Yes, this is one of the reasons I'll never have children. No, all you need is a cultural change-- population growth is slowing.
Is it taboo to environmentalists? No, not at all. Almost every environmentalist I've known, professional or otherwise, talks about the need to limit population growth frequently and cites it as a factor in their own reproductive choices. Is it a consideration of mine? No. I have plenty of other reasons to not want children, the primary one being, that well, I don't want children...
Population control is only a taboo subject for environmentalists when the population being controlled isn't human.
But then that is still telling of both devoped nations and developing nations. Once devoping nations are develped then immagratuon and emagration will settle down and I'd will be a challenge to sustain population.
I think current estimates are for the population to top out at 9-10 billions. If the death rate ever exceeds the birth rate, it will still be quite some time before we have to worry about sustaining the population. I'd say the optimum Human population for the planet is around 3 billions.
^^ Actually, what I meant to say is that 3 billions is the maximum Human population that the planet can comfortably sustain; but 500 millions seems a little sparse.
well say UK stops people having too many kids.. China and India wont.. and they will have more.. and their policies will win..so eventually the world will end. cos of over population. a poulation filled with people who dotn care about the environment and cant do anything about it.. if the UK could take over the world and THEN make everyone be environmentally friendly.. that would be good.. but then it would require alot of man-power...
i too have read this.. the Earth cant sustain alot more then 10Billion people for a long time.. the reason being is the resources will not be available for people to live proper healthy lives.. more so than now even.. so whats the point of people having kids if they are to die when they are 45 and live in povety.. it could be argued it is ethical to control population growth to protect the individual... potential individuals.. and also the human race.. which i think is important as its the only intelligent race in the universe..
So it's just like winning wars. In fact it is a world war. And again this demonstrates the omnipresence of natural selection.
China does try and stop people having too many kids with their one child policy. It's compounded by a major cultural problem they've never been quite able to stamp out - a preference for boys over girls. I haven't ever come across India having any policies on the number of children. Problem is that short of a literal decimation of the their populations bases even with a one child policy they can easily add a couple of million people a year. Don't know if it's ever played a factor in India or China in Africa, the selling (thought it's closer to dumping) of baby formula has caused problems. Normally the women there would of breast feed for 2 or so years which provides the mother with a degree of natural contraception. Along comes baby formula and they stop nursing. Combine with a lack of contraception for a variety of reasons and they become pregnant more often.
Another problem in First World countries is that people are living longer; so even though people are waiting longer to have children there are more generations alive at one time-- so even if you limit yourself to a "replacement," you're still likely tripling or quadrupling your part of the population. But there's no way to control this through legislation without interfering with Human Rights; there has to be a cultural change.