[beatgammit]

Personally, I think the overpopulation argument is weak. The places that have overpopulation issues are the places where people don't listen to people talking about overpopulation. It's the same problem with plastic use, non-green electricity generation, etc. Most policies are just going to negatively impact the minority without actually solving anything.

I firmly believe that necessity is the mother of innovation, so we should be encouraging those who feel a need to cut back to reproduce, because those are the people who will innovate for the rest of the world. If you have the means to make positive changes, you have the means to raise children to continue that effort. If food starts to become scarce (globally, not just regional distribution issues), we'll innovate new ways to produce food. If water starts to become scarce generally, we'll innovate ways to conserve it and/or desalinate. If pollution gets out of hand, we'll innovate solutions there too.

So I think all of the talk about overpopulation is counterproductive. We should be discussing the problems overpopulation causes and solve those since there's no way to force another individual or group to stop reproducing, but you can make living more sustainably more cost effective.