If you think the earth is over-populated, would you rather...

[angelo]

In most of the first world the birth rate is equal, or lower than than the death rate. The problems are in the moslem and third world! Both afflicted with raging religions.

 

[arkirk]

I think any effort to adjust the population due to overpopulation will require this big elephant in the bathtub get out...a form of capitalism and ownership that allows some people profligate consumption of resources necessary to sustain society. There is a train wreck in human society and it has existed from very early in our history....it is the social acceptance of standards of behavior that are inimical to sharing and cooperation.

Birth control is the obvious humanistic answer to the question, but this alone is not enough. Society needs to become more equitable. What we need is a lot more education on how to coexist...with the old and the young. We need to become a more sharing society. and at the same time, a more frugal one.

 

[travc]

Reducing birth rate tends to actually increase life expectancy. There are, of course, all the obvious things like having more resources per child, but there are also some tantilizing indications that suggest low birth rate has a causal biological connection to longer lifespan (not just life expectancy, which has more to do with infant death rate than anything else.)

Reducing birth rate is generally a very good thing IMO. However, if we go below 1 (to reduce overall population), we need to also adjust our economic system... but I think we need that economic adjustment/realignment anyway.

 

[angelo]

I think any effort to adjust the population due to overpopulation will require this big elephant in the bathtub get out...a form of capitalism and ownership that allows some people profligate consumption of resources necessary to sustain society. There is a train wreck in human society and it has existed from very early in our history....it is the social acceptance of standards of behavior that are inimical to sharing and cooperation.

Birth control is the obvious humanistic answer to the question, but this alone is not enough. Society needs to become more equitable. What we need is a lot more education on how to coexist...with the old and the young. We need to become a more sharing society. and at the same time, a more frugal one.

You can start by sharing all you have with some random down in the pits family in any Sub Sahara African nation!

 

[rousseau]

Put index finger over thumb. Play.

Come on.

I'm a pre-boomer. Turns out the first 13 years of my life included WWII and Korea. I was fortunate to serve before the Vietnam era, but, many of my friends and acquaintances at the time died, fled to Canada, or, hobbled in that period. Yes. I'm white, anglo-saxon descent, westerner, smart, and lucky. However when I was 20 I was still working summers in the wheat fields and canning factories. We had communism and the bomb hanging over us until I was 50. Around that time retirement plans began to shrink inscope. I lost retirement health care which leaves me spending up to $2000 a month now and my pension is $3200 a month in a $6000 a month world when one has children and assets.

Had no time for finding myself since there was no support net of any size when I was in my 20s. So don't whine. Birth rates are down around two which is a bit less than replacement in western countries including Canada and the US. Its was mine and it will be your responsibility to provide for your comfortable retirement. However you can rest assured you'll have something better than those among us who haven't prepared when you get to that ripe old age of at least 55.

If we ever figure out a way to keep the predators from raiding pension funds you should have a fine retirement. That task was generated during our generation and now its on you . Chin, er, dauber up. Good luck.

You'd be around 10-15 years older than my dad. When he graduated high school he drove up the road, turned left, knocked on a door, shook a hand, and made 6 figures for 30 years. Here I am, nearing 28, still trying to get that first decent job, with 8 more years of post-secondary education than my dad, and 6 more than my mom.

I'm not complaining, it's the hand I've been dealt and there's nothing at all I can do about it besides play the hand, but it's definitely not the easiest.

 

[angelo]

Like many Europeans, the highest qualified unemployed.

 

[Bomb#20]

They will go to bed hungry in a world that has enough food, right now, to feed ten billion people.

Their hunger is not caused by their numbers; it is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution;

You say that as though the conclusion followed analytically from the premise as a matter of arithmetic -- divide the amount of food by the number of people and compare with the amount it takes to feed one person. But claims of cause and effect are synthetic. You do not have a valid deduction there; what you have is a hypothesis. Your causal hypothesis can be rephrased as follows: if wealth were distributed equally, the world would still have enough food, right now, to feed ten billion people.

