Frankly, I find it bemusing to watch the handwringing everytime someone brings up the words 'population control' in USA. I assume the only 'population' control model USA has in mind is that of china, with its forced abortions-at-7-months policies.

Actually, another democracy has done quite a credible job at population control -- that is India. No forced abortions there, but simply a long public relations campaign that pointed out to people that this was a poor country with limited resources, and having more than 2 kids was essentially hogging more than your 'fair share' of resources that the country had available. It worked wonders. In a couple of decades, public opinion had changed enough that a 3rd pregnancy caused eyebrows to be raised in mild disapproval (kind of like smoking does in USA today ), and a 4th pregnancy would make one's own family gasp with shock at one's idiocy. And most folks found that life could be pretty darn good with 2 kids -- or even just 1.

Face it -- if we all become super eco-conscious and cut our carbon emissions by a staggering 25-30%, and the world's population grows by 25-30%, then our net gain is nada.

And also face it -- there's another source of population growth which NOONE is wanting to curb -- that's the fact that people are living longer thanks to medical technology and battles against poverty. We want people to have a long and healthy life, right? We want all the children of the world to have access to clean water, electricity, a solid roof over their head, enough nutritious food. All of those things use up resources and tax the environment. Well, the only way you can have your cake and eat it too -- give every human a decent standrad of living AND have some nature left -- is if the number of people being born is reduced voluntarily (hint, contraception is a wonderful thing :)).

And by the way, just having one 'biological' child does not mean you have to be a 'one child family.' There is no end of children in the world who desperately need a loving home -- have your 1 biological child -- then adopt another, or 2, or 3. You can have as big and as loving a family as you want, they just don't all have to come from your own loins! Of course, in theory there COULD come a day when EVERY child who is born is 'wanted' and 'loved' and parents can look after them and noone is ever abandoned or abused or given up for adoption. Its going to be a while till that utopia arrives -- and when it does, it would probably mean world population is stable enough and low enough that folks can go back to having children at the 'replacement rate' without worrying about how much its taxing the environment.

Your math is off. We're far and away the biggest resource hogs in the world. The average American uses 62 times the resources the average Indian does. A 30% decrease in our carbon emissions coupled with a 30% increase in world population - which as a whole uses resources at a far lower rate than we do - would give us a net gain for the environment.

"The average American uses 62 times the resources the average Indian does."

India has historically polluted less not out of being greener, but because it was poorer. People in india would happily drive SUVs and crank the AC if they had the money to do so.

The average American uses 62 times the resources the average Indian does."

That would mean USA cars get .65 miles per gallon. It would mean americans air condition their homes to 30F in the summer and heat their homes to 120F in the winter.

The energy usage figures don't make sense until you stop assuming the energy use is all personal and realize that 25% of the world's industrial output and trade runs through the USA economy.

For your earlier claim, India's lifestyle motives are irrelevant. You spoke strictly of population growth, not economic growth.

India has been a failure in terms of population growth. The middle-class might be limiting it's numbers, but the 800 million people below the poverty level still breed like rats. India now has a population larger than China, if only it's Govt. would conduct an honest census. One has only to go to one of the large Indian metropolises and look at the teeming slums and the accompanying pollution to realize that India hasn't made any dent in its population or its polluting ways.

Oh, I agree, the 'suceess' has been less in rural and poor areas where folks have very little education. AND where religion and 'contraception is evil' mentality has a stronger grip.

But a big part of the 'growth' has also come simply from fact that, even in India, people are living longer and infant mortality rates are down etc etc.

In America, where education levels are higher and access to contraception is cheaper, I think this would be far easier to achieve if that initial mindset of MORE children is always BETTER could be changed. Like i said before, its perfectly easy to have a BIG happy loving family through adoption!

Not really -- we 'hog' more simply because we have higher standrads of living and more longevity.

The kid in africa who lives without access to clean water and latrines and gets no education and is malnourished and dies of malaria by age 8 doesn't get to use too many resources. But we don't WANT that -- do we? We want this kid 9once he's born) to have the clean water, have enough nutritious food, have a school building to go to and educational material once he gets there, we WANT him to live to 70-75 yrs rather than die at 8.

