The "Elephant in the Room" at the Bali talkfest was "population control".

Nothing will change until this issue is dealt with.

Carbon emmissions, deforestation, over-fishing and many other blights upon the sustainability of the planet come down to this issue.

I would note, the inventive genius and imagination of the developed world to counter the effects of population growth, with more effiecient food production including GM crops and improved techniques is being overrun by the profligate breeding habits of the underdeveloped world.

This is not going to go away.

Global warming and Climate change will not abate because the deveopled world imposes restraints upon their commercial potential with carbon taxes.

Global warming and climate change, due to human activities, will only go away or stabalize when the burgeoning populations and over-breeding habits of underdeveloped and ill-equipped nations is halted.

We will eventually reach the point where the conditions tied to economic subsistence (world bank funds etc) will be tied to accepting the introduction of contraceptives into a nations water supply.

Better underdeveloped nations grasp the nettle and do something to help themselves and the rest of us, before such measures become mandatory.

Never thought I'd say this, but agree with everyone's posts including; sputter, choke, sputter Leigh AND Col Rouge. Incredible.

Well if consensus can occur on the pages of OLO, then perhaps our world leaders can work something out as well. Will they put population on the agenda? If not, why not?

Thanks for posting an interesting article. You have made evident that population growth is part of a constellation, a web of interrelated issues that are becoming rapidly more urgent.

I expect that although critical population densities of humans was not an explicit issue on the Bali Climate Conference Agenda, it nevertheless was atalking point in the halls and hotels.

Population was one of the five factors modeled and reported upon in "The Limits to Growth", by Meadows, Meadows, Randers and Behrens, back in 1972.

The authors state on page 21:

"Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern - accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment."

Their report was a lightning rod for global interests that actively in accelerate industrialisation, deplete resources and are careless of the environment. Dismissals of "The Limits to Growth" can still be found on the internet. Its authors have found their place with Darwin and Freud, in giving the world some ideas to worry about.

Dennis L Meadows, one of the authors cited above, remarks in a recent interview:

" ... we have developed a variety of economic data systems and decision support systems that implicitly take quantitative growth as a goal. So the numbers we focus on automatically lead us to physical expansion. Satisfying goals for quantitative growth can be a source of enormous profit for the organizations that advertise in the media. Satisfying qualitative goals does not offer the same potential for profit, at least over the short term. So advertisements stimulate physical growth. We are on a treadmill that spins faster and faster but leads nowhere."
http://www.euronatur.org/Interview_Dennis_Meadows.dennismeadows_en.0.html

Those decision systems ignore population growth and density at their peril.

Valerie - you have no idea - and I can't believe the responses so far. Are your heads in the sand? Overpopulation has never been an issue, and never will be an issue in this country and even globally.

Human beings account for a miniscule percentage of greenhouse gases. Climate change has little to do with how many humans inhabit this planet. Putting an undue emphasis on the environment before the need and the right for humans to reproduce is blind, selfish and bizzare.

This sounds like a Maulthusian doomsday article that can't understand that technological advancement and human capabilities have always found a way to provide for each other. The only reason why we have people starving in some countries is a gross inbalance and lack of distribution of wealth and power.

"Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens; but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens.": American land-economist Henry George.

Valerie says, "Almost every Western country in fact has a greater population than in 1950" Once again, are you absolutely bananas? Of course population will grow. If population does not grow over 55 years, then we are a dying breed. The world's population rate has been dropping since 1963, when it was 2.19%. Some countries already have a negative population growth and those who have the highest rate are Africa and the Middle East.

There must have been a dinosaur once called Valerisaurus who came up with a theory about overpopulation...

How do you convince third world countries that over population is bad when their whole system and religion is geared around producing large families. More hands make light work is their unacknowledged belief.
And how can you convince left wing governments ,refugee activists and vested interests that encouraging poorly educated enthusiastic fertile
third worlders to swamp our immigration and welfare systems is bad for our country? They do not care.

"If population does not grow over 55 years, then we are a dying breed"

Poppycock. There's no reason human population has to change substantially over that sort of period - indeed it barely budged for 1000s of years on end for much of human existence, and at various points almost certainly went to decline for significant periods.
Anyway, all the evidence so far suggests that global population will stabilise well before the end of this century, and may well decline for some time, before efforts are taken to up the fertility rate again. We could afford several centuries of moderate population decline without any threat of "dying out".

And what is Henry George's quote supposed to prove - that the Earth has infinite capacity for supporting more and more life, so long as there are more and more humans? Economists like him and Simon never really understood the basic laws of thermodynamics that constrain all physical activity within the Earth's biosphere - which is unfortunate, because they were capable of making useful observations about human behaviour that some ecologists often overlook.

Indeed on that point, as I've said before, there's no reason we can't reduce our total level of ecological stress on the planet while maintaining or even growing our numbers - just as cars today emit less pollution than they did 30 years ago when there were far less of them. So while population growth should be a reason for concern, it's not necessarily a showstopper.