"(some of us call it the difference between living and existing ) – but to understand exactly what I mean, you also require some imagination"

Yeah right Col. Imagination. That would be what is, for you and your friends in your monochromatic desert, that non-existent grey area between Soylent Green and a Petri dish overflowing with dead bacteria. There's no nuance or degree with you lot. Why are your reactions exaggerated and extreme? Human population growth is a simple statistical dilemma and you just can't face it. It's always a do-or-die Jihad or Crusade with you and never "we've got a problem, we'll fix it".

You just need a little imagination Col, but then again, perhaps that oversimplifies the problem. I think the real nexus of the population issue is that religious, political or ideological fundamentalism creates intellectual conflict and dissonance that leaves them unable or unwilling to act decisively or even recognise and acknowledge the existence of a problem.

And as for your comments on the 'Nanny State', I can only assume you are agreeing that we need to get breeders off the State's teat?

I disagree Col Rouge.

I think a more humane and fair solution is to create some sort of easily transmissible but self limiting biological vector that effects some level of temporary reduction in fertility.....if biologically possible.

Possibly modify some cold virus strains to secrete enough oestrogen into the blood stream of those infected to reduce the chances of embryo implantation in females and reduce the sperm count in males, for a short period of time (several months perhaps), but no other serious or distressing symptoms.

Cold viruses are clearly self limiting with pandemics reliably fizzling out as immunity to them builds throughout the population.

To maintain fertility reduction, new cold virus strains would have to be continually genetically modified.

Such a method would be akin to drawing straws and impossible for governments to control for the purposes of ethnic cleansing etc. In the end the entire human race would share in the burden of reducing their fertility more or less randomly.

Out of these options:

1) Genetically modified biological vector
2) Enforced 1 or 2 child policy
3) Do nothing and allow famine, war, genocide and disease take its toll.

option 1 seems to me to be the fairest amd most humane meanes of reducing human fertility across the board under the present circumstances.

And a genetical modified biological vector, if it could be successfully created, would be by far the most cost effective and rapid means of bringing down global fertility and cause the least amount of additional stress to our already critically stressed global ecosystem.

The Bilderberg Group have just met in Switerland.Here we have over 140 of the World's most powerful and influential people who meet to determine Central Banking Policy and where the next war will be fought.

This time there was a difference.China for the first time was invited.China has just told the West not to invade or attack Iran and more recently Pakistan.They have also warned the USA not to default on the debt it owes China.The USA has invaded Afghanistan with the intent of getting an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan,through Afghanistan/Pakistan to make it economic viable.The USA has tried to blame Pakistan for the Mumbai bombings and for aiding/abetting Bin Laden,all to no avail.The other intent of invading Afghanistan.The USA has been screwed by their own banking system,the Federal Reserve.

There is another reason why China is a target.They finance their growth via a Govt Banking system while the West languishes in private debt banking system.So China's invite to this Bilderberg meeting could be an admission of defeat by the Corporate Oligarchs.They could well be making deals with China to save their arses at our expense.

Mr Windy, I can only disagree with your viral proposition in the most strenuous terms. On the one hand, meddling with genetic modification is an extremely risky business, and on another hand, the idea of random cross-world reduction by non-selective fertility control is overkill in the extreme, when there are quite effective means available to enable people to make a conscious and responsible choice to limit their family size - education, readily available contraception, genuine benefits and enhanced prospects for a smaller number of children, increased cost of providing an essential better level of education for offspring, enhanced employment opportunities and greater environmental awareness. The 1-2 child policy then becomes a logical and attractive option, without force - but the groundwork of better information, opportunity and living conditions must be established. Given that the West is responsible for demolishing fossil resources, and over-exploiting everything and everyone to facilitate extraordinary and unsustainable largesse, it is long overdue that the West paid the toll. If not, chances are someone, somewhere, sometime, is going to risk all to effect restitution and retribution.

Mandating population control by any heavy-handed means is just asking for trouble, and those able may be expected to undertake extreme measures to undermine any such attempt. Disagreement, discontent and conflict may be expected in response to any such attempt, when what we need to find is a way to reign in the West and to provide the means and stability for the Third World to develop much more efficient agriculture and industry, to keep the whole world going while population reduction takes its natural course - by choice.

Some worry too much about care for the aged in a diminishing youth base. Technology can be expected to enable greater productivity with fewer hands, but only if they are educated hands - and this is the key, and the solution. As for 700 years of gradual reduction - resources will run out long before such stability could be reached.

"Mr Windy, I can only disagree with your viral proposition in the most strenuous terms. On the one hand, meddling with genetic modification is an extremely risky business"

Then I assume your view is consistent in objecting to genetically modifying food crops so as to increase yields to feed more people.

", when there are quite effective means available to enable people to make a conscious and responsible choice to limit their family size"

I agree that this should be tried first before we resort to my proposal. But you must concede that your method is logistically challenging, to put it mildly, and may be to little to late at this point in history.

Again I point out to you that raising the living standards of the third world and educating girls so as to lower their fertility may not be possible with further deterioration of our ecosystems and wont be possible, on a significant scales, at all without cheap oil derived fuel.

"Mandating population control by any heavy-handed means is just asking for trouble, and those able may be expected to undertake extreme measures to undermine any such attempt.,"

I am not so sure about that! Given what is happening across the Arab world at present I suspect that many governments would privately welcome a means to peacefully curb political dissent and increase citizen contentment in the long term.

"when what we need to find is a way to reign in the West and to provide the means and stability for the Third World to develop much more efficient agriculture and industry, to keep the whole world going while population reduction takes its natural course - by choice"

Like I keep saying, this would be ideal but it just may no longer be possible to avoid a catastrophic collapse in the global population given that we have dithered and denied the proble for so long.

Perhaps if we had acted in the 50s when Norman Borlaug warned us that his green revolution had merely bought us a few decades to tame the population dragon.