Population growth is unsustainable. It will stop either because we get this message and maintain a birth rate below two, or because more children die.

However, we must do better than that because the world is currently overpopulated. We are consuming resources faster than they renew and those resources are essential to provide for the current number of people. While we attempt to figure out how to live sustainably we must bring our numbers down.

The logic is straight forward. A growing population is not sustainable. A stable population is not possible unless the birth rate is managed by governments, therefore we must manage it. If we are managing it, we might as well manage it so that it declines so that there is more time to figure out how to provide for our numbers sustainably and so that there are fewer to sustain.

Ted Rosling, the man in the video, has the cause and effect backwards. A low birth rate is not caused by wealth, but poverty is caused by a high birth rate. With an uncontrolled birth rate, the population grows until it hits the limit. At the limit, children die at the rate necessary to cancel the birth rate above two. For example, if the birth rate is three, then one in three children will die. When we humans improve our skills at providing for ourselves (i.e. better technology) the limit is increased which drops the death rate of children and thus the population to grow.

Over the past 100 or so years, we humans have dramatically increased our skills and we’ve seen the population grow dramatically as a result. Scientists like Ted Rosling have noticed that with increased wealth the birth rate has dropped. But they make the mistake of concluding that there is a mechanism that forces the birth rate to drop. There is no such thing. He has found a correlation to wealth, education, and a lower birth rate, but he has not found a mechanism that guarantees a sub two birth rate, and he’s forgetting that there is a mechanism whereby a birth rate above two causes poverty.

There is a mechanism that can keep the birth rate under control. It is knowledge. Everyone must have the knowledge that 1) a birth rate above two kills children, 2) that in the absence of regulations, you must limit your offspring to two, and your parent’s grandchildren to four and your grandparent’s great grandchildren to eight, and 3) that every country is currently overpopulated right now because we are consuming resources faster than they renew.

These three simple facts must become common knowledge if we have any hope to stop the deaths that are caused by overpopulation.

See http://stopattwo.org