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from the On-a-Pale-Horse-vs-Being-a-Green-Mother dept.
The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.
A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 1) by albert on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:55AM
This being SoylentNews, I'll assume you accept the idea of evolution. Yes? I hope so.
OK, all this stuff for reducing population is massively selected against. This isn't some minor selection bias that would cause a bit of the usual snail's-pace evolution. This is absolute win-or-lose selection. Anything and everything that defeats population restraints will rapidly become near-universal in the population, no matter how distasteful we may find it.
Contraception tends to be defeated by a desire for kids, religious feelings, stupidity, inability to think ahead, rape, and irregular/misleading cycles. Economic incentives tend to be defeated by petty crime (pickpocket kids) and abuse of welfare, including the fact that our society is currently unwilling to let kids actually starve. A one-child policy generally relies on contraception and economic incentives, so the same things defeat it, plus you can add corruption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:12AM
So you are saying (among other things) that creationists often have large families because they evolved that way?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:40PM
DUH. Religious wacos despite their whining and maximum misinterpretation about evolution in practice tend to be very good servants of Azathoth. Other horsemen of atheist apocalypse keep them at bay most of the time thou.