[arjn]

You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ? The world is already heavily overpopulated. If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.

If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway. The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.

[joshuapants]

> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?

I have traveled all over the place, so your lousy ad hominem is unnecessary. "Crowded" is not the same as "overpopulated."

> If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.

Ah, so now we've moved from a factual question ("Is the world overpopulated?") to a subjective one ("At what level below the carrying capacity should human population be maintained?") which comes with a number of ethical questions ("Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?" for one).

> If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway.

Undoubtedly. That is not the same thing as overpopulation, by the way, because we humans have been driving other species to extinction throughout our entire history.

> The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.

This is nice and subjective, and also not the same thing as overpopulation. In the future, please try to avoid slinging around buzzwords.

[AnthonyMouse]

> "Who are we going to forcibly sterilize to maintain that level?"

That's unnecessarily inflammatory. We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage. If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.

There are still ethical questions there, but it's a far cry from rounding up poor people and sterilizing them against their will.

[joshuapants]

> We could substantially reduce the birth rate by providing everyone with free birth control and promoting its usage.

The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.

> If that isn't sufficient we could pay money to anyone who has a vasectomy.

Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The efforts to increase condom usage in sub-Saharan Africa show that this might not be very easy at all, and this assumes that the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children which probably isn't accurate.

It assumes that some of the people who have children in those areas don't actually want to have children, which probably is accurate.

Moreover, the efforts to increase condom usage are targeted at reducing AIDS and other STIs. If you want to reduce birth rates you promote birth control pills. Particularly in an area where the legal system puts most of the economic burden of raising children on the mother.

> Economic coercion is still force, and still ethically shaky.

I fail to see how offering to pay someone $5,000 to have a vasectomy is less economically coercive than requiring them to pay $10,000+/year in child support for the next two decades if they get a woman pregnant.

[ekianjo]

> You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ?

Have you travelled to the US, Europe, Russia or Africa? In most parts of these continents there's nothing but nature for kilometres and kilometres with very low population density. Only large cities concentrate a lot of people, and there's still space for more if we really wanted to.

[hamoid]

From "Deforestation and net forest area change, 2010"

* Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year in the last decade compared to 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s. * The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2010 is estimated at –5.2 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Costa Rica), down from –8.3 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.

http://www.fao.org/forestry/30515/en/

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in China, which is not nearly as populated as Bangladesh or India.

We have to decide if we are to move forward or back. Technology can help us boost population while limiting impact, we can also branch out into new ecological niches (even those off planet) as any successful animal would. Biologically speaking, we should increase in number if we are doing well, to do otherwise isn't very natural (and ya, flora and fauna are out competed all the time, it's part of the system).

It might not be the moral thing to do, but it is definitely the natural thing to do.

[alextgordon]

It takes a special kind of person to look at all the environmental damage we are currently doing to the world (destruction of rainforests, overfishing, rising sea levels, disappearance of coral reefs, desertification, air pollution, soil erosion), and say "more please!"

[seanmcdirmid]

Nowhere in my post did I say "more please." To say humans should roll over and intentionally go extinct is not the solution just as much as exhausting all resources. Somehow, we will find how to thrive.