Of course, the little known fact about how the starving millions in Asia got, OK, not 'rich', but got out of the 'starving' category, is that it boils down to effective mapping - GPS plus government surveyors.

Ancestral lands are OK for raising rice, but they are only good for raising capital if the bank can be sure exactly what you are mortaging to buy that tractor. By allowing the poor third world farmer to join the global capital system, and borrow against (or sell) his own real estate, you enrich the whole planet.

That's not GPS plus government surveyors. That's GPS plus government surveyors plus banks plus mortgages plus real estate sales. That's farmers who pay back loans getting to keep their land and farmers who don't pay back loans getting kicked off and their land turned over to banks and sold to farmers who pay back loans. If wealth were distributed equally none of that would happen, which means the entire mechanism that created enough food for ten billion people by persuading mechanics to build tractors and put them in the hands of farmers would not exist.

If your hypothesis predicts the exact opposite of what your observations tell you, then it is time to bin the hypothesis.

The hypothesis that their hunger is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution predicts the exact opposite of what your observations tell you.

 

[Bomb#20]

The question of the value of the elderly is a red herring, however; the OP presents a question that is based on a false conditional. IF you think the world is overpopulated, THEN you are wrong. It isn't, and unless something dramatic changes, it never will be.

What is the evidence that the world is not overpopulated? That there is ten billion times more food right now than what one person requires? That inference appears to rely on at least three assumptions:

1. There exists a procedure to distribute the food so as to get all seven billion of us enough to eat that wouldn't reduce the overall food supply by more than 30%.

2. The mechanism that causes there to be ten billion times more food right now than what one person requires is sustainable and doesn't rely on draining aquifers, mining topsoil layers, and turning natural gas into fertilizer.

3. The only problem with having lots of people is the difficulty of feeding them; other considerations such as causing the Sixth Extinction don't matter.

 

[Unbeatable]

If I had to choose, I'd go with fewer births. I don't think of it as "fewer people get to experience life." I think of it as "fewer people have to experience life". Even if the goal isn't to reduce population or prevent new people from being subjected to a life sentence, I'd go with fewer births, simply because I'd like to see the number of unplanned pregnancies reduced to zero.

Granted, outside of this forced dilemma, I see no reason why I can't choose both. The options aren't really mutually exclusive, after all. And as it happens, I also like the idea of making it much much easier for people(note that I'm not specifying "terminally ill people") to access assisted suicide services. If you want to reduce population, it makes sense to attack the problem from multiple angles.

But I don't necessarily think that the earth is over-populated. Over-populated implies there's such a thing as just-populated-enough, which implies that population size is a means to an end, and while I don't actually reject the notion of people-as-potential-means-to-an-end, I have trouble evaluating the utility of any particular end which doesn't directly relate to my self-interest, and I have trouble figuring out which ends would in fact be impacted by population size. A common end brought up is the resolution of resource distribution problems (hunger, poverty, preventable illness epidemics, etc.), but as implied by the "distribution" part, I think those are more a result of humans creating and perpetuating systems of inequality and exploitation, and that they'll probably keep cropping up to some degree or another at any population size until we fix human nature itself.

 

[angelo]

Well human nature aint about to change in the foreseeable future so other ways must be sought to reduce the birth rate in poverty stricken third world countries.
Elimination of religion would be an enormous boost, but that aint about to happen soon either. It's been discussed and instantly dismissed by the PC armies, but still worth considering if all else fails.
Birth control through the water supplies. No, I'm not a Nazi!

 

[dendrast]

Birth rate. I'm here now, I don't really want to suffer from lowered expectations.

 

[angelo]

Education n the third world is what's needed.

 

[ideologyhunter]

In 2050 (yes, 36 years away), the world population is expected to go from 7 billion to 9.6 billion. Biggest increase: Africa. Nigeria's pop. will be larger than America's. Please tell me where they will find a single stick of wood to burn and a single slice of bread to eat. Please tell me the religionists will be helpful in this. Please tell me the Greenland ice mass won't be in liquid form on the shoreline. We're lurching toward a lot of bitter lessons in this century. Jebus better come quick.

