The Fundamental Problem with Population Control
Assume for a moment that a deadly catastrophe kills over 99.99% of the human population leaving only one million people left alive.
In this scenario, I believe that humanity would still run out of resources. For instance, the remaining survivors would still continue using non-renewable resources, such as oil and natural gas.
Furthermore, the world would experience a huge population explosion that would eventually fill all the corners of the planet again, yet with fewer resources available. Thus, in my opinion, humanity would quickly reach large enough in numbers to again start using more renewable resources than the planet can naturally renew.
It is a natural human tendency to use up all available resources until depleted or near depleted. It is only when resources start running low (i.e. higher prices because of limited supply) that alternative resources are even considered. As a result, whatever the human population, mankind will never have enough natural resources.
The only possible solution is to require only manmade renewable resources to be used. Therefore, mankind would be directly responsible in creating whatever resources that we need without depending on limited natural resources that man has no control over.
Actually, this will ultimately happen, since we will run out of all natural occurring resources eventually. Therefore, the only option for mankind is when to migrate to only use manmade resources. I would hope and advise to switch before the lack of resources negatively impacts mankind (i.e. mass starvations or crashed economies). In other words, now is the time to start switching to only manmade resources.
As a result, population control is just a means of delaying the inevitable necessity of humanity being completely self sufficient. However, the fundamental problem with population control is that it does not and will not solve the insufficient natural resources problem. Population control only delays this problem from being addressed.
by Phil for Humanity
on 11/25/2009