Education of women in third world countries has been touted as providing the choice to have less children, but will this actually work?

Islam is the second biggest religion after Christianity making up some 1.57 billion people in 2009. Both religions appear to be hell bent on out-breeding each other. Not all, but many Islamic males treat their women quite horribly. In those Islamic households, sex is demanded by men and the women chastised if any resultant pregnancy fails to deliver a son. Under such circumstances, female education is frowned upon by males, so how is education even going to be possible? You'd have to start with educating men to consider their women as equal. And I stress, not all Islamic men hold these views, but in the worst parts of the Islamic culture, atrocities against women are carried out on a daily basis.

Christianity, on the other hand, are also attempting to our-breed the others. Their holy book has been cleverly written by AD scholars to make followers believe that it's their divine right to breed with abandon which in turn will assure that the word of their particular brand of cult is spread far and wide.

So it's ok to say education is the key to controlling the birth rate, but first to have to convert religious minds and that's simply not possible.

Clownfish
We can always depend on you to lower the tone of the debate, can't we? Yet again you play the man and not the ball. Your reference to "the screeching neo-Malthusian ninnies' was offensive.
Cheryl
You're not much better. Your reference to anti-pops and "their thinking has a nasty regressive element" was just simply false. I deal with people who seek an ecologically sustainable population every day and they tend to be driven by deep humanitarianism. So why not address the issues raised by Divergence and nicco and stop insulting everyone.
Everald
I agree with you that the world is overpopulated, that is, there's an imbalance between the number of people and the resources required to meet their needs. Your argument, however, that we need to increase our population and get it up to that of the US is just ignorant. We are a desert continent with only 6 per cent of the land arable. The US has vast areas of much more fertile land - thanks largely to so much of it being covered by massive amounts of ice through the last ice age - and it can support many more people though it too is already overpopulated with 310 million.

Because the current global population of nearly seven billion is largely propped up by the ready availability of conventional oil, we will face severe problems as oil begins its inevitable decline before long. Many analysts say we can only accommodate 1-2 billion people in the world once the oil has run out, so we had better start thinking quickly how best to reduce our numbers in the most humane way possible.

Clownfish,

Instead of assuming that we are hypocrites, why not ask people here how many children they have? It is only possible for Neo-Malthusians to be hypocrites if they themselves have had large families while simultaneously urging restraint on others. I stopped at two and suspect that others here have had one or none. On the other hand, high income growthists are hypocrites if they are unwilling to reduce their consumption to the living standards that they clearly deem acceptable for others. If it OK for other people to be forced into overpriced, crowded high density living, have their water severely rationed, and put up with overstretched and overloaded infrastructure and public services, then the growthists should not be able to buy their way out of these problems.

Loudmouth,

Read Banjo's post and link. Fertility rates can drop quickly, and yes, it will take a long time to get population down far enough in many poor countries to give people a really good quality of life, but at least there won't be a collapse and there will be hope of improvements, because of technological advances and because the infrastructure budget can be spent on the existing population, not on extending the same lousy standards to more and more people. With decent labour productivity, the younger generations will be able to cope, as they are now in Europe.

We do waste a lot of fruit, but it is unlikely that much is wasted in Bangladesh, and it probably won't be wasted for much longer here either, as prices continue to rise due to the rising costs and scarcity of agricultural inputs. You don't seem to realise that we have moved from a world where well-being was limited by the supply of labour to one where well-being is limited by competition for resources and damage to planetary life support systems. See my environmental footprint link above.

Loudmouth

You raise the subject of the aging catastrophe, albeit in euphemistic tones. I cannot say that I am convinced. I certainly am not convinced by the scaremongering tone of the pop-growth extremists.

As gets regularly pointed out by many on this forum, there are serious flaws with the claim of an aging catastrophe, namely:

-Is it ageing that is the problem, or the increased incidence of chronic illness that goes with it?

-Is caring for the aged person a greater burden than raising and educating children? People tend to need care in the last two years of their life on average: How many two year olds live independently?

-The studies suggesting an ageing catastrophe all assume that medical costs will skyrocket, yet make no consideration to the fact that medical advances can greatly improve a patient's productivity. There are many instances where advances in medical treatment have had a very positive economic impact, yet the studies discount this possibility.

-All the studies pointing to the aging catastrophe rely on computer simulations of the world many decades into the future. Given the great skepticism of many pop-growth extremists to computer simulations of the manifestations of CO2 induced global warming, why then are many of the same people so blindly accepting of a type of forecast which the evidence would suggest is almost always wrong, even for projections of a fraction of that time?

Maybe those proposing a "big Australia" and pretending to believe that over population isn't a problem should read the ABC article in the link below and then read through the comments that follow. Those comments would seem to suggest that not too many people really think that adding more numbers to the world population is a good idea and they give excellent reasons why not!

Trust me. It's worth a look.
Aime.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2757948.html

Many people get it, sustainable living with just one child or happy to be childless. These fine citizens have the vision of a healthy biodiversity as their intergenerational legacy.

Does our society honour these values and the individuals that have chosen such lifestyles? Slurs on barren women, single parents and same sex marriage couples do'nt help. The biggest tax incentives and bonuses for big families doesn't quite do it either.

We know that water and food shortages cause decimation of other species and risks catastrophe for human populations. We also know that our greatest strength is to think and act strategically to eliminate or minimise high risks. We can do this by establishing the foundations of a viable steady-state sustainable living model that evaluates everything with a quadruple bottom line including our economic well being together with our wellness in environmental health, strong social justice and policies developed in a fully engaging way with citizens in a participatory democracy to govern our society.

We are standing on a precipice. On our present trajectory our downfall looks likely and will probably be attributed to the lack of gutsy leadership throughout our society in remaking our broken institutions and fixing flawed decision-making processes. Bumbling along throwing dollars to appease vested interests is no way to prepare for the financial and environmental tsunamis about to be unleashed from sudden movement in those two massive tectonic plates, greed and stupidity.