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E.O. Wilson, "perhas our greates living biologist", lays the crux of this bare in his elegant book The Future of Life: 

"The constraints of the biosphere are fixed.  The bottleneck through which we are passing is real.  It should be obvious to anyone not in a euphoric delirium that whatever humanity does or does not do, Earth's capacity to support our species is approaching the limit"(p.33).

Any hard won reductions we manage to achieve in shaving our ecological footprint are for the time being totally offset by rising global population as people work to meet their basic needs. 

Noble as they may be, lets forget changing the light bulbs and biking to work for a moment.  Instead lets find ways to begin talking about taking responsibly for the rate of population growth and the direct consequences population growth have on decreasing the quality of life on earth for all of us, especially our children and theirs, etc. 

In the US at the moment it might well be politically untenable (at least in the terms usually used for talking about this), but perhaps only because we fear the perceived solutions to run-away population growth will be worse than the problem, which if left unchecked now, someday they may well be. 

But for the time being in fact, ballencing of run-away population dynamics are the natural result of the some of the very values that most of the world's population currently aspire to:  those of economic opportunity, greater community integration through technology, and of most direct importance:  The empowerment of women!

(Again, Wilson): "The freeing of women socially and economically results in fewer children.  Reduced reproduction by female choice can be thought a fortunate, indeed miraculous, gift of human nature to future generations. ... They opted for a smaller number of quality children, who can be raised with better health and education, over a larger family.  They simultaneously chose better, more secure lives for themselves" (p.30)

Thank you ladies.  (moral of the story:  So the truer answers appear as usual when we revision the questions which they serve.)

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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