 

[bilby]

You say that as though the conclusion followed analytically from the premise as a matter of arithmetic -- divide the amount of food by the number of people and compare with the amount it takes to feed one person. But claims of cause and effect are synthetic. You do not have a valid deduction there; what you have is a hypothesis. Your causal hypothesis can be rephrased as follows: if wealth were distributed equally, the world would still have enough food, right now, to feed ten billion people.

Yes. I fail to see how that re-phrasing of my position changes anything though.

That's not GPS plus government surveyors. That's GPS plus government surveyors plus banks plus mortgages plus real estate sales. That's farmers who pay back loans getting to keep their land and farmers who don't pay back loans getting kicked off and their land turned over to banks and sold to farmers who pay back loans. If wealth were distributed equally none of that would happen, which means the entire mechanism that created enough food for ten billion people by persuading mechanics to build tractors and put them in the hands of farmers would not exist.

Indeed; and a great deal more that I didn't mention. I did not intend to provide a comprehensive list of factors; Clearly, as you were able to extrapolate in this way, I was not wrong in assuming that at least some of my audience would recognise that there is more to it.

This board does not lend itself to a complete analysis of complex issues such as this one; so necessarily we must be brief.

The hypothesis that their hunger is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution predicts the exact opposite of what your observations tell you.

Of course it doesn't. Are you saying that we observe that rich people are the ones who are going hungry?

There are many possible causes for hunger; one is that there simply is not as much food as would be required to feed everyone - that even with a perfectly equal distribution, hunger would still be a major problem. Another is that inequality leads to hunger that, in a more equal world, would not exist. Unless you can demonstrate that larger populations inevitably are less equal than smaller ones, then my point is valid - the existence of hunger is not evidence of overpopulation.

If overpopulation exists, then hunger is inevitable; but the existence of hunger, in and of itself, tells us nothing about the presence or absence of overpopulation, because hunger can have other causes.

 

[bilby]

In 2050 (yes, 36 years away), the world population is expected to go from 7 billion to 9.6 billion. Biggest increase: Africa. Nigeria's pop. will be larger than America's. Please tell me where they will find a single stick of wood to burn and a single slice of bread to eat. Please tell me the religionists will be helpful in this. Please tell me the Greenland ice mass won't be in liquid form on the shoreline. We're lurching toward a lot of bitter lessons in this century. Jebus better come quick.

You are confusing overcrowding with overpopulation.

Overpopulation is necessarily a global phenomenon; it is what happens when the total resources available in the world are insufficient to sustain the total population of the world.

Overcrowding is a local phenomenon; it is easily resolved by trade and transportation. Sure, there may be no firewood to be gathered, or grain grown for bread in Nigeria in 2050; but the same is true of Manhattan Island today, and no-one panics about it - if you want bread, heating fuel, or pretty much anything else, and you live in New York, you buy it in from elsewhere. The Nigerians can either grow their own, or buy it in; or they can move out of Nigeria, to places where they can obtain bread and firewood.

Of course, politicians can engineer a famine in a crowded area if they choose to do so - or if they fuck up badly enough - but the risk of that kind of fuck-up is not demonstrably greater in Lagos than it is in New York.

Overcrowding is NOT overpopulation. Hunger is not overpopulation. Both are possible results of overpopulation; but they can (and do) have other causes.

I have yet to see any hard evidence that there is a single irreplaceable resource on Earth that is actually running out faster than the rate of decline in population growth. The planet can sustain ten billion or so of us just fine; of course, we need to recycle stuff quite efficiently for that to work, but we already are (mostly) doing that.

Fossil fuel is unsustainable, but it is not the only game in town, energy wise. Worrying about the use of fossil fuel, and coming up with ways to stop doing so, seems to me to be a far better use of anybody's time than suggestions for ways of forcing people who want kids not to have kids; or of euthanasing old people, poor people, or anyone who doesn't look like us.

