"Sigh. No, not always. Not even nearly always. There is one species where should be very clear to you males to compete strongly for females, they the biggest and strongest do not always, or even mostly win. That would be humans. Peacocks would be another example, as would bower birds."

Bull$hit rstuart!

And I already acknowledged that a proportion of birds are an exception to the rule and pointed out that humans are mammals not birds!

If you are going to sit behind you key board and attempt to convince me that the general rule for mammals is that the biggest and strongest do not prevail in the procreation stakes, then you needn't bother!

Why don't you compile a list of mammal species where the above is not the case and compare to my list where the above is the case. I have little doubt who the winner will be.

You fellows are wasting your time. There is no easy explanation of the operation of Natural Selection, as I am sure you are only too well aware. If it were simple, then cockroaches would rule the world, the oceans, and everything in between. (After the nuclear holocaust, that will be all that will be left.)

If power were an available solution to overpopulation, a few well placed nukes would solve the problem. Fortunately, it is important not to create a bigger problem in the process.

I still contend that cooperation, and not force, is the key to solving all of the world's problems, not just overpopulation. However, there is a shrinking window of opportunity. Shall the West be guilty of counting its gold, or arguing politics, while the viability of the planet goes down the drain?

@Boylesy: Why don't you compile a list of mammal species where the above is not the case and compare to my list where the above is the case.

Now that you have firmly changed to the goal posts to mammal's Boylesy, I am going to have to concede. But did you know it is not true for the mammalian order of Lagomorpha - hares and rabbits?

"Having said that, it can be difficult to bond two rabbits. Often they fight when they are first introduced until one rabbit is deemed to be the dominant rabbit of the pair. "

I aint no expert on rabbit biology but your claim doesn't sound entirely accurate to me rstuart.

To get back to the topic:

On a global scale, there are two ways that population increases, both relating to the net balance of fertility and mortality:

* more babies are born than the number of people dying;

* people living longer - even if there was world-wide zero net fertility, if everybody lived ten years longer, then in ten years' time, there would be maybe another billion people on the planet.

So, there seem to be two distinct approaches: either -

* to increase the killing of people already born, such as the lunatic 'solutions' proposed above, about viruses and the goodness of wars and destrucution generally, and in this way reduce people's life expectancy, OR

* to reduce fertility levels by more sensible proposals - for example, to ensure that women get much better education and reduce the number of children they have in that way, and that schooling is compulsory for all children from five or six up to fifteen (thereby becoming a financial burden rather than a help around the house or farm or factory: cf. the magnificent John Caldwell).

The first step - before any daydreams about actual population reduction - would be to stabilise the world population at some level, taking into account that longer-life factor. So the questions become:

: how do we improve world-wide health and education opportunities, particularly for women ?

: how can poorer countries be assisted to put educational infrastructure in place so that all children can get at least ten years of schooling, plus vocational and university opportunities ?

: how can we strengthen women's rights around the world, so that they can have choices over their own bodies and careers ?

As I suspect we will soon learn from the Chinese disaster, limiting family size may well be a catastrophic way to combat these problems. So there are clearly no easy ways, even just to reduce population growth, let alone stabilise it at a particular number, like nine or ten billion. Daydreams of actual population reduction should, of course, be considered, but,let's,not,be,too,free,with,Grand,Plans,About Other People's Lives.

Joe Lane

Boyelsy:
"What is at issue here is not the survival of the human race, but the survival of western civilisation that we all value reagrdless of its many faults"

I don't value western civilisation, regardless of any questionable merit it might claim.

Loudmouth,

... so you've said precisely nothing? apart from that tired moral imperative about "Other People's Lives", ignored in practice.

It's fascinating the way people fall back on that old saw as a defence for doing nothing; affected passivity, a mode of conservatism.

As it happens, overpopulation is not the problem, over-consumption is, and the main culprit is the West, which, "apparently", has comparatively stable populations.
As I've tried to indicate above, we should be considering the matter in world-system terms. Population growth in "developing countries" (the term says a lot, suggesting they too will eventually join the ranks of the mega-rich--as if!) is the by-product of Western affluence. All the world's populations are connected and overpopulation in poor countries is the vicarious effect of Western lifestyles, more properly of the capitalist dynamic--the profit motive.
The Western glut--a crisis of obesity, ennui, population-stagnation, decadence generally--is a "middle-class" disease (the term these days of course includes the so-called "working classes") and nearly as pitiful as its obverse manifestation in the developing world, whose complementary source is poverty, driving hope, appetite, ambition.
Poverty and wealth symbiotically feed off each other, and that's what keeps the whole thing going. It can't be adjusted and it can't attain overall prosperity within a closed system whose limits are already starkly apparent.
Until the problem is seen in the holistic terms that prevail, all talk on the matter will be inevitably parochial, as this thread bares-out.
The problem has nothing to do with Christian ideology (scientistic ideology is the culprit); it's a purely materialistic dynamic.