You guys are putting the cart before the horse. Humans breed when they are poor or stressed or religiously inclined or oppressed. If they are not they don't breed. We see many examples of nations where that is true; for instance nearly every Western Nation and particularly Japan.

The main ingredients for the prosperity necessary to curtail population are cheap technology and individual rights democracies.

And if you have not noticed enforcing edicts about who can and cannot reproduce in those types of societies is anathema to those basic social principles.

So, the solution is increase prosperity. The greens will decrease prosperity; in fact their declared intention is to reduce lifestyle; so logically, the greens if successful in promulgating their odious ideology will increase population.

Unless, of course, they introduce enforced sterilisation; and of course anything is possible if the greens are in power.

Look,

As long as Me and my kids can live a cosy first-world lifestyle to age 90 or whatever, it doesn't matter if future generations have no resources left and die in horror and degradation.

People have to understand that the here-and-now is all that matters. Its up to future generations to find more resources after Gina Reinhardt guts every mineral on the Australian continent in the next 20 years. When they can't find minerals future generations will have to fight each other or suicide to fit in with evolutionary pressures in a New World. And that's not our problem!

As Julia Gillard puts it "Its time for all nations to make stimulus packages and GROWTH" so we can live the LIFE and ENSURE women's breeding rights - the MOST important single ISSUE as Julia Gillard correctly infers in her pleas to other nations.

T-Rex didn't care what kind of Earth he left, Why should WE. Clearly it's fate.

Good on Cheryl and JJ for getting with the program.

And if overpop doomers lay a guilt trip on our SELFISHNESS just tell them, "Demographers generally don't get concerned unless the fertility rate goes below 1.5, that is, you don't want population to decline faster than about 1% annually". That always shuts 'em up!
Then, avoid like hell the issue of global population increase of 75 million people^/year.

That way we can all get on, men having sex, women having babies, Coles and Woolies having more customers and Julia and all the other politicians having more votes and taxes to collect.

This is OUR planet, not some creepy future dweller's. So, let's P.A.R.T.Y ..

WhY?

Because we have the Technology and We GOTTA!

And oh, by all means plead for illegal islamic boat migrants to be placed in communities within 30 days of arrival. Slaves are essential for raising our kids in style. But be clever like Malcolm Fraser. NEVER let them come to OUR community. As a rule of thumb ALWAYS externalise the immigration costs & dangers to poorer communities which don't have the resources to fight-back.

Enjoy Australia! OUR-FUTURE.

Cohenite, if you are arguing that making everybody prosperous and educated will reduce the birth rate because women will then have the know-how and means to employ contraception, and Yabby is saying that women in impoverished countries could reduce the birth rate now if the wealthy nations would give them access to the necessary know-how and means, why isn't his solution not only more assured of working than yours, but more likely to have its effect in time to stave off a species catastrophe?

@KAEP: "As long as Me and my kids can live a cosy first-world lifestyle to age 90 or whatever, it doesn't matter if future generations have no resources left and die in horror and degradation."

KAEP, when you can tell us exactly what resources, technologies, discoveries and problems will be around in, say, 100 years -- and prove it -- then you will be entitled to tell us how to make life better for the people who live then. But until you can demonstrate your ability to make flawless long-term predictions covering every possible set of circumstances, you're in the same position as the Londoners who predicted in 1880 that their streets would soon be waist-deep in horsecrap.

In other words, you just don't get it.

GlenC, you say Yabby's idea of giving women in impoverished nations the means to control their fertility is a better method then my method of making women [and everyone] more prosperous and better educated.

That is unrealistic; here is a list of all nations listed in terms of their wealth;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Look at the bottom nations, the most poor; these are strongly patriarchal, tribalised and oppressive nations; often they have the patina of Islam which makes the oppression and inferior status of women even worse.

Do you really think if the UN pulls up, distributes some condoms, birth control pills and some instruction manuals that the women will take them or that their menfolk will let them take contraception?

Here is a map of the fertility rates of the nations of the world:

http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=31

Scary isn't it?

The UN is a waste of space because a lot of the most fertile nations are voting members and have oppressive, as measured by the standard of individual rights and democratic structure, societies.

Frankly I think Yabby's idea is ridiculous.

In response the the Jon J comment "The best way to assure the welfare of future generations is to accumulate wealth ourselves and then pass it on to them, not to force them into squalor and then lecture them about living within their means."
Not sure what the basis is for this idea. A family's wealth, for example, is usually divided between the number of children and so the less children there are the more weathly each of those children would be on receipt of their inheritance. Now consider the situation where a family has 12 children, and they have used up all the family's resources through their eating, education, etc. Where is the wealth to be passed on to the next generation? And the little there is 'left-over' would be divided between so many.
Think this analogy could be logically be extended to the global population. Eating it all now, isn't going to provide a jot for the next generation. There is no savings bank for food, money, or non-renewable resources that our generation can pass on to the next. Not much point everyone in our generation being rich and educated and fat, and there being nothing left for the next generation...