Trivun said:
I'm going to be controversial here, but I think one of (not the worst, but in the top ten) the worst things humanity has done, or rather failed to do, is the failure to institute population caps in the last century, with strict regulations and harsh punishments for breaking those rules. I even wouldn't be averse to (as a last resort) adding birth control to the water supply in countries with greater than 3% growth per year. The population is increasing out of control, and we're running out of room and food and resources. Unless we want WW3, over natural resources, within the next century, we need to do something now.
And i'll be the first one to disagree with your "controversial" opinion here.
Concerns about over-population frequently pop up on the Escapist, and indeed "over-population" is often used in science-fiction as a simple and easy catalyst to create dystopian, conflict riddled futures, which is probably where a lot of people get their concerns about population from.
"Over-Population" is a relative term, depending on how technologically advanced such a population is when it comes to acquiring it's own food resources. For instance, by 1340 England was over-populated, medieval farming technology could not sustain 5 million people and more and more people were slipping into poverty and serfdom until the plague happend. If England had a population of 5 million today, with modern technology, we would be massively under-populated, because our economy can sustain a population off around 60 million.
For these reasons, developed countries like the UK, America, Germany, Canada Japan are not over-populated because they can feed their respective populations- to the extent that obesity is a common public health problem. Plus, in a developed economy, there is little incentive to have more than 2 children (or any at all) which means that the fertility rates in countries like the UK, France and Italy say hover around at "replacement level". In fact the only reason why the population in countries such as the UK is rising is because of immigration- in Germany and Japan the population growth is almost negative- because there is not enough immigration.
Developing countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Bangladesh etc are however "over-populated" and this is because they don't have the technology to sustain their populations. If they did, like the developed world does, then these countries would not be over-populated. However, antagonising this problem is high-birth rates because in un-developed states, there are reasons to have lots of children- lack of contraception, some medicine which would lower infant mortality, but mainly because most people work in agriculture and children are a) cheap, free labour b) without an effective system of state welfare, parents need children to look after them when they are old. This means that the populations in the un-developed world are rising quickly, and the solution to this is not imposing birth control measures, but by helping them develop economically so they have the technology to sustain their populations. If the entire world becomes "developed", populations will stabilise and we'll be able to feed everyone.
