This is something that has always concerned me in the back of my head, and have wondered how seriously others consider it. It's somewhat political due to many public policies being based on children, families etc...

Now I am not against children, we have 3 ourselves, and stopped there. We originally wanted to stop at two, but we love our youngest just as much as the two older two.

But then I see a family like the Duggars... who are expecting child number 18 in 2009... and I have a hard time understanding the rational behind such a large family in this day and age. They seem to be somewhat extreme in their interpretation of religious doctrine as well.

But to use them again as an example of why I think using books, documents, and writing that at times are over 2000 years old for today's society is foolhardy.

Back 2000 or more years ago, there was a horrific infant mortality rate, so having some extra would tend to help your kingdom/religion succeed. As modern medicine has removed many of the reasons children died at young ages it has led to a marked increase in population.

Also take into consideration that during those times life expectancy would often rarely exceed the mid 40's, with someone living to the age of 65 a rarity. Modern medicine has the human being living often into the mid 70's on average.

This is leading to gigantic population boom... that the earth will have a hard time handling, either resource wise, or politically.

It would behoove the human race to think beyond religious doctrine and face the facts, we need to control our population growth better, because if we don't, it will go beyond politics, and mother nature will take a direct hand, and we'll all end up like the dinosaurs.

Not exactly. The chronic procreators in the US and other Western nations are few and far between and don't make that much of a difference.
The exponential growth in population these days is occurring in far less developed countries where the dynamics still in many ways resemble those of the days when as much reproduction as possible was considered a good thing. That is where we need to focus our efforts in development and education to prevent excessive population growth.

__________________
That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

True, it's not as rampant in the western cultures, but it still ends up being tradition, religion, or in some cases a bit of both coupled with advanced medicine that has created a population boom the world can't cope with.

Americans are still a growth population, not as rampant as others, but we still need to look at ourselves before we say something to others.

Our growth comes from immigration.
Although it is worth noting that evangelicals are outbreeding the rest of us. I'm not sure that will actually lead to a culture of over-reproduction though. I think many young evangelicals will alter or rebel against their upbringing given time.

__________________
That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

I think we would do better to stop allowing illegals to come over here and have babies to try and gain citizenship than to try and restrain ones freedom to raise a large "legal" American Family.

Our federal government if put in check would not allow this invasion of OUR land and thus we could send these people back were they belong and get a bunch of the tax monkey off of our collective backs.

I posted about population control to another group and one responder commented "if eating babies is right I want to be wrong."

Well, I have no answer as to how to go about pop control, but I can see we have too many people in our world for the limited resources that are available.

If the world was a perfect entity, no, the gov should not dictate pop control...but we are far from perfect.

Our future existence on this planet will demand some form of pop control, but I think nature will take care of that problem in the not so distant future.

And in the big picture, we can't fix the problem, we can only postpone the inevitable. But buying a little more time would make things much more livable in the not so distant future than the current path we are headed in.

The world is in a death spiral and politicians as well as industry are pretending this problem does not exist. We can only blame ourselves, for it is just how we have built our world over the years....too many people, living outside of natures intended balance and not an infinite supply of energy to fuel all our demands.

It would be one thing if we all reverted back to rural living, burning trees for fuel and housing and living within our comfortable means allotted to us by nature, as our ancestors did back in the day. But 7 billion people can't burn the trees!

The public just won't not go for pop control...too UN-American...goes against our religious upbringings...too controversial and all of the rest. I can hear the cries now...Communist!...Atheist!...Baby Killer....Hitler....Impeach the President!!!!

I think nature will help us humans out with that hard decision - for nature does not discriminate nor find the truth too controversial or provocative or opinionated to be true. And in the end, nature will settle the dispute of population control with even handed justice by removing excess population just as it does with all its species, ever reminding us all that nature does not bow to man...it is always man that bows to nature.

Are you my twin, or just a mind reader?