"Overpopulation" is like Satan - it is terrifying, widely feared, and makes otherwise good people think of, and even do, truly evil things. Oh, and it doesn't actually exist.

 

[Bomb#20]

Your causal hypothesis can be rephrased as follows: if wealth were distributed equally, the world would still have enough food, right now, to feed ten billion people.

Yes. I fail to see how that re-phrasing of my position changes anything though.

It makes it explicit that you're making a claim about other possible worlds. The real world has ten billion times more food in it than a person requires because wealth inequality caused it to have that much food. In the alternate world you're imagining that has equal wealth distribution, the processes that cause huge amounts of food to come into existence in this world do not operate; and yet you claim there would be that much food in the alternate world too. Why do you believe your claim? What mechanism do you think would operate in a world where wealth is distributed equally that would bring ten billion times more food into that world than a person requires?

That's not GPS plus government surveyors. That's GPS plus government surveyors plus banks plus mortgages plus real estate sales. That's farmers who pay back loans getting to keep their land and farmers who don't pay back loans getting kicked off and their land turned over to banks and sold to farmers who pay back loans. If wealth were distributed equally none of that would happen, which means the entire mechanism that created enough food for ten billion people by persuading mechanics to build tractors and put them in the hands of farmers would not exist.

Indeed; and a great deal more that I didn't mention. I did not intend to provide a comprehensive list of factors; Clearly, as you were able to extrapolate in this way, I was not wrong in assuming that at least some of my audience would recognise that there is more to it.

This board does not lend itself to a complete analysis of complex issues such as this one; so necessarily we must be brief.

So since you know all about those observed inequality-dependent causal factors leading to the observed reduction in hunger, why do you believe getting rid of the inequality wouldn't get rid of the causal factors and consequently get rid of the reduction in hunger?

The hypothesis that their hunger is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution predicts the exact opposite of what your observations tell you.

Of course it doesn't. Are you saying that we observe that rich people are the ones who are going hungry?

Of course I'm not saying that. What I said does not in any way resemble what you asked if I was saying.

Your hypothesis predicts that inequality increases hunger. What your observations tell you is that via the many causal factors that depend on it -- property rights, banking, mortgages, foreclosures, land sales and so forth -- inequality caused hunger to decline.

There are many possible causes for hunger; one is that there simply is not as much food as would be required to feed everyone - that even with a perfectly equal distribution, hunger would still be a major problem. Another is that inequality leads to hunger that, in a more equal world, would not exist. Unless you can demonstrate that larger populations inevitably are less equal than smaller ones, then my point is valid - the existence of hunger is not evidence of overpopulation.

Who said the existence of hunger is evidence of overpopulation all by itself? People starved on a regular basis for hundreds of thousands of years when there were only a few million people in the world. That's why the population stayed at a few million. As you say, hunger has many possible causes. If that's the only point you made that you care about, great. But you offered inequality, not just as one possible cause in some possible worlds, but as the actual cause of this world's hunger. Unless you can produce a reason to think a world with equal wealth would still grow enough food for ten billion people, that's an incorrect explanation.

 

[ksen]

It makes it explicit that you're making a claim about other possible worlds. The real world has ten billion times more food in it than a person requires because wealth inequality caused it to have that much food. In the alternate world you're imagining that has equal wealth distribution, the processes that cause huge amounts of food to come into existence in this world do not operate; and yet you claim there would be that much food in the alternate world too. Why do you believe your claim? What mechanism do you think would operate in a world where wealth is distributed equally that would bring ten billion times more food into that world than a person requires?

lol, I too remember the times of plenty from the gilded age.

- - - Updated - - -

make that "gelded age"

 

[bilby]

Your causal hypothesis can be rephrased as follows: if wealth were distributed equally, the world would still have enough food, right now, to feed ten billion people.

