[nine_k]

No, not this, to my mind.

When the world was much smaller, the same problems persisted. The Great Famine of 1845 in Ireland happened not just because crops failed in Ireland. England had enough crops, and the world was ready to sell more, but the British government kept Irish ports closed for imports of foods, and English Protestant farmers were not very keen to sell to Irish Catholics (fun: both considered themselves Christians). Estimated world population at the time was about 1 billion.

Man-made famines are a really common thing all along the human history; just consider the medieval sieges of cities, and routine deliberate destruction of enemy crops. This was happening when the world had merely 300-400M people.

It's not too many people. It's too little wisdom, and too much cruelty, per person.

[briansm]

Then again, if you believe that it's not 'too many people' and you also concede that population will continue growing as it has for the last 650+ years and the planet obviously isn't growing then surely you must also concede that at some point it has to become 'too many people', the only question is when.

[nine_k]

Population growth slows down literally everywhere, and in most countries it's below replacement level.

We are living through the peak Earth population right now; it will likely be degreasing in 50 years.

[antisthenes]

Population growth slowing down is literally collective agreement on "there are too many people".

[dotnet00]

No, population growth slowing down has nothing to do with a collective agreement on their being too many people.

It's simply that people in developed countries don't want to deal with the trouble of raising more than 1 or 2 kids because raising kids is difficult and expensive. You need 2 kids to replace the 2 adults, but then you add in other mortality factors and it drops below replacement.

Most of those people aren't agreeing that there are too many people, hell in cases like Japan, even their governments want them to have more children, they're just focusing on what strikes a balance for their comfort.

[vidarh]

The population is demonstrably not continuing to grow at the same rates - all but sub-Saharan Africa is at below replacement fertility (and sub-Saharan Africa is also dropping fast), and much of the world today only experiences population growth due to immigration. With China likely now having slipped into decline net of migration, and India having dropped below fertility replacement rates and so only a couple of decades away from population decline, we're 50-100 years away from global population decline without drastic steps.

[ajuc]

According to our best estimates we're already past the "peak children". World population growth has been slowing down for decades at this point, it will become negative in second half of this century.

World hunger is not caused by too many people, it's entirely caused by our priorities. World produces more food than it needs and that production grows faster than the population.