When we achieve that, this kid will need to use a bigger share of resources.

That's the crunch -- we WANT to give every human a decent standard of living - if not quite America, then at least Greece. At the same time, we don't want natural resources to run out and all wild places and wildlife to entirely vanish. So -- voluntary birth control seems to me to be the happy compromise.

Unfortunately in a lot of parts of the world you run smack-bang into religious structures that forbid contraception use and insist on more and more childbearing. I have no idea how one gets around that.

India needs to institute a one child policy like China, otherwise as we see now, it is just going to export its teeming millions to other countries. This of course would never happen as the religious conservatives keep beating the drum about the decline of their numbers. I once read about some Hindu fundamentalist exhorting his followers to have 10 or more children, otherwise they would become a minority.

At the poorest level, there is little incentive to limit birth rates. How exactly do you propose a destitute nation or region sustain itself? If you're a parent in these areas, your kids are your workforce and your future social and financial support when you are no longer able to work.

And the reality is, attempts to modernize people in third world nations has created more pollution than existed in the first place.

do you give up and not try to institute change? i have a big issue with the fact that a lot of times religion is part of the problem. you can educate people, but you can't stop them from blindly following the mandates of their religion. now if said religion wants to be solely responsible for those people and their impact on the rest of us, that's one thing. but in this country, for example, our taxes go towards helping subsidize these people, if only through the public school system.

no. it's a problem i dont know how to get around, but we need to figure out some way to do it. there is no help (and perhaps a hurt) in depopulating the middle class and letting it be run over by the lower classes of the society. there is no easy solution, but it needs to be done.

I think education is a great way to reduce birthrates. However, India is a terrible example as its out of control population growth will soon make it the world's most populous country.

However, there is plenty of statistics that suggest by giving all women the equivalent of a grade 6 education you could significantly reduce population growth in developing countries. However, an agenda by Western countries to reduce the birth rates in developing countries would not be very welcome in the current geopolitical climate.

deduction said:

"do you give up and not try to institute change?"

I empathize with your concerns, but the fact is that almost every effort western nations have taken to improve the quality of life and health of poor countries has been disastrous. This includes many very well-intentioned liberal policies, as well as the usual suspects of global economic domination and corporate exploitation. Given our track record, at some point I think we need to ask "who are we to tell people they have to change?"

"i have a big issue with the fact that a lot of times religion is part of the problem. you can educate people, but you can't stop them from blindly following the mandates of their religion."

The problem is, an uneducated but very religious person consumes fewer resources than an educated nonreligious person does. It's a difficult paradox; if you are mainly concerned about the environment, the best thing you can do is to discourage education. Education results in more income, which means more resource consumption and materialism. Religions may encourage reproduction, but the religions that are strictest about unregulated childbearing also tend to be strict about lifestyle. Therefore they end up regulating resource consumption.

However you look at it, the fact is that the people least likely to respect environmental concerns are the people mostly likely to have many children. Studies have shown the more kids parents had, the more likely it was that they voted for Bush. Voluntarily declining to have kids merely hands our future over to the Mormons, Fundamentalists, and Muslims who don't believe in contraception.

I once read about some Hindu fundamentalist exhorting his followers to have 10 or more children, otherwise they would become a minority.

Fundamentalists of every religion are probably the BIGGEST enemies of voluntary birth control. No surprises, their biggest concern is maintaining the 'power' of their own religion -- plus they tend to care more about the afterlife than the state of either the earth or of human suffering in this life!

Religions may encourage reproduction, but the religions that are strictest about unregulated childbearing also tend to be strict about lifestyle. Therefore they end up regulating resource consumption.

Really? In my experience religions care about regulating stuff like drinking and homsexuality -- and while they MAY have some success in reducing out-of-wedlock births, most encourage you to breed like rabbits once 'in wedlock', and none of them exhort against -- say -- driving an SUV or keeping the AC turned to 67 degrees in summer or buying your kid half-a-car-load of plastic toys (or at least as many as you can afford) for every festival.