The Issue of Human Over-Population

Human Over-Population of the earth is an amazingly complex and multi-faceted issue, as discussed in this DU thread.

The basic argument for having population control is that too many people leads to limited resources and conflicts such as war, plus there is degradation of the environment from human pollution and development of wild spaces. This is all pretty clear, basically obvious points.

This argument of the dangers of over-population has long been made, over centuries, in various and very dire ways, but it is clear that the most catastrophic predictions have not come to pass. Clearly the risk of over-population has been over-stated to a real degree, and technology has kept up to a certain degree with the massive human population.  This doesn't mean that human growth can go on forever, obviously, and there is a sense among most people in tune with the earth, that at this point in time, the planetary ecosystem is really starting to be significantly degraded, and perhaps, irreversibly.

Now, there are some signs that human growth will be checked without any overt actions taken-- increased prosperity and education and better rights for women should lead to lower birth rates. Many advanced countries indeed have declining birth rates. So maybe there isn't major reason to worry about this.

And clearly, any forced population control is reprehensible to most people, and can even lead to genocide. Forced culling of humans is a huge worry among conspiracy types. And this is obviously a real concern. Even's China's one-child policy is extremely harsh and raises all sorts of ethical issues and borders on the verge of mass murder.

But on the other hand, I see no problem with the solution of education and freely available birth control. Most women do not want to chug out tons of babies, so this is an easy policy for non-religious people.

Religious people, especially the more fanatical ones, are a huge blockade to sensible birth control for a couple of reasons. First, many religions seem to be centered specifically around controlling female sexuality and having men subjugate women to a significant degree. I'm not clear about whether this is just about power or something deeper. Second, religions always want to maximize the number of their followers, and they realize how easily people can leave religion, so they tend to have their women produce lots of children. Third, since religions preach the notion of fantasy worlds and the after-life, tend not to worry about the physical world and planet earth, thus do not care about over-population from this perspective.

I do think, in an ideal world, the planet could hold the number of humans we presently have easily and in relative harmony, IF technology was maximized for production of cheap, non-polluting energy, maximized for producing nutritious food efficiently, and efficiently dealing with pollution. But this is in an ideal world, which means it won't happen. So the mess will continue, and where it is heading is hard to know.

It's certainly likely that over-population will drive humans to search for new worlds away from planet earth, which raises a new set of conspiracy issues.

First, if there are evil aliens quarantined on this planet by other more benevolent aliens, as proposed by AP and which is supported by a fair amount of conspiracy evidence, then this is a major problem to finding a new planet for humanity. AP proposed that humans leaving the earth is actively blocked by the quarantine since humans are so closely intertwined with the evil aliens and share DNA. So rather than humans being able to readily leave earth via spaceships, there will be a "breakout" move by the evil aliens against the quarantine, involving nuking of the atmosphere and near space to break the quarantine. Unfortunately this will also annihilate most of humanity at the same time.

Second, let's say the idea of a strict planetary quarantine against evil aliens is wrong. Now, I do think there is evidence for a planetary quarantine by aliens; there certainly is clear evidence for aliens. Maybe the quarantine isn't against evil aliens trapped here but simply against humans themselves. My thinking is if humans can evolve enough into benevolent creatures, then a deal could be made with the quarantiners for us to leave. Plus, since there are definitely highly advanced aliens monitoring us, then at some point, if they are benevolent, they would help us deal with over-population issues and destroying the planet. Heck, maybe they already are, in strange ways we can't see.

In any case, I think most of us agree that we should save the earth from too much humanity and save all the beautiful creatures and plants that live here, and actively work for a better world.