Reply #18: The question remains whether you can bring about small enough family sizes by family planning alone [View All]

[GliderGuider]

If we need to have prosperity factored in, then from a global point of view we have a major problem. There is no way I can see to make 7 billion people prosperous in the near term, by any traditional definition at least.

World population is still growing by the equivalent of one Egypt every year. Lots of extra mouths, lots of extra food, lots of extra environmental damage. It's a Red Queen's race between population and food, and a flat-out loser between population and the global environment. In order for the rest of life on the planet to have a chance we need to find a way to make the global population start dropping within the next 20 years. Can we do it without increasing the imbalance between humans and other life even further? Increasing prosperity is unlikely to do that, as it would concentrate yet more of the world's resources in the hands of humans and out of the reach of other life.