Boylesy,
my modest proposal, like Swift's, is tongue in cheek. Though if it came to that, I like my idea better because it would be arbitrary, apart perhaps from gender and age groups--a percentage of each of these then. I'm presuming a nano virus programmed to carry it out absolutely fairly. I would of course much rather that we find voluntary ways to reduce population. Populations "would" do this voluntarily if their governments persuaded them of the desperation of the situation, just as populations got behind the war effort. The problem is that our growth economies feed on population growth. If population growth stopped, so would economic growth, at least once the current populations reached satiety (they never would of course because the planet could not sustain Western lifestyles on any like that scale). Population growth in impoverished countries is perfectly understandable, and I doubt they could be reasoned with unless they were raised up to subsistence and dignity. This could only be done by reducing Western standards until their standards and ours met. Western standards, their spread and how they're derived, are the problem, and not the teaming masses elsewhere.
The problem is economic and not the human propensity to breed.

'It's easy to be so blasse when it's unlikely to be your generation that receives natural justice.'

Ah but squeers, you seem to have a bit in common with David Koresh.

Poirot,

'but I'm still searching for any substance'
Look closer. He's not in the greatest of form at the moment, but there are little gems of self-effacing mockery and

'Anyway, what is a "master man"? '
Master, man. My great grandmother twice removed was Jamaican. My Dad also, but I'm not so sure about my mother's fidelity.

'His banter is more likely to make you throw up than to have you bowing and scraping at his feet.'
Which is why it amuses me so to partake in the latter, and enjoy watching the crowd engage in the former.

'middle-class decadence, but one that throws a light on the attitudes that drive Western hegemony'

Is middle class decadence worse than upper class and working class decadence? Western hegemony isn't all bad, more akin to a referee that is only noticed when he makes a mistake against your team.

PS: Maybe the lefties aren't the idealists, you're all so defeatist!

Big The Cure fans, or is it The Smiths?

The history of humanity can be summed up by cramming for the test at the last minute and scraping through ok, and I'm sure when self interest and self preservation becomes prudent for the movers and shakers the ship will be righted pronto. The poor downtrodden masses will fare about as well as they do now and always have.

As I said, those concerned about population, you know what to do...

Would you like to know more?

"There are far better ways to achieve population balance than by the method you favour."

I agree with you all that a serious global effort to control fertility should be made via free contraception and family planning services in the third world first.

But you must all concede that this effort may fail to bring about enough of a reduction in global fertility to avoid widespread disease, famine, war and genoicde given that we have collectively failed to heed Norman Borlaug's warning 50 years or so ago.

If free contraception and family planning fails to sufficiently reduce global fertility to avoid the above, then what do you all propose we should do? We need a backup plan.

And I disagree that anyone needs to decide which races need to be targeted. The only criteria that needs to be considered are population centres where fertility cannot be sufficiently reduced via contraception etc. That may well include white skinned races along side dark skinned races.

And there is no way in hell that something like a cold virus could be entirely contained within the targetted population centres. They would spread through out the human population to some extent and we would all have some share in the burden.

Everald...I presume you have never heard of Peak Oil or Carrying Capacity or Arid Desert...please Google these today

"The problem is economic and not the human propensity to breed."

I assume you mean that third world fertility will fall if we raise their living and education standards to our level.

Squeers the global ecosystem is already close to collapse with the current number of humans living a western lifestyle.

How can your seriously believe that all 8 billion humans can be raised to a western living standard so that we can then reduce our global population.

Charles Birch said in his book Confronting the Future "The earth cannot sustain a world of rich countries" and he is dead right.

Perhaps if we had have acted in the 50s when Norman Borlaug warned us that he had bought us s few decades to tame the 'population dragon'. But we failed and now we have to pay the price in making some more difficult choices.

Now fertility control and population reduction will have to come before third world development.

Alternatively, GregaryB, all of us in western countries (which are using by far the lion's share of the world's resources) could cut back drastically on our living standards, as we help to raise those in Third world countries, so that it's all equalised out ? A massive increase in the education aid budget for women in those countries might be useful - western countries could cut back on their own welfare budgets, wages, pension payments and social services, to pay for it, for the next few generations.

Every person in the Third World is as entitled to a good life as you and me, and everything it includes. So clearly, any eugenic solution must impact far more on people in western countries who already have, on average, more than their 'share' of the world's resources.

So Boylesey, spread your virus first in your own country. Those talking about culling: go first, and take your family and friends with you.

Let's even up the world and let the perpetually-disadvantaged have a fair go