Canem Malum,

Whether you like the BBC or love it is irrelevant.

In this case it's not our opinions that matter -
but those who are knowledgeable in the key disciplines
underpinning modern environmental decision making
otherwise known as sustainability science; ecology;
economics and ethics.

Cheers.

Foxy said "In this case it's not our opinions that matter - but those who are knowledgeable in the key disciplines underpinning modern environmental decision making otherwise known as sustainability science; ecology; economics and ethics."

* Interesting comments here -

What's more important is the quality of the information that the "knowledgeable" produce - what I was intimating is that journalists require some knowledge of the problem - that perhaps they need to choose their experts better and ask better questions. I'd be surprised if journalists knew what a Malthusian Catastrophe is. The sad thing is experts, who have an agenda, need to be held accountable in a scientific community, but can get away with certain comments in the public media that they wouldn't in more scientific publications. But who knows academia is in a fairly sad state. Publishing publicly rather than in peer reviewed journals is discredited at certain institutions - seen as vanity publishing. It is fairly well known that Economics specialists are subject to certain political constraints if they're serious about their career.

Garbage in garbage out - the system needs to have integrity to be reliable. A PhD is what is known as - a requisite but not sufficient condition.

I didn't see "Population Biology" in your "knowledgeable" list - I suspect that would be most relevant here - maybe there was one but you missed it (could be the ecologist). Give me a link and we can check the source material...

Ben Goldacre's TED talk puts this very well! If I with hold 76% of the results I can convince you I've got a coin with two heads...

Anyway good discussion Foxy

The most important resource on the planet is the human brain
mhaze,
The thing with that is that the brain is already housed, the body is not. Another problem is that the brain takes in rubbish but can't empty it every monday.
We have bodies that house brilliant brains but superstition, greed, lust & lust for power outnumber these brilliant 6 Billion to one.
A lot of people make a lot of money by suppressing integrity & responsibility. Most of them can be encountered in authority where they work overtime.

Hey Mhaze,
”We've never ever run out of a single resource due to human ingenuity".

Let me tell you a story about human ingenuity.

A group of people out in their fishing boat get caught in an ocean current and eventually get marooned on an island thousands of miles from anywhere.
The island is heavily forested and there is much timber.
The people build boats and homes and can go far out from the island to fish and they live prosperously... for a time.
Eventually the forest starts to thin out and the timber resource becomes greatly diminished.
The people on the island then become divided into two factions and a civil war ensues among the people.
One group who want to preserve the remaining forest and the other who want to use the remaining timber for boats; to gather food.

Question: Does anyone here know of the people and place I'm talking about and what happens next?

If nobody figures it out I'll post the answer tomorrow.

My thing about this issue essentially is who decides who lives and who dies for someone else's 'preferred number'?

I'm not going to choose who should die.
And that's why I prefer to choose something else.

The only answer I can come up with for the previous question is this:

Those who truly believe we are overpopulated need to stand up for what they believe in and offer to kill themselves and or their dependents first, so that others who don't believe we are overpopulated aren't themselves forced to choose.

If you don't put your money where your mouth is then your adding to the problem.

Dear Critic,

Has anyone here suggested killing anyone else? I think not.

Not only that, as much as I consider procreation to be inappropriate in our day and age, I still strongly object to China's one/two-child policy.

We do however have every right not to support other people's actions which we find unwholesome. If they want to procreate, then they cannot be forbidden, but they will need to foot the bills.