The article is sober common sense. I would like to address two common misconceptions that inevitably occur in discussions of population growth, including here:

1) People have a right to procreate.

In fact, procreation is one of mankind's most highly regulated activity. All societies have elaborate customs or laws that limit the rights of individuals to procreate. Even the most primitive societies govern marriage to increase the survivability of the group. In the US, marriage is a legal status that governs degrees of allowable sanguinity, legal age, inheritance, insurance, and tax status, including marriage benefits and penalties and deductions for dependents. These are all existing and valid matters of public policy. Tax penalties for large families would not be outside the realm of current policy options and, in my view, would be entirely beneficial.

2) Predictions of ecological collapse have been proven wrong.

This is a mantra as familiar as "guns don't kill people." Paul Ehrlich spoke of the population bomb in the 1970s and here it is 30 some years later and disaster hasn't happened. Therefore the "neo-Malthusians" have been laughed out of the room, we are told repeatedly.

The average mammal lasts approximately two million years on this planet; the human race has about 1.8 million years to go to match even this modest standard. That is the appropriate timescale to use in considering these issues. The modern explosion in population and energy use is the merest blink of the eye. Sometime essentially equivalent to the present, on this timescale, the planet’s endowment of finite resources, including finite capacity to absorb global warming emissions, will be depleted. Do you think there is enough rhodium on the planet for all the catalytic converters that China and the world are going to want for their automobiles? The fact that Paul Ehrlich and The Club of Rome got the day of reckoning wrong by a few years is not at all the reassuringly conclusive argument for eternal progress it is always taken to be by the birth lobby. Resource constraints on a finite planet are inevitable, and we will see them sooner rather than later if we don't learn to "grow" in some more sensible way. Human creativity may be able to work around these constraints, but the economy and the society that result aren’t likely to resemble the current one very closely if it does.

excellent post. US quality of life is already suffering due to

explosive population growth in my view.

technology brings many boons but also many troubles. Couple this with the booming population and we have a world that is increasingly out of control. Curtailing population is the solution to this, but it is one of many issues that we need to address going into this next era of human development.

Short of forced abortions and/or sterlization, you cannot prevent someone from procreating, even with marriage laws (as if one need be married...). And certainly punitive measures against large families may seem beneficial, but before you get too involved in it, I encourage you to look into the "success" of China's one-child policy.

Don't get me wrong, I am not denying that overpopulation is indeed a serious concern. I am, however, cautioning against advocating policies that have already proven to be quite problematic. (And, no, I do not have a better suggestion...)

Remove the child tax break -- so that you can take a 'tax-deduction' only for one child. You'd be surprised, but it will stop some (not all, but definitely SOME) folks from having more than 1 kid.

Have a bunch of popular celebrities come on the media and advocate adoption rather than biological children. People are all social animals, we do stuff that we think will make families, neighbors, and scoiety in geneeral approve (for e.g., look at the amount of social pressure on folks who decide NOT to have children in USA). The mo' it becomes 'cool' to have no more than one bio child and just adopt if you want more, many more will follow suit.

Sure, SOME folks will simply have an instaiable urge to procreate multiple times -- can't stop that in a free society -- but hey, if you can make 50-60% of population stop at one bio child -- that's a darn good start!

1) If you want to encourage adoption, why get rid of the tax break, which applies to them with equal force? If you get rid of it, you probably only decrease incentive for adoption, according to your theory.

2) The child tax break is irrelevant for people at the high end of the earning spectrum. They are likely to have fewer children by choice, but those children are likely to absorb more resources than poorer children. In other words might one rich kid equal 3 poor ones? Once you factor in luxury SUVs, food, clothing etc. maybe so? I'd love to see some economic breakdown.

The logical conclusion to your argument begs the question of whether the goal of saving a human life is in fact worthy on it's own merits. Should the strongest always survive? Do we dilute our own gene pool by subsidizing those incapable of supporting their progeny; by passing and enforcing seatbelt and child restraint laws; by going to extreme measures to save babies born substance addicted or with AIDS? Do we want to save these people just so we can have cheap labor, (the conservative view), or because they have attributes that will be lost to future generations if aborted or allowed to die the natural death that their, or their parent's, stupidity would naturally provide? My take is that saving a life, on the individual level, is a noble and worthy thing; one of which we can all feel proud; catching an infant dropped from a burning crack house, giving CPR to some beggar who has over-dosed on Sterno. But to what end? Do we save the low-rent people just to have affordable yard-boys, or to have expendible fodder to send to our wars? Do we jeopardize our own survival, as a species, or ensure it, by saving those attributes which nature would not allow to live, and thus be passed on to future generations? smitn@hotmail.com

I've been an advocate of population reduction since I was a kid and learned about overpopulation, and in ways that overpopulation and the stripping of the environment has lead to the cycyle of African starvation. Too many trees get cut down for firewood, so fertile topsoil gets washed away when it does rain, leaving poor quality soils to grow crops on, crop yields aren't high enough to support the population, so people starve.

I don't believe humans have any moral 'right' to reproduce. I don't believe we are any 'better' than the other species that inhabit this planet with us. We may be more aware of ourselves, and able to reason, but why does that make us better? I don't see it.

1) I agree, get rid of the kid tax credit for any children biological children over 1. Allow additional tax credits for adopted children. As people have less kids, there will be less kids to adopt, and over time, the multiple child tax credit will fade.

2) Give couple the right to have 1.5 kids. Obviously you can't have two or more kids if you only have the credits to have 1.5. So what's to be done? Kid credits get traded and bartered. You want two kids? You have to purchase someone elses 0.5 kid credit. You don't want any kids? Well then, you have 1.5 credits to sell to others. I've read this idea before, and I think it'sa great idea! And the 1.5 credits is for the couple. So each individual would only have the right to 0.75 of a kid. So lets say you get married, have a kid with your spouse, and don't use or sell your remaining 0.5 kid credit. You get divorced and remarried, your new spouse has the right to 0.75 of a kid and you have the right to 0.25 of a kid (if you and your ex decided to fairly split the credit between the both of you instead of selling it as part of the divroce or give it to one of the parties). So after your second marriage and breeding stint you wouldn't be allowed to have anymore kids. And neither would your new spouse since he/she used up all of their 0.75 kid credit.

3) How to control people breeding? Well, we could always do like culture in the novel "The Sea of Glass" and take the unlawful extra children away fromthe parents, execute one of the parents as punishment, send the extra kid to a forced labor camp, and if they are just a baby, turn them into hamburgers. No I don't advocate that at all. It was a disturbing book. But I would totally support a forced birth control policy for both women and men. Depo shots for women, and some other reverisible form of BC for men. And when you get married and want to have a child you haveto go through a class and get a certificate showing that you are ready to be a parent and stop BC. Then once you have your kid you can choose sterilization or more BC until you purchase another kid credit.