Comment 33156

By Borrelli (registered) | Posted September 01, 2009 at 15:45:46

If the world were proportionally over-populated, I think it would be much easier to have discussions about population control or ZPG, but in much of the Western world, and especially North America, there is plenty of land and resources yet to be exploited. This is a blessing in many ways because while I understand the need for ZPG, we're still talking about a massive social engineering project that will have vast unforseen consequences.

Though China didn't shy away from implementing population control policies, they had a very poor understanding the long-term cultural consequences of the one-child policy and are now dealing with a fairly large gender imbalance, which itself is a problem since large populations of young males with no job or marriage prospects tend to lead to restive populations. In Japan, population control was similarly needed, and over the past half century the Japanese have brought down birth rates by something close to 20 per 1000, yet this has resulted in a very small youth cohort that will somehow have to support a burgeoning ageing population.

Which is basically to say that dramatically reducing population growth will have its fair share of problems associated with it, and it will be a much larger issue in proportionally over-populated areas of the world where resources are already scarce. Look to learn lessons from Nigeria and nations in the Middle East over the next 20 years to see how they fare.

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