It is not only "parts" of the world that are overpopulated, but this whole planet.

Apparently some scribe was lazy or wanted to save on shards/scrolls, so when they copied God's blessing, "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth", they omitted the sunset clause, that "until" which explained when "full" is full enough. They must have thought: "this is superfluous, it is unrealistic, humans are so few, it will never happen anyway so this is not worth the scroll it would be written on" - well they were wrong and it did happen, about 2,000 years ago and since then this world is overpopulated and like the sorcerer's apprentice, we don't know how to stop it!

For any quality of life, for dignity and freedom, to fulfil the full human potential rather than sardine potential, we ought to reduce human global population to around 100-200 millions. If we fail to do so willingly, then nature will do it for us but in a more painful manner.

If you truly believe the world needs to reduce population Yuyutsu, go for it, we'll watch & cheer. The world could feed a much larger population if needed. In my district alone there are thousands of acres of good farm land doing nothing but running a few cattle. They aren't farmed because people are not completely stupid.

Growing food in Oz except broad acre crops or in very large industrial style farms is a recipe for bankruptcy. The returns are so poor. We had an incredibly industrious Vietnamese family start a market garden on about 20 acres of top land on the river a couple of kilometers up stream. They worked their butts off, but earned little. The council jumped on them when they had a little honest customer stall on the side of the road.

They now run a couple of trucks, the farm lies fallow, & they eat much better.

If ever growing food becomes viable financially, hundreds would love producing it.

Dear Foxy,

You and Belly seem to have been sucked in by the "Poverty dictates big families" argument. My recollection of the argument is that it gets trotted out by senior ministers of countries with a high birth rate. I am amazed how gullible people are to believe that a man (let's face it, all of these countries are patriarchys) should known how all the women in his country think. Would you consult one person if you wanted to know what all the women in Australia thought? To do so for any country, in my opinion, betrays a stereotyping that was commonplace in our past.

What is understood about fertility is that populations stabilise if contraception is made available. Given very clumsy past programs, current programs risk being labelled as benign genocide.

Belly,

4 decades ago Zimbabwe was extremely prosperous. It fell into ruin not because of the incompetence of the new government, but rather its kleptocracy and greed.

The same thing happened in Kenya, Zambia, the Congo (Zaire) etc and is now happening in South Africa.

Fester,

The book by Professor Tor Hundloe "From Buddha to
Bono: Seeking sustainability".

Today we desperately seek solutions to climate
change, water scarcity, pollution, over population,
and Third World poverty.

It's worth a read.

Shadow Minister,

Took the words out of my mouth. I was half way through writing a similar post when your's came through.

One thing you missed however is that many of these kleptocrats who stole their nations wealth were Marxists.

Belly raised Zimbabwe. Well it fell into poverty at the hands of Marxists.

Communist Muagbe died a US$ billionaire.

South Africa is also embracing Marxism.

There's an old saying. In capitalism, the rich get powerful. In Communism, the powerful get rich.