Rhian,

Globally, we are doing serious damage to our environment and life support systems even with the existing population, facing shortages of losses of arable land, fresh water, forests, fish stocks, biodiversity, cheap fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and other technology (because most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked), and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. Anyone who reads Science or Nature, probably our most respected science journals, or follows the science news magazines and websites is aware of these problems. This article from Nature looks at the overall picture

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html
open version: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

Yes, over the top consumption and plain stupidity are part of it, but from the last Global Footprint Network atlas (2010), the top billion people in the richest countries are responsible for only about 38% of the consumption. People have to consume in order to survive, and they have to consume a lot more to have anything like a decent quality of life. This graph plots environmental footprint (consumption) against rank on the UN Human Development Index. It looks like 1-2 billion people to sustainably keep everyone in modest comfort.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/blog/human_development_and_the_ecological_footprint

We are only getting by now because so many of us are very poor and because we are consuming our environmental capital. Ehrlich et al. got at least the timing wrong because they couldn't predict the success of the Green Revolution, but might have the last laugh yet.

Yes, in most of the world people have brought down their fertility rates, but we would still be in for billions more people just due to demographic momentum, even if all countries had done this. Fast population growth leaves you with a pyramid-shaped age distribution, with the births in the huge young adult generation and most of the deaths in the relatively tiny elderly generation. Population growth can go on for up to another 70 years, even if the young people are having small families on average.

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There are still a significant number of countries, mostly but not exclusively in Africa and the Islamic world where fertility has remained high, essentially because the local culture is pronatalist and objects to contraception, or objects to education, equal rights and economic opportunities for women, or has problems with the public health and sanitary measures needed for better child survival. We can't just ignore them. They are why the UN has had to keep increasing its medium population projection to close to 11 billion by 2100. They are also places where people are dealing with overpopulation in the traditional human way, by trying to drive out or kill their neighbours to get enough resources for themselves. They are also the main source of the world's refugee flows. Syria has more than quadrupled its population since 1960 and people were spending around half their income on food, on average.

Frankly, I see very little difference between people like you and Aidan and the anti-vaxers, Holocaust deniers, or folks like Runner who deny evolution. You either accept the science or believe that there is some vast global conspiracy of the world's scientific community to lie to us. LEGO is making a lot more sense here than you.

Divergence

I’d support measures that ensure that all parents, and, especially women, are able to control their fertility. But even if policies influence fertility rates, there is precious little that governments can do to halt demographic momentum unless they take draconian measures. And those policies that might be effective can have severe unintended consequences, and risk overshoot – look at problems caused by China’s artificially rapid aging population, and Japan’s declining population.

Are you seriously suggesting that the main cause of Syria’s civil war was population pressures? Nothing to do with ethnic and sectarian conflict, a brutally oppressive government that is willing to gas its own citizens, interference by foreign powers; an influx of lunatic foreign jihadists….

Rhian,

There is never just one factor involved, but there is a clear relationship between food prices and social unrest. Religious and ethnic differences make good pretexts for violence and good rallying points when people are joining up sides, but you can't just assume away conflict over resources. Why is it, say, that the Syrians could coexist with their Christian and other minorities for centuries, but not now. What has changed? Curious isn't it that the land and other resources that these refugees couldn't carry with them now belong to someone else? If you are one of the new owners and have been spending half your income or more on food, these extra resources might make a real difference.

This article plots food riots on a graph of the FAO World Food Price Index

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455.pdf

"Much of the world today has the same survival problems virtually all humans had in the distant past. Land and food are in short supply, and there is continuous competition for such resources today, just as in the past. People do starve to death, and their neighbors will kill them and take their land if they get a chance." Prof. Steven LeBlanc (Archaeology, Harvard) in his book "Constant Battles"

What do this fellows want to progress towards?

Perhaps an ant-hill is their ideal model?!

Divergence

It’s true that rising food prices were seen by some commentators as a contributor to the Arab Spring. But this was not caused by population growth. Basic foodstuffs are commodities and go through marked price cycles. Over the longer term, however, there is no upward trend in real food prices that you would expect if supply growth didn’t match demand growth. The FAO’s real food price index has fallen in the past four years and is now at about the same level as its average for the past 30+ years. The recent peak in real prices did not match the earlier major cycle in the 1970s.

http://www.fao.org/statistics/en/

Combined with rising real earnings, this means that foods is becoming more affordable on average over time, not less.