Mr Windy,
the situation is indeed serious enough such that we should be considering fertility control, though only in tandem with sterilising consumerism, which is itself as irresponsibly fecund as any African, Indian or Catholic. I take exception to your, "But I do defend western civilization more broadly. It is clearly superior to the Taliban and Syria etc". To begin with, this is at cross purposes with the issue, and political correctness doesn't discount the vile currents that run beneath our hallowed democracies. The only thing the West is superior in is sophistication--in the full sense of the word.
I agree with Squeers, and I'm not his sock puppet but his wife; overpopulation is not the problem, but a by-product of capitalism and its endless growth dynamic. Neuter the markets and populations will have to follow suit, and we in the west will have to come down to Earth. The system has long been credited with lifting millions out of poverty, but for the vast majority that means been just enough to exploit them and foster unrealistic expectations. The root of the problem, the root of all evil in the modern world, is not money, but capitalism. If you care to trace any of our problems, that's where you'll be led.
That's the inconvenient and unpopular truth. It's capitalism that has to be de-sexed. But it seems that's not going to happen voluntarily; rather, economic collapse will be part of a overall collapse that it has precipitated.

I agree with you entirely Mitchell that there is much wrong with western civilisation that requires a great deal of overhauling, primarily our economic systems.

But you cannot deny that, as imperfect as it is, western civilisation is superior to the current alternatives available on the planet.

We are the current custodians of human history, science and technology, human rights and justice,.........

And what a tragedy it would be for that to be lost for ever through over population generated political instability, partly generated by developing nations, because we were to afraid to speak up lest we offend them in favour of indulging in self hatred.

But I disagree with you that over population is not a primary problem. It has been building throughout human history long before modern capitalism came into existence.

If you want to blame anything for over population then you should look to agriculture which arose several thousand years ago.

If the west halved its consumption and stopped taking resources from the developing world then I have little doubt that third world population growth would continue largely unabated.

The only difference would probably be that the developing world would have a growing upper and middle class still exploiting a much larger underclass in their own societies.

Let us dispense with my 3 alternate user names.

May name is Greg.

Greg,

"We are currently the custodians of....human rights and justice."

"We", in many cases, are the impediment to human rights and justice in the third world through our greed, manipulation and exploitation.

The current uprisings in the Arab world are in part a revolt against structural adjustments implemented at the behest of the Western institutions of the IMF and World Bank, which funnelled profits away from ordinary people into the pockets of the ruling elite and the corporate elite beyond borders.

It is a capitalist construct that seeks to relieve the third world of its autonomy.

OK then answer this Poirot.

If the west is doing so comprehensively bad for human rights and justice, then would you be comfortable for the west to bow out of the UN and put it in the hands of the Arab world, Asia, Africa and South America?

The fact is that there is a faction in the west that is doing all the bad things. It is the economic and business lobby. But it is at loggerheads with a rival lobby - the scientific and justice etc lobby.

But to condemn the west entirely based on the activities of one lobby within it is not to do it justice.

Greg:
<We are the current custodians of human history, science and technology, human rights and justice>
History is just another genre of fiction. Science and technology, market-driven as they are, are part of the problem. Our vaunted human rights are empty rhetoric, as is our "justice". Where's the justice or observation of human rights in our simultaneously condoning starvation and obscene wealth? Our human rights are like our history, just another form of nationalism--the nice things we say about our selves and observe in the breech.
Beneath all the rhetoric, even at its best Westernism does not offer quality of life, just a tacky empty dream that we wake up from too late in life and find ultimately soul-destroying--unless we've gathered sufficient hubris to go on self-deluded right up to the end.
<If you want to blame anything for over population then you should look to agriculture which arose several thousand years ago>

It's only since the agricultural and industrial revolutions, fuelled by capitalism, that we see a j-curve in population growth, and the much steeper increase in developing countries' populations is a direct effect of capitalist exploitation.
But I have nothing else to say on the subject, only that if you want to tackle population you have to address the system that generates it:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Wallerstein#The_World-syste