There sure have been a lot of suggestions on how to reduce the population and we could get a few more from the bible such as the plagues of Egypt and deaths of all the first born, the great flood etc.
We came up with a conscription system for the Vietnam war which resulted in the deaths of quite a lot of people. What about getting rid of all those with the most demerit points on their driving licences (this would only work in the countries where people have cars), all those born on a certain date, all those with the most money (they have more to leave to the rest of us and it would help solve the housing shortage), all the fat ones (they take up more space).
Maybe the UN could conduct a competition and award prizes for all the best suggestions on who to bump off and how to bump them off.
I think the idea of eating the dead is bad, we must get away from all this meat eating as producing meat is not an efficient use of resources.

<So who agrees that the global over population and political instability problem may get serious enough to warrant action beyond voluntary use of contrception and family planning services?>

Boylesy

You have to take the approach that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took with Mikhail Gorbachev. Sell the benefits of change as those benefits are readily apparent wherever they have been adopted. All the bull about the ageing catastrophe resultant from becoming a stable population is insignificant in comparison with the infrastructure shortfalls, environmental degradation and human misery and deprivation resultant from high population growth. What of the 400 million Indonesians projected for mid century? Will they threaten Australia? More likely the country will be a dysfunctional mess, but I suspect that the Indonesian Government will have a family planning program long before then.

Peace, Peace, Peace........dear or dear.

The irrational hand waving of hysterical anthropocentrists like your self is SOOOOOO tiresome.

No one has suggested actively bumping folks off as a way to deal rapidly with over population.

But you can be sure that, if we allow population growth to continue on its current trajectory, that bumping people off will be precisely what we will end up doing through war and genocide, more so in the developing world than in the west perhaps.

Ohhh it will be labeled as ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, despotic regimes blah, blah, blah. But at its heart it will be caused by to many people in mortal combat over to few resources as occurs among countless other animal populations.

You can be mature and intelligent enough to face this harsh reality or you can go on sticking your head in the sand and pretend that it isn't happening or wont happen. As I am sure the previous generations did when Hitler began his ascendancy.

"but I suspect that the Indonesian Government will have a family planning program long before then."

More likely Indonesia will become a near failed state with a ruling class and an under class much like Libya.

Periodically they will send in their armed forces to do a bit of culling when the under class grows too big and politically restless.

Watch out Yabby, if you try to defend yourself with common sense and reason, by challenging the bullying innuendos and attacks of harpies, you will only be accused of displaying some personality disorder.

Saltpetre offers a couple of visions of the future….

Your projections are about 6-7 billion options short on alternatives, Saltpetre

Life is chaos… don’t pretend it will ever be different

However, the hubris of so called “scientists” groveling for climate change grants and pretending they can accurately predict some abyss into which mankind is about to fall is as unreal as the notion that population numbers will cause the ultimate decline and extinction of humanity.

Fact, this world has a self correcting process. Scarcity of land or grazing causes fertility to decline in animal species – we think we have fixed that by intervention in the natural order of human existence. I do believe, however, that anyone who thinks the numbers if humans will not decline if food sources of and shelter are reduced is a fool. Ultimately people will not be able to “breed” when they lack the basic resources to support their offspring, alternatively in the dilemma and need for food, they will kill their offspring, at birth to survive.

None of this is a pretty picture for the individuals involved but we are not talking about individuals … The numbers of humans in the world is a species issue, addressing species you cannot be specific to individuals but I will speculate

Given equal access to limited resources – it will be the fittest who survive and the unfittest who will perish.
This is the way of the world… for myself, if I try to see the issue in individual terms I end up with the conclusion:
What is important is to try ones best to be among the fittest and those who choose otherwise (the unfit) can suffer the consequences of their indolence and it will come to a point when people say “Welfare” with threatening population numbers can we afford it

And we are back to “survival of the fittest”

And in that context the 'fittest' are always the most violent, and aggressive, the least compassionate and empathic and the least respecting of human rights!

Hence my reason for suggesting that we should consider a biological means of global fertility control even if it infringes a little on one particular human right of freedom to procreate.

Is it actually a human right or a responsibility?