Yes. I fail to see how that re-phrasing of my position changes anything though.

It makes it explicit that you're making a claim about other possible worlds. The real world has ten billion times more food in it than a person requires because wealth inequality caused it to have that much food. In the alternate world you're imagining that has equal wealth distribution, the processes that cause huge amounts of food to come into existence in this world do not operate; and yet you claim there would be that much food in the alternate world too. Why do you believe your claim? What mechanism do you think would operate in a world where wealth is distributed equally that would bring ten billion times more food into that world than a person requires?

I was not taking any position on that subject, as I believe it to be tangential to the question of overpopulation. I am not advocating equal distribution of wealth; I am pointing out that there is no physical limitation of resources that prevents the world producing enough food (or anything else) for ten billion people to survive.

That's not GPS plus government surveyors. That's GPS plus government surveyors plus banks plus mortgages plus real estate sales. That's farmers who pay back loans getting to keep their land and farmers who don't pay back loans getting kicked off and their land turned over to banks and sold to farmers who pay back loans. If wealth were distributed equally none of that would happen, which means the entire mechanism that created enough food for ten billion people by persuading mechanics to build tractors and put them in the hands of farmers would not exist.

Indeed; and a great deal more that I didn't mention. I did not intend to provide a comprehensive list of factors; Clearly, as you were able to extrapolate in this way, I was not wrong in assuming that at least some of my audience would recognise that there is more to it.

This board does not lend itself to a complete analysis of complex issues such as this one; so necessarily we must be brief.

So since you know all about those observed inequality-dependent causal factors leading to the observed reduction in hunger, why do you believe getting rid of the inequality wouldn't get rid of the causal factors and consequently get rid of the reduction in hunger?

I have not said i believe that; mainly because I do not.

The question 'is the world overpopulated' depends for its answer on the answers to a series of questions.

First, is there some resource (eg food) for which the maximum production physically possible is less than the minimum consumption required to sustain the population. This is the question I am attempting to address; the answer is, as I pointed out, clearly "No". Further, for all plausible future projections of population, the answer remains "No". The idea of perfect equality of distribution is a thought experiment designed to illustrate this important point; I am not trying to suggest that it is either possible or desirable, much less necessary.

Second, is there some resource (eg food) for which there is no sustainable or desirable economic system that produces simultaneously sufficient production AND sufficiently equitable distribution for the entire population to be sustained. Asking this question is pointless unless and until there is agreement on the answer to the first question. I believe the answer here to also be "No"; As long as the poorest family has enough to eat, the system is good enough. We need no utopian or absolute system to achieve this; the trends are clear over at least the last couple of centuries. As world population has increased, the availability of essential resource classes has increased faster, even for the poorest people. Clearly the worldwide technical, economic and political changes during that time, in sum, have been more than sufficient to offset the rises in population. It would be nice to move towards the goal of minimal hunger a little faster, but we are, by the standards of recent decades, pretty close. Famine is a rarity in the world today as never before.

The hypothesis that their hunger is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution predicts the exact opposite of what your observations tell you.

Of course it doesn't. Are you saying that we observe that rich people are the ones who are going hungry?

Of course I'm not saying that. What I said does not in any way resemble what you asked if I was saying.

Your hypothesis predicts that inequality increases hunger. What your observations tell you is that via the many causal factors that depend on it -- property rights, banking, mortgages, foreclosures, land sales and so forth -- inequality caused hunger to decline.

Yes, I see what you are saying now. I missed your point earlier, because a) It was only vaguely related to the actual point I was trying to make; and b) I already agreed with you, but you seemed to be claiming that we disagreed. In summary, we were just talking past each other.

There are many possible causes for hunger; one is that there simply is not as much food as would be required to feed everyone - that even with a perfectly equal distribution, hunger would still be a major problem. Another is that inequality leads to hunger that, in a more equal world, would not exist. Unless you can demonstrate that larger populations inevitably are less equal than smaller ones, then my point is valid - the existence of hunger is not evidence of overpopulation.

