Julian Cribb: "In the absence of a totalitarian world govt, my assumption is that the only truly effective instrument we will have to check population is prosperity."
It is time to get upfront and recogninse that totalitarianism is the greatest cause of population expansion.
That was recognised in 1994 at Cairo. There, empowerment of women was agreed upon as being necessary to advance their well-being: at least give them the opportunity to limit the size of their families. That necessity has not been realised due, more than anything else, to the totalitarian attitudes of the Vatican and of the American administration's fundamentalist Christian supporters. Both have fought tooth and nail to prevent implementation of the issues agreed upon in Cairo. As a result, since then another billion needy people are sharing the fast-diminishing resources of this planet. Its environmental resources are being mined (not sustainably farmed) to cater for more than six and a half billion people. Two billion are less than the age of fifteen.

For some hundred thousand years, our ancestors' birth-to-death rates were closely matched. Then, ten thousand years ago, agriculture tipped the balance slightly in favour of births. Nature stepped in to level that up somewhat by diseases such as smallpox (which needed population aggregations in excess of 20,000) and other diseases - mostly acquired from animal proximity.
Two centuries back the balance again tipped in favour of births, due to the advent of fossil fuel abundance for both energy and fertiliser, and of death minimisation due to more hygenic living. By 1950, human numbers had increased in that interval from almost one, to two billion; in spite of nature's best efforts with Influenza etc..
In the past half century we really got into top gear with death minimisation: births to deaths is way out of kilter. No animal population, human or otherwise, can continue to expand the way we currently do.
If we are to behave as the "big-brained mammal" should, we will cease acceptance of the totalitarian actions of the Vatican and Bush Administrations.

"People stop having kids when they become affluent."

Caritas, perhaps you have it exactly arse about there.

If we look at the 80 million per year that are increasing,
its usually in countries where religion interferes with
Government and women are denied family planning resources.
A huge number of those women, given the choice, would
not have so many children.

When you have institutions like the Vatican, doing what
they can to stop women using condoms, the pill, having
the snip etc, at the same time having huge influence
on Govts in third world countries, no wonder the
population keeps increasing.

In fact there are plenty of institutions linked to the
Vatican, actively encouraging women in places like
the Philipines, to have even more kids, despite the
overcrowding. Perhaps they just want more little Catholics,
in their fight with the muslims.

I don't think I have found a site in which so much unjustified ego and plain ignorance, is slapped up against rigid low scale academia and rampant ideological belief. The above posts are a parade of cerebral deficiency; not that any of the inhabitants will ever know this, due to their very evident lack of thirst for challenge and common incapacity to comprehend humanity. MSN has a good site titled respect party, if any equally disappointed readers are still searching. I'm off, dreadful dead dudes.

This is wonderful. No mention of population in the article, but so many people jumping in and saying just how important the population factor is.

Plerdsus writes;

“It would appear that the need to control population is the great taboo subject of this century.”

Yes indeed. But maybe, just maybe, that taboo is being broken down…..at last.

That was unfair of me; Bushbred and Rhian seem to do their homework and clearly have both feet on the floor. But to the rest of you, if the names Rockefeller, Rothschild, Soros and Brzezinski mean little to you in the context of the population crisis, along with the IMF/BIS, then you are a long way from beginning the gradual journey rise on the globalisation learning curve.

Tony, the rest of us have done some thinking too, not just those
that happen to agree with you. Perhaps its you who should
address the problem of the huge influence of religion,
in places like Africa and other third world countries.

It used to be a problem in the West, but luckily we told
the religious to get lost, to a large degree.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3147672.stm

The above link leads you to a BBC Panorama transcript, of
a few of the things happening in the third world. You ignore
them are your peril.

Given that Catholic police squads were going around burning
condoms in Rwanda, before the large genocide, you would
be foolish to understimate this factor as a problem for
third world women.