Yes and I'm not sure why the panic has subsided. Has the world really increased its capacity for human population? More likely: it's media meme that had come and gone.
No. No they aren't. The number of pregnancies is declining, but the pregnancies that result in a child who lives more than two years has never been higher.
Why it is the elephant is probably that if you decry overpopulation, you're implicitly complaining about them, not us.
You can't invoke overpopulation without bringing in racial and other divisions, because it's not the developed nations where the populations growth is taking place (other than due to immigration).
> You can't invoke overpopulation without bringing in racial and other divisions
Of course I can. Watch: overpopulation of humans is a very serious problem. In fact, it is the root of many (if not nearly all) of the other major problems we are currently facing (climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity). Not overpopulation of poor humans or dark-skinned humans, but humans. And in fact it is almost universally the case that if you offer people the opportunity to have fewer children without destroying their economic prospects or requiring them to have abortions (i.e. if you give them jobs and access to birth control), they will take it. The only exceptions are members of certain extreme religious (not racial) groups.