Comments on: It’s World Population Day. Or is that, “Over” Population Day?

By: IGORoamandreport

IGORoamandreport — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:35:28 +0000

Generally speaking, I think population will grow as long as we have plentiful resources. That being said, it’s how we are treating and conserving our resources that will make the biggest difference. Here in America we have 5% of the world’s population but use almost a quarter of the world’s energy, so I don’t think it’s necessarily ‘overpopulation’ that’s the world’s biggest problem.

By: Diane MacEachern

Diane MacEachern — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:28:49 +0000

Thanks so much for the thoughtful post. Unlike Bryan Caplan, I don’t believe we can rely on technology alone to help us out of this mess. That sort of shifts the burden elsewhere, doesn’t it? But it certainly would help. No matter how many of us or how few, it just makes good sense to be more efficient whenever we can – and technology can certainly help us with that.

By: adam @ greendoglove

adam @ greendoglove — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:34:41 +0000

Shew that’s a tough subject. You are right there are a lot of people in the world and it’s putting a strain on the earth’s resources. But what is the right solution?
I definitely agree we should give women the right to choose whether or not to bear children, along with education on contraceptives. Both of those have also been shown to decrease crime, so that’s an added benefit.
I used to think it was obvious that decreasing the population was the obvious goal, but there are people who make the argument we should be doing the opposite. Bryan Caplan in “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” (http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046501867X) argues the solution will ultimately come in the form of technological breakthroughs, and by increasing the population we are increasing the chance of someone discovering one of these breakthroughs.
Anyways, sorry for the long-winded post, this is an interesting discussion!