Well, you seem to have outlined all the problems but none of the solutions Valarie!

One notes that Easter Island solved its over population problem and lack of food resources; via tribal war cannibalism?

Intensely Catholic Philippines is not going to accept birth control anytime soon, due to their brain washed or brain dead attitudes? Ditto much of South America and large swathes of Africa! None of which is assisted by primitive belief and (bone pointing) superstition.

And as intelligent as your article is Valarie, I'm just not sure it will ever actually change much in any of the aforementioned places, anymore than whistling into the wind might!?

Moreover, lecturing by foreign intellectuals only seems to entrench and harden current attitudes and practices?

The only thing that has seemed to make a difference as effective population control; is education, and for the female gender in particular! And therefore the best and perhaps the only place to direct all our foreign aid?

Other than that, helping "EDUCATED" folks (women) to help themselves via micro loans; seems to have had a history of outstanding and enduring success; far beyond those our small pool of funds have assisted?

Given repaid loans can be loaned out again and again, almost indefinitely!

Education seems to be half the battle and eliminating poverty wherever we find it, the other half!?
Rhrosty.

Well said, Valerie,

This is the age-old advice - "Don't be selfish", but telling it never worked: how can one shed the blanket of self-interest and why would one do it? What possibly could cause anyone to willingly give up the prospect of dignity in old age? It is of course easy enough to want all others to be unselfish...

The alternative to this impossible task of giving up self-interest as we know it, is to know our true selves - then only we can discover what our true self-interests are (if any).

So long as we believe ourselves to be a human body, then this body is endowed with genes that were programmed over billions of years to preserve it and reproduce more copies. Our brains are wired this way by those genes, so they won't easily let go.

Archimedes said: "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world", but the catch is, that this lever has to stand out of the world.

This takes us beyond this and all other worlds, into the realm of spirit where we truly belong, where our interests are not mixed up with the interests of our genes, where the rider is not mixed up with the chariot:

“Know that the Self is the rider, and the body the chariot; that the intellect is the charioteer, and the mind the reins” - http://www.ocoy.org/dharma-for-christians/upanishads-for-awakening/the-katha-upanishad/the-chariot

Yet another article by someone who doesn't know what economic growth really is! It's not growth in resource use, though it tends to involve that, especially when resources are as abundant as they currently are.

Bicycles have brakes, so stopping without crashing shouldn't be a problem. It certainly wasn't when I learned to ride one.

It wasn't the loss of the trees that destroyed the Easter Island civilisation. They carried on intensively farming the land until disease and the slave trade removed most of the population.

Population growth in many poor countries is certainly a problem, but in most cases that problem's being addressed already.

Valarie - your Easter Island views have been shaped by overturned theories from Jarad Diamond, about islanders chopping down trees and inter-tribal competition. Those ideas were recognised as been speculative when they were proposed. They never rested on a great deal, although it was thought there had been population collapses on the island before European contact. Now that possibility is looking remote. see http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1025.abstract
Now it seems that it was western contact.. see
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4314788.ece