encourage overwhelmingly large families which is not only an immediate strain on the government and our social resources but it is a huge burden to the future of our planet and our ability to produce enough food and goods for these people that are multiplying at exponentinally high rates.

What can possibly be done? I can't see western cultures ever implementing something like the Chinese gov't did, but how else are we going to be able to control overpopulation?

Do you think the answer lies in education? Highly educated people have fewer children. Look at Western Europe where the population is actually declining in some areas because of this.

Answer 1

We can readily adjust to a declining population, even though we would not see as high a GDP growth, even though we might find it necessary to allow seniors to work longer, even if we need more hours of work to sustain an excessive lifestyle.

But let us understand that we would not be able to count on an ever rising price for housing stock, we might need fewer teachers fewer builders of new housing. We might find less growth of demand for almost everything.

And, capitalism being what it is, we would expect improved efficiency  feeding into static to falling demand would mean we all go unemployed.

It does not happen, but we could imagine it happening. It seems that we can always invent new things to want, so new ways to consume manpower. Theories that we must have increasing population to keep the economy working feverishly are an unsupportable myth.

We do observe an increase in food production with improvements in agricultural science, but we do not need larger or growing populations to make that happen.

Nor is it necessarily desirable to be able to sustain larger populations if our ability to support a larger population is dependent on an ever increasing supply of non-renewable resources. Increasing food production does not depend only on better science, but also on supplies of energy and fertilizer components.

The earth runs out of readily available resource, where doe that leave our very high population?

Answer 2

My Wife and I have chosen not to have any Children, since 1965 the United States has had  a decline ,fewer children  born every year.

Answer 3

Education helps. Economic pressure helps even more, once a population approaches carrying capacity as Europe has.

Answer 4

Population decline is a very very very very very baaaadddddd thing.

Population growth is the most essential resource in all of world history. Especially economically.

And only poor countries are overpopulated. Once industrialized they can sustain many times more people.

China couldn't feed 700 million people decades ago and now because of industrialization they can feed near to 1.4 billion.

Answer 5

I think you've made a very good point here!

I guess places like Britain will never encourage people to have less children as it would mean a smaller work force which would be of no benefit to the economy, and at the moment that is more important to the government than addressing how overpopulation contributes to climate change.

I myself don't want to have children.

Answer 6

I think education is always the answer! I think that our western society will never be able to implement a policy  such as china, we are just to spoiled and have too much freedom . On the other hand our freedoms and allow us to Haber more choice. Most third world countries do not have the education on birth control we have. They do not have the access to birth control that we do and a lot of other countries are a lot more tradition then we are . Condoms are not really smiled upon ! Third world countries have a lot of children out of necessity (working on farms , supporting their family) . Remember that a lot of these children do not survive past 5 years old. One thing that we should be teaching these countries is sustainable farming, using their local crops , not what we grow here. I know that a lot of people who really have their hearts in the right place tech third world communitIEs to grow crops that are not practical ie water intensive in the desert. If we can start to teach sustainable farming techniques and get food into people's bellies we can then begin to teach them about over population.