"Whenever men start talking about cutting the population, what they really mean is cutting a woman's rights to do with her body as she pleases."

Very funny, Cheryl. The irony is that population growth is underpinned by men (mostly) denying women the right to voluntary birth control. By giving women voluntary access to contraception, the World's population would stabilise and decline without the need for any intervention at all. It is the ony measure I would advocate, nothing else. As much as some pop-growth advocates want to paint a picture of advocates for stabilising the World's population as a bunch of people hating neo-Malthusians usurping people's rights and herding them off to death camps, the picture belies the evidence.

Now what does Cheryl think of giving the World's population voluntary access to contraception I wonder? What of the ~200 million women who would use contraception were it made available to them?

"The way forward to keep the planet in balance,is freedom/democracy and not their totalitariarn New World Order."

Dear Arjay.

Thats a nice little sentence. Would you care to explain the " keep the planet in balance" and how you are going to accomplish this?

The New World Order.

All in good time:) hard New decisions have to be made, and so far the rest of the pollies hero's puppets have failed. New ideas like No baby bonus, a five year plan that if you can support the child until 21 with No government help, then that's fine.....for the rest, it will be simply illegal and abortion will be offered. If that option is not taken, then family members will have to support you. However, one year will be open for all to give birth with full government support.

Something like that will in time, have to be considered, and if not........well, I think you all know the answers to that one.

The clock is ticking.

Good luck

LEA

The immediate problem is not so much the population numbers but the severe imbalance of who controls and uses most of the available resources.

A tiny percentage of the global population exploits the rest to feed its growing hunger for an ever-increasing standard of living.

We already have the technology and resources to adequately feed and clothe everybody on the planet but not the will.

I doubt that any lasting solution to resolve this will ever be attempted but just to rely on the standard methods - War, Pestilence and Famine.

Is it possible to discuss the consequences of the plague of humans without religious and economic fundamentalists pouring out of the woodwork and drenching the unbrainwashed with spittle laden tirades?

I had a quick squiz at Everald's CV. He's a funny guy. That deadpan delivery had me going. Addressing the global over-population problem by more than doubling our population to 50 million? Hilarious! It's about time someone stepped into Campbell McComas' shoes.

Loudmouth,

You seem to assume that technology will be able to solve all those very different and very serious environmental problems, but won't be able to increase labour productivity. In 1850 half the people in the US made their living from agriculture. Now it is less than 2%. The same thing has been happening more recently with manufacturing jobs, where technology is a far greater source of job losses than outsourcing.

http://www.automationworld.com/news-414

Look at how countries made do and redirected labour during World War II. This is a far less serious problem, and the Europeans are basically coping with it now. Trying to solve it with population growth just creates an even bigger problem down the track.