Dear Mr Opinion,

Without the Industrial Revolution the world's
population - and the resultant pressure on
natural resources - would not have grown much,
if at all, from its number of approximately
on billion in 1825. It took under 200 years,
to the year 2000, for human population to increase
six fold to six billion. We had to wait from
about year zero ( the birth of Jesus Christ) to
1800 for the previous six-fold increase.

We must never lose sight of the vast number of us
humans on the planet. If the brakes are not
applied now we certainly will be in plague
proportions, and a sustainable future will be
foregone.

We should also note while on the subject of the
causes of population growth that near the end
of the 18th century Edward Jenner developed a
vaccination for smallpox and, as a consequence,
immunology came into existence.

This resulted in
the saving of countless of lives and was to propel
the "population explosion" that was being driven by
other new forces (such as greatly improved
productivity in food production, various break-throughs
in medicine, and, at last, a recognition that urban
filth was a major cause of disease and short life spans.

Between 1825 and 1923 the world's population virtually
doubled.

I won't go through all the history of
breakthroughs in technology - except to say that life
spans were expanded significantly -
in other words - it was the progress in medicine,
immunology and sanitation coupled with the transformation of
subsistence-scale farming to large-scale agriculture that
allowed for the take-off and rapid increase of the
world's population.

All the evidence today suggests that
we must turn around population growth
and aim for a much smaller population
than we have. Already there are highly developed European
countries where - regardless of religion - the population
is declining.

We find that South Koreans, Singaporeans,
Japanese and Chinese have minimal births per woman,
are becoming concerned
about birth rates. Politicians such as Peter Costello who
at one stage promoted large families - need to stop doing so
today.

Racism? twat! truth some times gets some claiming that
Now if mankind found a way to get all its power for free, say using water, that would only empower more over population
If we say continued growth is good and used this free fuel to put ten million in our out back,we would cripple that land, it has not got the soil to grow much

Its the same old Malthusian rubbish.

They've been telling us since the 18th century that population growth will out-pace food supplies.

From Malthus to Ehrlick to Club or Rome, and so on and so on, they predict doom and the usual crowd buy it.

But they were wrong - they are always wrong. And yet here we are, the same crowd, utterly uneducated as to the past errors, making the same false presumptions, making the same errors of fact, making the same misunderstanding as to the maths...and assuming that they are the enlightened ones.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so dangerous. It dangerous because the Malthusian impulse is so pervasive that it coerces governments into making the wrong decisions. And it allows carpet-baggers to fleece all and sundry.

Here's something to those who believe both in the we're-all-gunna-die from famine rubbish and the we're-all-gunna-die from warming theory.

The IPCC predictions about the future are based on predictions about the future global economy. You can't predict future emissions if you don't know what the future economy will be like.

Here's the kicker. These predictions say that Nigeria will be as rich per person in 2100 as the US was in 2000 after adjusting for inflation.

Now you can't believe simultaneously that Nigeria will be overwhelmed by famine while also being as wealthy as the wealthiest nation currently is. So either the prediction about famine is wrong OR the prediction about future economy is wrong. And if the economic predictions are wrong, so is the predictions about future warming.

So you'll have to drop one of your disaster scenarios. Or just engage the cognitive dissonance part of the brain.

Dear Loudmouth,

Your premise that educating women results in decreasing population growth is not valid.

The solution lies in keeping women in the workplace longer instead of at home having children, thus lowering the fertility rate in the society. To get women to make a choice of staying in the workplace requires providing them with incentives viz higher salaries, higher occupational status, more jobs for women, etc. Put all the women in charge of running the office and put all the men in the house dependent on the income of their working wives and watch how population growth will plummet overnight.

And of course this works best in an industrialized society. That's why we are seeing population declining in developed countries and rising population growth in developing countries dependent primarily on agricultural production.

Dear Foxy,

There is a much simpler answer. Think FOOD.

Joe,
I disagree with your assumption that racism plays a part in wanting to reduce the world population. It is fact that the western world has a low population growth rate than most third world countries and I believe that most people are like me in that I hate to see those pics of starving kids and crying babies. I also hate to see pics of women and kids sleeping in the streets and selling sex and begging from tourists, like in the Phillipines and some South American countries.

I think you also may find that the governments in Thailand and Iran (at the time) not only educated about contraception but supplied the means. So it was not only education that lowered the birthrate in those countries.

The point is that these countries showed that lowering the birthrate can be achieved if governments set their mind to it, without hard or draconian measures.