Who said the existence of hunger is evidence of overpopulation all by itself? People starved on a regular basis for hundreds of thousands of years when there were only a few million people in the world. That's why the population stayed at a few million. As you say, hunger has many possible causes. If that's the only point you made that you care about, great. But you offered inequality, not just as one possible cause in some possible worlds, but as the actual cause of this world's hunger. Unless you can produce a reason to think a world with equal wealth would still grow enough food for ten billion people, that's an incorrect explanation.

I most certainly did not suggest that inequality was the cause of hunger. I merely pointed out the higher level fact that there is not a physical resource constraint that shows that the Earth cannot sustain her current or projected population; a fact which, in my experience, is hotly disputed by population scaremongers.

If there are sufficient resources, but humans are unable to organise themselves, socially, politically and/or economically in such a way as to avoid famine, then that is obviously a big problem - but it is equally obviously not a population problem, as in that case, population is not the constraining factor. If (as we observed in the last few hundred years) hunger declines as population rises, than that is a good indicator that reducing population is not a solution to the problem of hunger.

Given that hunger and population are decoupled, hunger is simply not a part of the population debate. Indeed, I am wondering exactly what the problem is - the only valid concern I have heard from the population control advocates is that exponential growth is inevitably going to hit a hard resource limit at some point. This is true, but irrelevant, as the projected growth in population is not exponential; and there is no evidence that we are even close to any hard physical limit at this time.

The current trend is that hunger is declining as population is increasing. This has been the case for a long time. Therefore the hunger problem cannot be considered an indicator of a population problem.

Overcrowding is not the same as overpopulation; the crowded slums of the third world are not an indicator of global overpopulation.

Exponential population growth would be a problem; but it has gone away as a result of the availability of reliable contraception, coupled with increasing wealth, without any need for coercion or force.

So the question in the OP is based on a false premise. The Earth is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, overpopulated. Reduction in birth rate is a done deal. It has already happened - most likely irreversibly. The Earth is not overpopulated, life expectancy can (and will) continue to rise, and there is no reason to predict that birth rates might suddenly reverse the trend of the last 50 years, so nobody needs to make the choice presented in the OP.

It turns out that, given the choice, most women would prefer not to be baby factories. Problem solved. The solution to the "population problem" has already been implemented, and it isn't to reduce life expectancy, nor is it to explicitly reduce birth rates - it is to provide social and economic freedom, and let the birth rate take care of itself.

 

[Blahface]

First, is there some resource (eg food) for which the maximum production physically possible is less than the minimum consumption required to sustain the population. This is the question I am attempting to address; the answer is, as I pointed out, clearly "No". Further, for all plausible future projections of population, the answer remains "No". The idea of perfect equality of distribution is a thought experiment designed to illustrate this important point; I am not trying to suggest that it is either possible or desirable, much less necessary.

Second, is there some resource (eg food) for which there is no sustainable or desirable economic system that produces simultaneously sufficient production AND sufficiently equitable distribution for the entire population to be sustained. Asking this question is pointless unless and until there is agreement on the answer to the first question. I believe the answer here to also be "No"; As long as the poorest family has enough to eat, the system is good enough. We need no utopian or absolute system to achieve this; the trends are clear over at least the last couple of centuries. As world population has increased, the availability of essential resource classes has increased faster, even for the poorest people. Clearly the worldwide technical, economic and political changes during that time, in sum, have been more than sufficient to offset the rises in population. It would be nice to move towards the goal of minimal hunger a little faster, but we are, by the standards of recent decades, pretty close. Famine is a rarity in the world today as never before.

So, it is your opinion that if people have just enough to survive then it isn't overpopulation, and everything else is an unnecessary luxury? I think we should aim a little a higher. We should be able to produce food to give everyone a healthy diet without the use of factory farming. Everyone should also have access to medical care. The only pathway for everyone to have a government that is accountable will require everyone to have access to information technology – which will require more energy usage and more rare earth metals. Everyone should be able to live a happy fulfilling life and we should not have to force other animals into extinction to do so.

