Population control: When does it become necessary?

[foadi]

[Spider]

[The Dharma Bum]

[foadi]

[foadi]

[Spider]

[foadi]

you're basing your assessment of overpopulation on food imports? what? so by your standards, every city in the world is overpopulated by definition, because they import food from agricultural areas. lol

[PoS]

[Dennis]

We have a lot of places on this earth that are not occupied, so I have a hard time with the concept of population control, though I certainly can see the need to consider it when it comes to things like global warming and such.

But, things like global warming can be negated with better forms of energy. And overcrowding can be negated by people existing in places that are currently wide-open. Much of the American West, for example, is wilderness. Then, there are the oceans. Fiction right now, perhaps, but could we not work toward one day populating them? We even have a probe on Mars right now taking a lot of pictures of some very vast/open expanses. What is one day sci-fi oftentimes ends up a reality, and there is no reason to expect that this pattern will not continue.

All these things considered, I think outright birth regulation should be considered an option, but perhaps one of the last. No one wants to be told how/when they can procreate. I would like to see it used only when all other options are not an option.

[eynon81]

increase the standing of women = lower population growth

I think the one biggest ideological impediment to global family planing now-a-days is modern Islam.