I also wouldn't count on being able to keep up with current food production. Global warming is causing droughts and it is only going to get worse. It is also making the oceans more acidic and wrecking the ecosystem faster than the organisms can evolve. The ocean is losing its planktons and we are compounding that problem with overfishing. Unless we make some significant advancements is GMO's, we are going to be pretty fucked.

 

[bilby]

First, is there some resource (eg food) for which the maximum production physically possible is less than the minimum consumption required to sustain the population. This is the question I am attempting to address; the answer is, as I pointed out, clearly "No". Further, for all plausible future projections of population, the answer remains "No". The idea of perfect equality of distribution is a thought experiment designed to illustrate this important point; I am not trying to suggest that it is either possible or desirable, much less necessary.

Second, is there some resource (eg food) for which there is no sustainable or desirable economic system that produces simultaneously sufficient production AND sufficiently equitable distribution for the entire population to be sustained. Asking this question is pointless unless and until there is agreement on the answer to the first question. I believe the answer here to also be "No"; As long as the poorest family has enough to eat, the system is good enough. We need no utopian or absolute system to achieve this; the trends are clear over at least the last couple of centuries. As world population has increased, the availability of essential resource classes has increased faster, even for the poorest people. Clearly the worldwide technical, economic and political changes during that time, in sum, have been more than sufficient to offset the rises in population. It would be nice to move towards the goal of minimal hunger a little faster, but we are, by the standards of recent decades, pretty close. Famine is a rarity in the world today as never before.

So, it is your opinion that if people have just enough to survive then it isn't overpopulation, and everything else is an unnecessary luxury?

No.

I think we should aim a little a higher. We should be able to produce food to give everyone a healthy diet without the use of factory farming. Everyone should also have access to medical care. The only pathway for everyone to have a government that is accountable will require everyone to have access to information technology – which will require more energy usage and more rare earth metals. Everyone should be able to live a happy fulfilling life and we should not have to force other animals into extinction to do so.

Fair enough; I broadly agree. It matters not where one sets the bar; the question still remains "What resource is physically constrained to the point where that bar is unattainable due to the sheer number of people wanting to reach it?". Before anyone starts talking about how to fix the population problem, first it would be a good idea for them to demonstrate that such a problem actually exists.

I also wouldn't count on being able to keep up with current food production. Global warming is causing droughts and it is only going to get worse. It is also making the oceans more acidic and wrecking the ecosystem faster than the organisms can evolve. The ocean is losing its planktons and we are compounding that problem with overfishing. Unless we make some significant advancements is GMO's, we are going to be pretty fucked.

Global warming is certainly a concern; but either it is one that can be dealt with in the long term - by switching from fossil fuels to nuclear, solar, wind, etc..; or it is one that can be solved in the short term - by geo-engineering perhaps; or it is one that cannot be resolved at all.

As far as global warming is concerned, population adjustments by 'tinkering around the edges' - adjusting birth rates or euthanasing the elderly - are either needless, or futile unless carried out on an unimaginable scale. Demographic lag means that even if birth-rates fell to zero today, world population would not fall significantly for decades. Global warming is not a problem that is strongly linked to population - a reduction in population would likely have little effect on the supply of fossil fuels, which is more determined by geology and price than by the absolute number of consumers. Fewer people leads to cheaper fossil fuel, leads to lower economic incentives to move to Carbon-neutral power. Half the people burning the coal for twice as long leads to the same problems. Sure, the problem might be pushed back a few years, but the only long term fix for global warming is for us not to burn coal, oil and gas. It is not particularly important how many people there are; we could just as easily burn the reserves faster than they are recycled with only a few million population.

You could, I suppose, slash population to prevent the Global Warming crisis, but that would imply mass genocide now, to slow the problem, followed by a crisis in three or four centuries anyway.

Whatever the solution to Global Warming might entail, population reduction will not be an effective part of the process.